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Gonna reactivate my Audible for that one. Sounds fun.

I would like to hear that myself too.

 infinite_array wrote:
Just wanted to duck in here and mention that the new Gotrek audiobook/drama is basically an ongoing conversation between a WHFB veteran and an Age of Sigmar player.

Gotrek, looking at Age of Sigmar thing: What nonesense is this?!
AoS character accompanying Gotrek: That is *insert AoS name of person/place/thing*, which has-
Gotrek: *Brian Blessed Noises* The Old World was better!

Ok, now totally sold.

 infinite_array wrote:
Just wanted to duck in here and mention that the new Gotrek audiobook/drama is basically an ongoing conversation between a WHFB veteran and an Age of Sigmar player.

Gotrek, looking at Age of Sigmar thing: What nonesense is this?!
AoS character accompanying Gotrek: That is *insert AoS name of person/place/thing*, which has-
Gotrek: *Brian Blessed Noises* The Old World was better!

I really like that.
I'm going to have to listen to that myself.

Is there any indication of it coming out as an actual book? I'm interested in the story but I loathe audio books.

For me - I liked the old world a lot, and I dislike what I know of the new one - some of the retooling of the factions seems really dumb to me too (Zepplin dwarves and underwater elves for instance).

I find the new mix of factions confusing too.

Finally playing Total Warhammer (which is totes awesome btw) has really made me miss the old world again :( It was big blocks of infantry squaring off that really drew me to Warhammer over 40k in the first place.

Schmapdi wrote:
For me - I liked the old world a lot, and I dislike what I know of the new one - some of the retooling of the factions seems really dumb to me too (Zepplin dwarves and underwater elves for instance).

But the old world had loads of zepplin flying dwarves in the artwork and such. It just never really made it tableside besides the odd gyrocopter because GW couldn't make zepplins out of metal that were economical/not weight a tonne. Even the ones that we have now in plastic are small zepplins

Yeah, Dwarves had airships. I don't think they were that common though.
The dwarves also use ironclad ships and dreadnoughts when everyone else uses wooden ships. Or Turtles in the case of lizardmen.

Overlords aren't actually that far off from WHFB Dwarfs in terms of tech, but much like everything in AoS they are exaggerated.
My only real problem with them is that they went from Nordic themed to Victorian Steampunk themed. And I don't like steampunk. Its over done and poorly done.

That and the new plastic casting focus means that GW can actually give us models of them without having to remake warmaster (I think there was an airship in warmaster, if not it would have been the ideal place we'd have seen one eventually).

And yes you remind me that they did have air ships in Man O War

There were rules for zepplins in the generals compendium (released in 2002). So thats been a part of dwarf lore in the old world for many years.

Barak Varr, the Dwarven Sea Port in the Border Princes, and its fleet of smoke belching ironclad warships, one of which was featured in Dreadfleet, with an airship as it's scout.

Found it (google images is chock full of warhammer TW stuff now)
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/7v7z9w/are_dwarf_steam_hammertankthings_a_thing/

Classic art that shows a trio of airships. I think there's also several that featured in Golden Demon over the years

 Overread wrote:
Found it (google images is chock full of warhammer TW stuff now)
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/7v7z9w/are_dwarf_steam_hammertankthings_a_thing/

Classic art that shows a trio of airships. I think there's also several that featured in Golden Demon over the years

Man, I wish that Steamhammer tank was released back then.
Its goofy as hell, but it looks fun and I can totally imagine some insane dwarven engineer to build something like that.

 Overread wrote:

Schmapdi wrote:
For me - I liked the old world a lot, and I dislike what I know of the new one - some of the retooling of the factions seems really dumb to me too (Zepplin dwarves and underwater elves for instance).

