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Also don't forget some of those starters being sold below retail value were from 3rd parties who were needing to make quicker sale turn arounds and couldn't afford to sit on stock for 3 years to sell slower. Basically moving slower selling stock into faster selling.


Also for the life of AoS its had probably the worst time of sales predictions. Launch was a mess; 2.0 landed during the Pandemic; next edition hit with Cost of Living.

Alongside GW's record growth we've had huge swings in economics for people.

 His Master's Voice wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Both the 3rd and 4th starter boxes feel like they were overproduced, which doesn't necessarily mean they sold poorly, but implies that GW expected them to sell better.

I assume GW is basing their assessments on sales data from across the franchise, not just starters. It's perfectly possible for a big box to underperform while the rest of the range sells record numbers.

Absolutely. Something to consider on that mindset. The starters are where they really push the Stormcast and if those boxes are underperforming, maybe the reasoning behind revamping things is to deemphasize the Stormcast. They've never become the license to print money Marines are and one of the strengths of the line has been how iconic a wide variety of the factions have become. If the starters and only starters are underperforming, its quite possible they want to reframe things away from the Stormcast being the face of the line.

I never understood why they had to have them be as pushed as Space Marines are anyway.

The oversaturated Stormcast releases resulted in them also getting mass unit removals to keep up, which creates resentment.

Why not just... lighten it up a little? They don't have to flip the table to do that. They can just try doing a starter with Cities of Sigmar vs Ironjawz or something.

That's actually a good point and lets face it the idea of having Stormcast in every starter set did result in GW doing the very wild move of invalidating a number of popular models that were only 3 years old. That doesn't settle well with the market you are trying to make your main breadwinner.

In theory you don't need to actually change the lore to do that; just the internal company policy. However I bet its probably all wrapped up together


However another thought is perhaps GW felt that AoS needed a single core faction to market heavily to help it grow and now either that's failed to generate what they thought or its worked well enough, but that other factions are stronger/strong enough that GW feels they might shift marketing to "whole game" instead of "stormcast"


The other option is a lore change means they can argue having 2 stormcast armies to swap between for starter sets.

 LunarSol wrote:

Vorian wrote:
The conjecture from Rob (honest wargamer) was that 4th didn't sell well and so 5th is a bigger rejig to try and get it back to selling well.

He is vastly better placed to comment on it than me, so I am just relaying the comment on.

Both the 3rd and 4th starter boxes feel like they were overproduced, which doesn't necessarily mean they sold poorly, but implies that GW expected them to sell better.

Which means that they sold poorly.... There' no universal objective number that can indicate if an item sold well or poorly, it's always relative


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I think you are vastly underestimating how much lore changes matter to the players.

All WHFB armies were playable in 1.0 AoS. Initially you didn't even have to rebase them. Yes, the rules were ridiculous and generated their own fair share of mockery, but that's not where the bulk of the complaints were, the complaints were about the lore.

Technically yes, but

They didn't have any points
Everything had to be rebased to rounds/ovals (if you wanted to play right)
Even accepting the loose rules the entire system went from rank and file to freeform movement (that is a big change)
Several of the armies flat out stopped being sold
Several more got shattered into multiple "subfactions" on the GW webstore, telling people that those factions were going to possibly expand but not the original army
This was after 2-3 months of the entire product line being pulled from stores. Keep in mind at that stage no one expected the game to return - GW were 100% silent and even rumours were a mess at that time. There was no "we are blowing it up and then in 1-2 months returning with a new game) marketing at all.


I'm not saying lore has no impact, but that an advance of the AoS lore is very different to the mess that was the Old World to AoS transition. AoS 1.0 (if you can even call it that) wasn't just lore changes, it was basically everything changed.

My point is its a LOT easier to bite the pill of new/updated/advanced lore than it is a product removal

Yeah, while theyre was a ton of complaints about the lore, it surely wasnt the bulk of it. AOS launch was a total train wreck, the lore was far from the only problem with it

 Overread wrote:
That's actually a good point and lets face it the idea of having Stormcast in every starter set did result in GW doing the very wild move of invalidating a number of popular models that were only 3 years old. That doesn't settle well with the market you are trying to make your main breadwinner.

