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 Kriswall wrote:
The main reason I don't play is that the factions I'm interested in aren't likely to get new models anytime soon. I like the Seraphon line, but most of the Saurus models are super old and don't match the aesthetic of the newer ones... like the guy who rides the big dino. GW seems almost exclusively interested in releasing models for brand new factions.

I strongly dislike Warmachine/Hordes, but at least there you know your faction will get a few model releases per year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's been since August of 2013 that Lizardmen/Seraphon got new models. I know some have been reboxed for 9th, but they're not new models. That makes 5 years between releases, and it's not like new models are coming tomorrow. How many years would I have to wait for a new Seraphon unit? My only real hope would be to see a handful of push fit models sold as a Warhammer Underworlds kit.

Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!

A lot of the old classics are in the same vein, but there have been some things for some of the less fulfilled lines. Nothing really for classic Dwarfs unless you got Full Metal or Flame. Nothing for Dark Elves, High Elves, or Wood Elves, unless you go Under the Sea or Into the Woods. Beastmen sort of had something come in with the Tzaangors and such, but they were more emphasized as Tzeentch then Beast (though that's finally changing). The only real human release has been for the Sigmarines.

Then there are the Khemri. Given beautiful and amazing models in 8th, and then fully subsumed like a stepchild in to Death under the leadership of the Vampires.

 Charistoph wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
The main reason I don't play is that the factions I'm interested in aren't likely to get new models anytime soon. I like the Seraphon line, but most of the Saurus models are super old and don't match the aesthetic of the newer ones... like the guy who rides the big dino. GW seems almost exclusively interested in releasing models for brand new factions.

I strongly dislike Warmachine/Hordes, but at least there you know your faction will get a few model releases per year. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's been since August of 2013 that Lizardmen/Seraphon got new models. I know some have been reboxed for 9th, but they're not new models. That makes 5 years between releases, and it's not like new models are coming tomorrow. How many years would I have to wait for a new Seraphon unit? My only real hope would be to see a handful of push fit models sold as a Warhammer Underworlds kit.

Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!

A lot of the old classics are in the same vein, but there have been some things for some of the less fulfilled lines. Nothing really for classic Dwarfs unless you got Full Metal or Flame. Nothing for Dark Elves, High Elves, or Wood Elves, unless you go Under the Sea or Into the Woods. Beastmen sort of had something come in with the Tzaangors and such, but they were more emphasized as Tzeentch then Beast (though that's finally changing). The only real human release has been for the Sigmarines.

Then there are the Khemri. Given beautiful and amazing models in 8th, and then fully subsumed like a stepchild in to Death under the leadership of the Vampires.

Dark Elves had the Daughters of Khaine this year to expand part of their range, and Beastmen are getting a new battletome this weekend that looks pretty solid so far (though only a new terrain piece and new spells as far as models). I'm hoping more of the legacy factions will get these sorts of expansions in the future.

 Charistoph wrote:
Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!

*ahem* Dogs of War player checking in here. Our last Army Book was in 5th...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!

*ahem* Dogs of War player checking in here. Our last Army Book was in 5th...

The Dogs of War concept was dropped during 6th (I remember some of the army books referencing them), and hasn't been paid thrift since, sadly. They were never as cohesive an army set as even Bretonnians were, which is probably why.

Oddly enough, the Mercenaries and Minions in WMH has done pretty good for itself over all, even if they are rather short-sheeted in several departments when it comes to new models.

Cross-alliance allegiance for Dogs of War would be awesome.

 Charistoph wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!

*ahem* Dogs of War player checking in here. Our last Army Book was in 5th...

The Dogs of War concept was dropped during 6th (I remember some of the army books referencing them), and hasn't been paid thrift since, sadly.

They were never as cohesive an army set as even Bretonnians were, which is probably why.

Nope, Dogs of War got a "Ravening Hordes" list via a couple WD articles during 6th, and a few additional models for the Albion and Chaos campaigns.

Nope, DoW have always had a better, more complete army than Brets. You just don't see it because Brets can't hire DoW.

They also got a bunch of their named regiments and special characters updated for 6th as well. I've been playing against my brother's DOW army a few times recently, and it's a daunting prospect. It's only going to be worse when all the Dwarfs get added.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
Now imagine if you were a Bretonnian player! Nothing since 6th!

*ahem* Dogs of War player checking in here. Our last Army Book was in 5th...

The Dogs of War concept was dropped during 6th (I remember some of the army books referencing them), and hasn't been paid thrift since, sadly.

They were never as cohesive an army set as even Bretonnians were, which is probably why.

Nope, Dogs of War got a "Ravening Hordes" list via a couple WD articles during 6th, and a few additional models for the Albion and Chaos campaigns.