But the old world had loads of zepplin flying dwarves in the artwork and such. It just never really made it tableside besides the odd gyrocopter because GW couldn't make zepplins out of metal that were economical/not weight a tonne. Even the ones that we have now in plastic are small zepplins

A big difference for me is that old Dwarf airships were made with lighter than air gases rather than magic metal in the sky that may or may not be divine.

What is it about the bigger and more fantastical setting that turns people off? You can get more mileage out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the old world. But was it not limited in overall scope? Just one planet, mirroring the real world, realistic climate for the most part. With most of the factions stuck to one area (Lizardmen in Lustria, Wood Elves in Athel Loren, Ogres in the east etc.). I don’t mean to rub salt in any wounds. I just think AoS is more, unshackled.

Largely relatability. Its hard to relate to the world that is as high epic fantasy. (I like the setting of AOS, I'm just speaking from what I hear a lot)

I think part of the Disconnect is that the Old World had years of lore built up around it. The size isn't so much the issue, the issue is that we went from something almost as deep as Lord of the Rings into something as fresh as Harry Potter book 1.


So people feel less connected than before because its basically a new world and there's huge amounts of it that are not set in stone.

Ontop of that one could envision most of the Old World fairly readily because it was built upon a huge number of standard fantasy tropes. Basically if you grew up on Lord of the Rings and most western based fantasy you could easily envision large swathes of the Old World without the lore being there.

AoS is fully fantastical realms and its going to take longer and require more lore and material to give that same impression. Some areas like the plains where the Dark Oath fight are easy; whilst regions like the Realm of Metal or Shadow are far more mystical and defies peoples ability to even envision the local flora and fauna without GW producing more stories, maps and artwork depicting it.



The setting is far more varied and that is good, but it needs far more lore building to establish itself. The Empire of old most people could envision with a few leading comments. "Medieval peoples with muskets and steam tanks, not many. There that's most of the lore you need to settle yourself and the wooden buildings, castles, pubs, pigs, farms, fields etc... casually populate themselves very quickly.

Right now we've not really got that, esp since GW chose to invade most of the world with Chaos so most of what is there is twisted, decrepit and decaying in warped ways.

I fully understand why people feel this disconnect, but at the same time GW is releasing new Novellas and new stories and I hope will release more artwork as well to help put more flesh on the bones. They've already taken some steps with some casual maps in the rule book, however I feel that htey need more (I think GW is being cautious with maps and such as I think they want to keep the realms open to addition without adding new realms, so I don't think they want to write themselves into a corner now and either have to tip their hand and reveal future content on maps or deny themselves the opportunity to just add new s tuff

 Future War Cultist wrote:
What is it about the bigger and more fantastical setting that turns people off? You can get more mileage out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the old world. But was it not limited in overall scope? Just one planet, mirroring the real world, realistic climate for the most part. With most of the factions stuck to one area (Lizardmen in Lustria, Wood Elves in Athel Loren, Ogres in the east etc.). I don’t mean to rub salt in any wounds. I just think AoS is more, unshackled.

That's part of the problem. AOS is so huge and GW did an awful job of explaining how things worked so it feels far less important. If a province of the Empire or Dwarf Karak fell then it mattered, it was significant. In AOS it's not. A province falls? So what there's so much more left. You took a stronghold from Nagash? Big whoop he has many more.

A big factor I often see go unmentioned is that the base of fluff AoS has now was nearly nonexistent at launch. Aside from the basics of what the realms were, what the four grand alliances were, and a few extra Stormcast snippets there was little to nothing. The campaign books expanded the world very little beyond offering characterization of very specific regions/characters/factions, ditto for the battletomes. On top of that the Stormcast were presented as 'generic awesome mary sue good guys' up front and to find the depth required reading said books which were expensive with little in the way of practical content beyond battalions.

pm713 wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
What is it about the bigger and more fantastical setting that turns people off? You can get more mileage out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the old world. But was it not limited in overall scope? Just one planet, mirroring the real world, realistic climate for the most part. With most of the factions stuck to one area (Lizardmen in Lustria, Wood Elves in Athel Loren, Ogres in the east etc.). I don’t mean to rub salt in any wounds. I just think AoS is more, unshackled.