In theory you don't need to actually change the lore to do that; just the internal company policy. However I bet its probably all wrapped up together


However another thought is perhaps GW felt that AoS needed a single core faction to market heavily to help it grow and now either that's failed to generate what they thought or its worked well enough, but that other factions are stronger/strong enough that GW feels they might shift marketing to "whole game" instead of "stormcast"


The other option is a lore change means they can argue having 2 stormcast armies to swap between for starter sets.

Today Im looking into converting my full discontinued stormcast army into 40k, Its kind of mad to think that the reason behind of Stormcast saturation was to recreate the Spacemarine success in AoS but it turns out its the reason Im actually moving those collections to 40k and drop AoS.

Stormcast models are new and nice kits and it's a shame to see the lack of direction for them and pointless design redo's, I mean with a few head and weapons kits you could have loads of different chambers without the need to churn and burn full new model ranges that we are seeing today.

I am not doing anything with my AoS models until we know the truth.

I still think all this sounds like bogus, but I have Heresy models I can paint while we find out.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I never understood why they had to have them be as pushed as Space Marines are anyway.

Marines give GW a lot of leeway to take risks. If you think it won't sell, bundle it with marines and it probably will. I assume they wanted to replicate that with AoS and just... didn't.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I never understood why they had to have them be as pushed as Space Marines are anyway.
The oversaturated Stormcast releases resulted in them also getting mass unit removals to keep up, which creates resentment.
Why not just... lighten it up a little? They don't have to flip the table to do that. They can just try doing a starter with Cities of Sigmar vs Ironjawz or something.

GW wanted a Fantasy game that is as big as 40k and sells as much and they saw the oversaturated Space Marine as the key point on why 40k sells so much more and therefore recreated the very same for Fantasy.
A large model range with everyone else being an NPC, every starter refreshes the model line to have people buy a new army again etc.

just that nobody really cared about fantasy Space Marines and it hindered the sales instead of pushing it
and I guess the time skip and new arrangement with the different focus is a way to change that and move from the Space Marine focus to Imperial Guard focus, seeing that similar but different models lines are requested and sell in 40k as well as TOW

 kodos wrote:
just that nobody really cared about fantasy Space Marines and it hindered the sales instead of pushing it

Thing is, Stormcast are still cool. I like Stormcast, I have a fair few. Following the Thunderstrike redesign, they're well-proportioned magic knights, their helmets styled after Roman cavalry masks are very characterful, and they are well-written in several of their novels (the ones I've read, anyway). There's nothing all that wrong with Stormcast, the only real albatross around their neck is the circumstances of their faction's creation (out-of-universe, that is).

Them not matching Space Marines should not be a problem. Nothing can match Space Marines. Space Marines are so popular they sell multiple games on their shoulders alone. Stormcast having the same place Slaves to Darkness do currently would be fine.

Is this the price of GW being a public company? Of being beholden to shareholders who will not ever be satisfied with merely "good enough"? Who would rather burn it down again and again in the hopes of creating a second 40k?

Gods, it's depressing.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Is this the price of GW being a public company? Of being beholden to shareholders who will not ever be satisfied with merely "good enough"? Who would rather burn it down again and again in the hopes of creating a second 40k?

To a degree, yes, but not really the same way you're seeing in a lot of industries right now. It's pretty clear that GW leadership cares about making cool toys and playing with them in a neat game. Profits matter, but no one is gutting the company to inflate its value so they can bail right before the bubble bursts. It IS a very different GW than what existed in the Kirby years that lead to AoS and 8th.

As for Stormcast, they ARE cool. They're actually 100% me coded and something I should really like. I think to a degree they struggle by not being quite blank slate enough to encourage slapping your preferred cliche on them that marines do. In some ways they're a little too detailed in that regard and don't quite have the same universal appeal.

As for me personally, the main reason I don't own an army for them is just that the line is huge and I just don't like the game enough to want to buy and paint that many models for it. There's a few I've bought over the years for fun and I do really like them, but I'd need to be more into the game itself.

The plan was super obvious but I suppose they didn't understand the potential market as much as they thought they did.

Or perhaps they just have unrealistic expectations for how well a fantasy game can sell globally.