Nope, DoW have always had a better, more complete army than Brets. You just don't see it because Brets can't hire DoW.

"During" meaning that it wasn't completely carried through to the end. Ogre Kingdoms did mention them, I believe (it is been a long time since I looked at that book), but I don't think the Dwarfs army book gave much time to them for their last book (again, running on memory here).

"Complete" and "cohesive" are not always the same thing. Mercenaries are a complete army in WMH, but only the Rhulic and Pirates have any cohesive feel to them.

And never played or collected Brets. They were in the running, along with Tomb Kings and Beastmen, but I never did finalize on an army to start collecting.

 Geemoney wrote:
I don't think the game is very fun. My experience with Iron Jawz is charge everything and then lose because all the other armies are better then yours in combat.

Out of curiosity what sort of list do you run? Iron Jawz tend to do pretty well from what I tend to see.

If he's playing against competitive tournament armies then I believe what he says. Iron jawz in a power gaming environment lack the tools needed in many cases.

 Charistoph wrote:

"During" meaning that it wasn't completely carried through to the end. Ogre Kingdoms did mention them, I believe (it is been a long time since I looked at that book), but I don't think the Dwarfs army book gave much time to them for their last book (again, running on memory here).

Correct, last book to mention them was the 6th ed OK book with a reference to the best named unit in WHFB ever- The giant pygmies of Lemuria.

I want blocks of troops and regiments- I play a good amount of Warhammer Total War and prefer the previous factions/characters

The fluff isn't nearly as intriguing as the Old World

 Stevefamine wrote:
I want blocks of troops and regiments- I play a good amount of Warhammer Total War and prefer the previous factions/characters

The fluff isn't nearly as intriguing as the Old World

The fluff needs to mature itself and also get over the Sigmar Hump as I call it. The Realm structure leaves huge scope in this world for adding things; way more than for the Old World. The writers and story just need to push past Sigmar coming to save the day and get the other factions to get their head up. I greatly enjoyed reading Pestilins where you had Skaven waging war against each other and Sigmar over the back of a vast land worm that carried a city upon its back; with huge towers built around the long hard hairs on its back swaying to and fro with rats scurrying all around whilst also gnawing and eating their way through the worms guts.


As for blocks and regiments I agree that they are great and I love Total War AoS. I can only hope that the GW Specialist Games division keeps doing well and thus they decide to bring back Warmaster or recreate it for AoS. I always felt that was the perfect way to show rank and file as you could have far larger armies and get a real feel for the epic sweep of a cavalry charge into rank and file; of dragons and other beasts really being able to lay waste to companies not just 30 warriors etc..... I'd really love to see that game make a reappearance.

 Stevefamine wrote:
I want blocks of troops and regiments- I play a good amount of Warhammer Total War and prefer the previous factions/characters

The fluff isn't nearly as intriguing as the Old World

This too. I miss the ranks and blocks of WHFB.

Plus, I was never really much a fan of Epic fantasy like AoS. I prefer more grounded fantasy settings. AoS has great models but the setting itself doesn't interest me as much.


@Service Games

Admittedly SCE are a bad example considering how much starter set love they get. Fyerslayers are just ridiculous. $60 for like 10 basic troops? $40 for five naked dwarves? You must have a lot of spare cash to drop that kind of cheddar on naked dwarves with axes.

AoS strikes me as the kind of game for people who love painting pretty models and has no problem paying an arm and a leg for those pretty models.

It wouldn't have been that difficult to reintroduce block combat under AoS - just a single page of rules to cover RnF vs individual base.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It wouldn't have been that difficult to reintroduce block combat under AoS - just a single page of rules to cover RnF vs individual base.

Coupled to some plastic movement trays with deep round slots to hold the models on. Some people already used such for Demons of Chaos armies that could cross both games back in the day (I even started that and was going to use a magnetic sheet and magnets on the underside of models but never got round to finishing it).

IT could certainly be done, but I suspect it might not for a long time. GW is still in the kind of process of building AoS up and you can see that in how the unit counts for many armies are still smaller than some comparable 40K armies.

 Overread wrote:


The fluff needs to mature itself and also get over the Sigmar Hump as I call it. The Realm structure leaves huge scope in this world for adding things; way more than for the Old World.

I think that's the problem, actually. The setting is so large that nothing that happens at a scale the players can relate to actually matters. There are continents too numerous to even bother naming, literally billions of members of every faction in each of the mortal realms, entire kingdoms massacred on a daily basis. It's impossible to be emotionally invested in any of it when there's so much of it that none of it is actually vital to the setting.

In fairness that was kind of the same with the Old World - it was still very big. I think that the killed in droves thing will ease off once we get more named heroes and characters appearing.