That's part of the problem. AOS is so huge and GW did an awful job of explaining how things worked so it feels far less important. If a province of the Empire or Dwarf Karak fell then it mattered, it was significant. In AOS it's not. A province falls? So what there's so much more left. You took a stronghold from Nagash? Big whoop he has many more.

I think its more that currently the lore has a lot of battles and fights, but because those locations being fought over are all new to us they don't feel important. Furthermore a good number are chaos fortifications and thus being torn down is kind of essential currently to leave room for new factions to flourish.
I do think GW could have helped themselves and set the game in the first age when everything was new and establishing itself and all the factions were building up and improving themselves and learning new things about the world. Sadly choices were made in AoS's past that voided that option, we've skipped the prologue and the film and we are in the sequel so there's a bit of catching up. That said reading the new novella's that came out today I think GW is going to make fantastic strides in that direction. AoS needs time, more so it needs time under new GW management to flourish. Give it 10 years and then I think we can fairly compare it to the Old World.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
A big factor I often see go unmentioned is that the base of fluff AoS has now was nearly nonexistent at launch. Aside from the basics of what the realms were, what the four grand alliances were, and a few extra Stormcast snippets there was little to nothing. The campaign books expanded the world very little beyond offering characterization of very specific regions/characters/factions, ditto for the battletomes. On top of that the Stormcast were presented as 'generic awesome mary sue good guys' up front and to find the depth required reading said books which were expensive with little in the way of practical content beyond battalions.

Agreed, AoS had a horrible start, its 2.0 has really, I feel, been its turning point and you can see that in the new material coming out from Black Library; in the Rulebook and the Battletomes coming out and in the way GW is marketing it. AoS is almost like a phoenix in that its been burned and reborn and its doing very well for it. One hopes that now GW has gotten over the big 40K Codex release (for the most part); AoS can get at least year of full focused attention to really come into its own.

It really cant be overstated how botched the transition was. Describing it as finding yourself several films/seasons into a series is very apt.

It has steadily improved under the new direction so I am hopeful for the future. I'd like to see them be as aggressive as they are in 40k in reigning in outlier balance failures though. Seem to hang around longer in AoS.

There just aren't enough people playing it near me to bother with it at the moment.

I mean even a game as obscure as Darklands gets more games in my local club. Although I would like to see the release of the Fimir models teased by Forge World a while back.

 Eldarain wrote:
It really cant be overstated how botched the transition was. Describing it as finding yourself several films/seasons into a series is very apt.

It has steadily improved under the new direction so I am hopeful for the future. I'd like to see them be as aggressive as they are in 40k in reigning in outlier balance failures though. Seem to hang around longer in AoS.

It's improved leaps and bounds since it's first release. I would have never played it then. 2nd edition did a lot to pull me in. I am honestly quite impressed how much the game has grown.

In regards to balance, I'm going to say it's quite the opposite, AoS is actually much more balanced than 40k. If anything 40k needs to reign in some of it's more serious issues before I really consider heading back into tourny play.

I agree with that when comparing game to game it just seemed to me that while better balanced across the board AoS hobby killer builds linger longer (the Flyer spam/Assassin spam/rule of 3 crackdown in 40k being an example of the quicker action I referenced)

 Eldarain wrote:
It really cant be overstated how botched the transition was. Describing it as finding yourself several films/seasons into a series is very apt.

It has steadily improved under the new direction so I am hopeful for the future. I'd like to see them be as aggressive as they are in 40k in reigning in outlier balance failures though. Seem to hang around longer in AoS.

Completely agree on all counts.