I dunno. I'm very bad at guessing what will be popular because my tastes have become very specific and I'm a bit contrarian so I tend not to like popular things reflexively (a stupid habit, but one that's hard to break!). I was surprised at how popular AoS was after the initial disaster and I remained surprised at how popular bigger-sized 40K is. But I suppose GW wouldn't bother with this if there wasn't some problem - but I think they always underestimate the impact that offputting game rules can have on a game. And even if your hard core of players absolutely love it, it can still be offputting to the average punter (see 8th edition Fantasy).

Edit to add: I don't like Stormcast at all, I don't like the background and I only like the original models as sort of golems or statues come to life. The design of them is just viscerally off putting to me, and I find the way they've tried to inject pathos just way too transparent. "Oh no, I'm super strong and magical and come back from the dead if you kill me, but actually I LOSE A LITTLE PART OF WHAT MAKES ME HUMAN WHEN THAT HAPPENS!" Pffft. A human just dies, and loses everything, so I'm not very impressed at this terrible price the Stormcast have to pay.

That said, I don't think my taste should really be used as a guide for anything. There's loads of stuff I don't like that other people absolutely love.

Lets not forget AoS at launch was based purely on internal ideas and looking at the sales figures. That was the peek of "I don't need customer feedback/surveys" Kirby management.

As a result AoS was designed to be a super open boutique model range. The Lore, Armies and so forth was considered secondary to the simple sale of models for people to build and paint. The AoS lore and Grand Alliance system and launch rules plays into that perfectly. Super casual rules; loose 4 faction system with loads of internal allied subfactions (which could be a few models large to see if the design language sells and then either dump or expand); and a lore that's so stupidly open that GW can design anything and have it "fit"

 Ashiraya wrote:
They can just try doing a starter with Cities of Sigmar vs Ironjawz or something.

I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or what but having just gotten a few CoS kits, I think they'd be pretty awful for a starter. These are some of the most intricate sculpts I've painted from GW, on top of being < 10pts apiece so that a full army means painting a lot of them. As much as I dislike the Sigmarine aesthetic, they are about a million times more accessible to the average newbie- fewer models to an army, much less crammed with detail, and probably even easier to paint than Marines since the form-fitting armor takes Contrast better.

While I'm here, my two cents is that the Helsmiths put AOS back on my radar and the Cogfort got me invested. I still don't care for the infinite-planes-of-whatever lore, but I do like a lot of the new sculpts created specifically for AOS; they have an identity of their own and it doesn't feel like making a game out of the leftovers of WHFB anymore. Putting those sculpts in a slightly more grounded setting sounds up my alley.

 streetsamurai wrote:
Which means that they sold poorly.... There' no universal objective number that can indicate if an item sold well or poorly, it's always relative

To what Ashiraya said above, if you move 100K units, make a sequel, expect it to sell 200K units, but only sell 150K, that's still a success to everyone except the MBAs.

Yes, it's all relative, but overproduction just means under-selling relative to expectations. Which could in turn reflect any number of things, not least of which that shareholders expect constant infinite growth.

 catbarf wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
They can just try doing a starter with Cities of Sigmar vs Ironjawz or something.

I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion or what but having just gotten a few CoS kits, I think they'd be pretty awful for a starter. These are some of the most intricate sculpts I've painted from GW, on top of being < 10pts apiece so that a full army means painting a lot of them. As much as I dislike the Sigmarine aesthetic, they are about a million times more accessible to the average newbie- fewer models to an army, much less crammed with detail, and probably even easier to paint than Marines since the form-fitting armor takes Contrast better.

While I'm here, my two cents is that the Helsmiths put AOS back on my radar and the Cogfort got me invested. I still don't care for the infinite-planes-of-whatever lore, but I do like a lot of the new sculpts created specifically for AOS; they have an identity of their own and it doesn't feel like making a game out of the leftovers of WHFB anymore. Putting those sculpts in a slightly more grounded setting sounds up my alley.

 streetsamurai wrote:
Which means that they sold poorly.... There' no universal objective number that can indicate if an item sold well or poorly, it's always relative

To what Ashiraya said above, if you move 100K units, make a sequel, expect it to sell 200K units, but only sell 150K, that's still a success to everyone except the MBAs.

Yes, it's all relative, but overproduction just means under-selling relative to expectations. Which could in turn reflect any number of things, not least of which that shareholders expect constant infinite growth.