At present a lot of factions are relying on the big named god level heroes; with far fewer is any real named lesser heroes or characters. I think once we get them and we get a rise of other factions and settlements of note a lot of the story will come together.

I see AoS as a cake that's still in its goopy not yet fully risen state. It's got huge potential and if nurtured right will rise into a great cake; but make a mess and it can still flounder and fail to rise.

I think the key thing - lore wise - will happen when GW starts shifting off the Stormcast. The risk there is that they focus on Stormcast like they focus on Space Marines and attempt to copy the (lets face it, it works really well for them) marketing approach in that its all about the big superhumans and not really about anyone else.

 Overread wrote:
In fairness that was kind of the same with the Old World - it was still very big.

Not really, not in the same way AoS is. The thing about the Old World was that it was comparable to a squashed version of our world, with minor (compared to AoS) fantastical elements. It was not a series of 8 interconnecting magical realms, each with their own topography and quirk and are described as being massive. The scale is completely different.

You can look at a faction and go "oh yeah, these guys are based on the Holy Roman Empire and they are geographically in the same area as Germany. These guys are French and they are in the same area as France. These are totally aztec lizards and they come from a continent that looks suspiciously like a starved South America"

You just don't have that in AoS. That's why it feels so alien and extreme, because you have nonsense like that worm city. That just doesn't exist.

I just want some normal dudes, you know? I don't want some magic roided space marine expy from some god dimension. I just want a poor sod named Bob who was conscripted from some farm out in the country to fight demons, vampires and other horrible stuff with an ordinary pointed stick made of wood and iron called a "spear" rather than a "stabmaster extreme" made with bark harvested from a magical tree and metal that was conjured from the dreams of a drunken priest or some other nonsense.
That's what Warhammer Fantasy was to me. I can get into Warhammer Fantasy's world. I just can't with AoS.

Disclosure, I do play AoS, but only a small corner of it, namely: small narrative games. Anything 500 to 1.000 points if we did count them.

So, rephrasing the question to "Why isn't AoS your main game system, just like WHFB used to be" the answers, in no particular order, are:

- No more ranked units, just free-flowing blobs moving around the table at ludicrous speed (when not outright teleporting where you want them). WHFB used to be a chess-like system where you had your plan your movements well in advance and a bad deployment would punish the whole game. Here's the absolute opposite.
- Too much emphasis on shooting, with shooting into and out of combat being the cherry on top.
- Squatting of TK which is one of my main armies.
- Lack of people to play with. A lot of those who embraced AoS moved to 40k when 8th hit, and Shadespire also carried away a few.

There are some very good things about AoS which, IMHO, make it work better at the lower point levels, it's just not a WHFB substitute. To me it's closer to Warmahordes and 40k in concept than WHFB, so it's only natural that if WHFB was my main game that place is now held by just playing 8th edition or 9th age.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Geemoney wrote:
I don't think the game is very fun. My experience with Iron Jawz is charge everything and then lose because all the other armies are better then yours in combat.

Out of curiosity what sort of list do you run? Iron Jawz tend to do pretty well from what I tend to see.

It was just a start collecting league; we did 1000 points then 1500 maybe...I dropped out after that. My list was ardboyz, brutes, goregruntaz, Warchanter, and Megaboss on foot. I played like four or five games and they all ended the same. The game might be better and higher points; but I just didn't want to invest the time or money in it to find out.

I sold the army, Orktober is coming and I need to buy some buggies.

 djones520 wrote:
It's not Fantasy. It's 40K with more swords. I played Fantasy to play a different game. When the switch to AoS happened, it took away all of the reasons I played it, and there is nothing in AoS that makes me want to devote time to it, instead of just sticking with 40K.

You know, I have thought about this comment more than any other I have read on dakka. As I am only recently getting into WFB, I am surprised how detailed many of the rules were as opposed to 40k at the time. When I played 40k 2nd, there were a lot of rules, and I know the effect that can have a large games, however, I felt like every model not only made a difference, but tactically I could do more with it. Think about what was the right move was just as enjoyable as making it. I have lost interest in 40k over the years, and over the years I might have had 2-3 armies at a time. So far in diving into WFB (I know I really missed the boat on this, but I just bought my 4th Battalion set, in addition to the other 6 starter armies I have. The biggest reason why? The rules. I am amazed how much flavor each army has, and how that gives them their own character, strengths and weaknesses. For much of 40k, it was the opposite, I just felt like everyone blended together and there was just this generic feel to all of them. I would say this was the case until 6th, which I think swung way over too far in all the special rules and details, but even still I didn't play it that much nor any of the additions since. I imagine there are some that disagree with me, but this is just how 40k has made me feel over the years, and throw in the Primaris, and I am over it all. I do have some fondness for the earlier editions that I will never get rid of, but I am over keeping up with the game.