I think one big balance difference that AoS got right is that whilst there is an allies system its curtailed as such to basically prevent "soup abuse" far more so than 40K. Even Stormcast, who can ally in anything in Grand Alliance Order, cannot build a supreme "soup" army of min-maxing (in fact at present for all their favour in models, the Stormcast are actually ranked on the underpowered end of the scale- or at least have yet to have anyone take major positions regularly at tournaments).

AoS rules feel like they are aiming for more balance, what needs to be more aggressively done is not so much controlling the balance at this stage, but get Battletomes out and clean up the army listings. I'd love for a year like 40K has had and by 2019 Christmas be able to see most armies at least with a Battletome - might not mean new models, but at least their future secured and some of the split up armies are recombined into functional forces. I think that would go a very long way to improving its popularity with both previous fans (many armies are still without Battletomes and sitting on shelves) and also in getting new people into the game as they have far more freedom to choose what they want.

A year of AoS would be fantastic. I really hope that’s what they’re planning, now that 40k is covered. And I think the BoC book is the first example of a way to bring scattered factions back together again. I could easily see the Freeguild, Devoted Of Sigmar, Colligate Arcane, Ironweld Arsenal and even Maneaters being grouped together under one book, now that units no longer need to be restricted to one book (e.g, Tzaangors) or even one GA.

But as a big big fan of the game, I’ll be the first to admit that the games launch was terribly botched. No points, no structure, little background, do silly things to get bonuses...we’re lucky it survived that. And now it’s grown into my own personal favourite game.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
A year of AoS would be fantastic. I really hope that’s what they’re planning, now that 40k is covered. And I think the BoC book is the first example of a way to bring scattered factions back together again. I could easily see the Freeguild, Devoted Of Sigmar, Colligate Arcane, Ironweld Arsenal and even Maneaters being grouped together under one book, now that units no longer need to be restricted to one book (e.g, Tzaangors) or even one GA.

But as a big big fan of the game, I’ll be the first to admit that the games launch was terribly botched. No points, no structure, little background, do silly things to get bonuses...we’re lucky it survived that. And now it’s grown into my own personal favourite game.

40k isn't covered though.
They still need to release something for GSC, Sisters of Silence and Custodes, a 40k Slaanesh release to tie into the new Slaanesh range, Vigilus and whatever they are planning for Black Fortress. There is still a lot of stuff to cover.

Honestly I don't think anyone (save possibly Kirby?) can say that the launch of AoS was anything but a total mess. That said I think that the old plan for AoS was just totally different. I think their plan was to fully embrace the attitude of "people just buy cool models" in marketing.

Hence why rules were optional and armies were fractured into tiny sub-armies; which I think was a means to allow GW to introduce new armies and retire old models without having the same backlash in marketing that retiring full proper armies has. They also dropped TombKings quite randomly and I figure that we'd have seen them steadily drop more armies as they rotated stock around. It would have made AoS a very light lore and basically rolling series of releases focusing purely on short term profits from launch events.

It's honestly no surprise to many that its launch was a mes, but considering that Kirby was famous for not allowing/doing proper market research nor communicating with the player base its easy to see how a closed box management team (focused purely on the shareholders meeting and profits in the short term) could arrive that that idea.


New Management has totally different focuses and the new AoS is a totally different beast, though still lumbering along with some of the baggage of its launch mess. A year of releases, even if there's hardly a single new model and its all Battletomes cleaning up armies and giving others a secure future - would totally increase the popularity and player base significantly. I really hope its GW's plan, I really hope we can see armies fleshed out and others recombined ilke the Beasts of Chaos were.

 Overread wrote:
Hence why rules were optional and armies were fractured into tiny sub-armies; which I think was a means to allow GW to introduce new armies and retire old models without having the same backlash in marketing that retiring full proper armies has. They also dropped TombKings quite randomly and I figure that we'd have seen them steadily drop more armies as they rotated stock around. It would have made AoS a very light lore and basically rolling series of releases focusing purely on short term profits from launch events.

Incidentally that was the rumour well before release of AOS.