No it isnt a succes for anyone, cause your cost of production doubled (or something to that ilk), so you might be racking in a loss because of that. At the moment, we dont have any metric to know if AOS is selling well comparatively to the cost of producing the game. As far as we know, it might even be a loss-making product (I doubt it is, but it's a possibility). So simply stating that AOs is selling well is an empty statement.

 Overread wrote:
Lets not forget AoS at launch was based purely on internal ideas and looking at the sales figures. That was the peek of "I don't need customer feedback/surveys" Kirby management.

As a result AoS was designed to be a super open boutique model range. The Lore, Armies and so forth was considered secondary to the simple sale of models for people to build and paint. The AoS lore and Grand Alliance system and launch rules plays into that perfectly. Super casual rules; loose 4 faction system with loads of internal allied subfactions (which could be a few models large to see if the design language sells and then either dump or expand); and a lore that's so stupidly open that GW can design anything and have it "fit"

It was also during an age in which World of Warcraft's popularity was having a huge impact on fantasy in general. FFG, DnD and a lot of others all pivoted to more of a cartooning, big pauldron aesthetic that AoS similarly seems built off of. It feels like it recent years they've pivoted back a bit with mixed success.

 Da Boss wrote:
The plan was super obvious but I suppose they didn't understand the potential market as much as they thought they did.

Or perhaps they just have unrealistic expectations for how well a fantasy game can sell globally.

I dunno. I'm very bad at guessing what will be popular because my tastes have become very specific and I'm a bit contrarian so I tend not to like popular things reflexively (a stupid habit, but one that's hard to break!). I was surprised at how popular AoS was after the initial disaster and I remained surprised at how popular bigger-sized 40K is. But I suppose GW wouldn't bother with this if there wasn't some problem - but I think they always underestimate the impact that offputting game rules can have on a game. And even if your hard core of players absolutely love it, it can still be offputting to the average punter (see 8th edition Fantasy).

Edit to add: I don't like Stormcast at all, I don't like the background and I only like the original models as sort of golems or statues come to life. The design of them is just viscerally off putting to me, and I find the way they've tried to inject pathos just way too transparent. "Oh no, I'm super strong and magical and come back from the dead if you kill me, but actually I LOSE A LITTLE PART OF WHAT MAKES ME HUMAN WHEN THAT HAPPENS!" Pffft. A human just dies, and loses everything, so I'm not very impressed at this terrible price the Stormcast have to pay.

That said, I don't think my taste should really be used as a guide for anything. There's loads of stuff I don't like that other people absolutely love.

Same here, I have a visceral hatred of SCE. Visually theyre kitch, lore-wise they are a much too obvious transposition of space marines in a fantasy setting (GW execs at the time were literally mental midgets. SM sell well, so let's make SM in fantasy...), but with even more outlandish abilities.

If the new AOS push them off the front scene, I might finally get interested in the game, cause some of the minis are exquisites

I wouldn't let one faction I don't like stop me from getting into a game. You don't have to get stormcast at all.

Personally my only two problems with stormcast are
1) The keep taking ALL The freaking cool mythical mount creatures - dragons griffins and so forth - let other factions have a go and some dragons (that aren't undead)

2) They are always in the launch box. I only dislike that because it means other faction's can't get the model boost they need and because it led to them retiring models way too early.

 Overread wrote:
I wouldn't let one faction I don't like stop me from getting into a game. You don't have to get stormcast at all.

Personally my only two problems with stormcast are
1) The keep taking ALL The freaking cool mythical mount creatures - dragons griffins and so forth - let other factions have a go and some dragons (that aren't undead)

2) They are always in the launch box. I only dislike that because it means other faction's can't get the model boost they need and because it led to them retiring models way too early.

AOS is pretty much a game and a setting built around SEC so......

Don't bring the Securities Exchange Commission into this, they already have enough on their plate.

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I wouldn't let one faction I don't like stop me from getting into a game. You don't have to get stormcast at all.

Personally my only two problems with stormcast are
1) The keep taking ALL The freaking cool mythical mount creatures - dragons griffins and so forth - let other factions have a go and some dragons (that aren't undead)

2) They are always in the launch box. I only dislike that because it means other faction's can't get the model boost they need and because it led to them retiring models way too early.