AOS feels like where 40k is going. Given the popularity of 40k, maybe that's the right move for the masses, but they have lost me. And to be honest, I feel like I am seeing some LOTR in AOS. And while that system was kinda new and I was playing characters from an amazing story, it was still mostly moving single models around a table who fought with swords. Got over that quickly and aren't really interested in going back.

I do like skirmish level games, like Warhammer Skirmish and Mordheim, but I there is more detail in those games.

I have an Age of Sigmar army, complete with round bases. Moonclan Grots.

While night goblins are a part of warhammer the whimsey never really matched the grim horror of the unrelenting orc hordes. So they never left their 7th edition sprue until Age of Sigmar came along.

I wont take Age of Sigmar seriously, so my night goblins found a home on round bases, I bought some squig hoppers and a pair of manglers to go with them

Apparently Moonclan is a top tier army, but I have rarely used them and most are unpainted. They were out of my main fantasy O&G army though.

I am not in a hurry to buy into any more Age of Sigmar, though I frequently buy the models to use with my Warhammer Fantasy armies.

Aos is 40k with swords

40k is MTG with models you assemble and paint.

GW have abandoned all trappings of war games in exchange for CCG and Video Game expansion pack design.

If i wanted to play LOL or MTG I would play LOL or MTG not AOS or 40k.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:


The changes did not start happening until 2016. look at the prices on the Fyreslayer release and tell me that is not Kirby-era thinking. Note how the GHB came as a result of feedback instead of being a day 1 release, note how the battletome structure entirely changed, note how the campaign books that were being pushed as a big deal never got continued. The way AoS was managed for the first year/year and a half is completely different than after. If it was so successful why change things so dramatically?

Look at the prices of chainrasps. or the price increase of wanderers when they shifted to rounds. It's still fairly out of whack.

And yes, of course changes didn't start happening until about 2016. One doesn't say, i need to clean house, and gets a stark white abodement inmediately. you need to start gathering things. In case of company management, it means studying and analizing the innards of the company. And all that while the endless machine of releases churns its product. A book needs to be on the printing machine about 3 or so months before release, meaning for most of the early stuff it was too late to form up a coherent response, which was ready before launch.

The change wasn't done because the game wasn't sucessfull (though we need to be fair and admit it was clearly not a roaring sucess, just doing a-ok) but because the dev team didn't like the way things were imposed to them. We all have seen that reddit thread about the former dev who explained how entire departments had to be evacuated when certain someone passed by to inspect. The change was inevitable, gw just wanted to sped up things by borrowing the job done by scgt and thus shave off months of extra work.

One also has to remember that battletomes have changed in paradigm in two occasions. the first being sylvaneth, where we got alleigance, with the second being kharadrons, where we got sub-faction alleigance (which is a thing all tomes afterwards have, bar the god specific chaos gods' armies and nighthaunt-the later which can be part of a tome which DOES have sub-factions)

Sub faction allegiance is just an evolution of the meta-battalion versions that existed in the first battletome. They just stripped out the part whete a battalion tax had to be paid, the actual benefits are pretty consistent.

I would agree about management simply needing time, etc, except the entire structure changed so dramatically. It was not just the pricing, not just the community engagement, but multiple factors. Again, if the point-less, campaign-book structure of AoS was working, why abandon it? The only reason for them to completely halt those campaign books (and there was most likely intent that they would continue originally--clear if one read All Gates) is that they were not working out. Even fan demands for points did not require the introduction of allegiance abilities that redefined battletomes.

I find it difficult to believe that Roundtree simply wanted to completely change the paradigm of AoS while it was successful--the changes only make sense in the context of the original content not doing well.

Pancakey wrote:
Aos is 40k with swords

40k is MTG with models you assemble and paint.

GW have abandoned all trappings of war games in exchange for CCG and Video Game expansion pack design.

If i wanted to play LOL or MTG I would play LOL or MTG not AOS or 40k.

Correction. 40K is Age of Sigmar with guns.

Davor wrote:

Pancakey wrote:
Aos is 40k with swords

40k is MTG with models you assemble and paint.

GW have abandoned all trappings of war games in exchange for CCG and Video Game expansion pack design.

If i wanted to play LOL or MTG I would play LOL or MTG not AOS or 40k.

Correction. 40K is Age of Sigmar with guns.

40k came first though.

40k is WHFB with guns would be the more accurate version. Same idea though.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
40k is WHFB with guns would be the more accurate version. Same idea though.

WHFB already has guns though