AOS is pretty much a game and a setting built around SEC so......

I mean that's one take on it sure - so long as you ignore all the books that are about factions other than Stormcast; and all the armies that are not stormcast. Sure GW goes pretty heavy, but real world wise they are just another faction. Unless you die-hard need them to be in the main box; you can go for any other army

I was thinking about it and even if they make a cool new setting, I just can't get past the copyright proof names for fantasy creatures.

Like Ogre is a real english word with a history and a meaning. You can look at the origins of the word and what it has meant through time. Ogor is a stupid attempt to make a generic concept copyrightable for disgusting corporate reasons.

Every time I see one of those words when interacting with the setting it just hits a discordant note for me - my immersion in any kind of fantasy is broken as a giant foghorn brays "YOU ARE READING CORPORATE SLOP" at me.

I'm not even sure why GW bothered with orruk and ogor, when they market the armies mostly through already copyrightable names like Ironjawz or Mawtribes.

 Ahtman wrote:
Don't bring the Securities Exchange Commission into this, they already have enough on their plate.

South Eastern Conference has some of the best college football you can watch, though!

It's SEO.They want you to google Ogor and find their products instead of googling Ogre and getting generic fantasy results.

Same reason why 40k does this too. Why it's ASTRA MILITARUM now, instead of Imperial Guard. Why it's Aeldari and Drukhari instead of Eldar and Dark Eldar. Why it's T'au instead of Tau. GW isn't going to stop doing this regardless of what happens to AoS, so discussing it as an AoS-specific thing seems ultimately futile.

 Overread wrote:


I mean that's one take on it sure - so long as you ignore all the books that are about factions other than Stormcast; and all the armies that are not stormcast. Sure GW goes pretty heavy, but real world wise they are just another faction. Unless you die-hard need them to be in the main box; you can go for any other army

For sure. If people can put up with 40k despite not being a fan of Marines, AoS should be no different. Stormcast gets an ultimately smaller piece of the cake than Marines do. Sure, they get the edition launch stuff, the starter boxes, but they don't get shoved into everything all the time like Marines do. As a reminder, Space Marines right now in 40k have more detachments (subfactions, like AoS battle formations, but with even more stuff in each like unique commands and enhancements) than SoB, GSC, Drukhari, Tau, Votann, IK and CK combined. Unlike Stormcast, they keep getting relentless releases throughout the edition, not just at launch! They get equal attention cakes when GW releases stuff that should have nothing to do with them.

I dislike it in 40K too, but for whatever reason it REALLY stands out for me in a fantasy setting. I think I see Sci Fi as inherently less generic than fantasy. It's what makes Sci Fi roleplaying less universal than fantasy - there's fewer assumed tropes and things for people to have an automatic shared understanding.

GW just needs to finally acknowledge that the 'Space Marines of Fantasy' are the Chaos Warriors. Evil dudes in baroque suits of armour are just cool (all the way through Dark Souls and beyond!), they have the nostalgia factor of 'they were in Hero Quest', the cover star of first edition WFB was one, and they aren't too difficult to paint.

 Ahtman wrote:
Don't bring the Securities Exchange Commission into this, they already have enough on their plate.

I dunno, given what's been going in those betting markets, I'm guessing they're taking it easy these days...

 Ashiraya wrote:
It's SEO.They want you to google Ogor and find their products instead of googling Ogre and getting generic fantasy results.

You need a certain level of familiarity with the setting to even consider searching for "ogor" over "ogre", and by that point, Mawtribe works just as well.

 Da Boss wrote:
I was thinking about it and even if they make a cool new setting, I just can't get past the copyright proof names for fantasy creatures.

Like Ogre is a real english word with a history and a meaning. You can look at the origins of the word and what it has meant through time. Ogor is a stupid attempt to make a generic concept copyrightable for disgusting corporate reasons.

Ogre is French though.

I don't have that much of a problem with those names. I mean even in WHFB several races used different names for themselves (Dawi, Druchii, Asur...) and I suppose there would not have been an outcry if they had used them more often, even on the army book title.

And well, as Germans we shouldn't have a problem with Ogor or Orruk at all - if you don't use an extravagantly pronunciation it sounds just like Oger and Ork anyway.