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Given GW appear to be on a high at the moment, I'm curious if the GW/AOS/40K faithful have been tempted by or play, or did play, non-GW games, and why you stopped or carried on

Note this isn't a my games better than yours thread, if you are having fun you are doing it right, just wondering about the dissonance between the Geedubs idea of 'the hobby' and my less GW-centric dogma

Have at it Dakka's

Bolt Action, Infinity, MtG and a few other games are popular in my area.

The only other games I play personally are 2nd and 4th edition 40k. Obsolete 40k is definitely different...

I'd argue the biggest reason for GW's success is that wargames require other people to play with and the massive cost to get into and maintain them. GW's market saturation comes in large part because they're what 95% of people began with - outside of historicals who don't really 'count' as they're more their own, separate thing - so will always have something tying them back to their products. mostly 40k. This creates the effect where people don't dare step out of GW's circle because, well, there's either nobody else to play that new game with or they paid too much money on their GW armies. In the UK I've found this to be a huge problem because Games Workshop stores make this even worse. 8th Edition has pretty much wiped out anything else where and AoS' sudden insurgency hasn't helped either. Why would people spend money on Warmahordes and Legion when all that people are playing is 40k?

This brings me to my directly reply. Trust me, I'd love to see the diversity of games in such abundance that the US has. I'd avoid GW products like the plague, but I enjoy wargaming too much. Luckily I got most of my Imperial Guard before I turned on them, so it's not too bad. Unfortunately there's not much of a choice where I live.

I'm a big GW guy, but I have dabbled in other systems. My biggest departure is with Battlefront. I used to play Flames of War, but have given that up. I'm really getting into Team Yankee now, and most of my buying money will be going into expanding those armies.

I have enough Wrath of Kings that I played a ton before that game went out. I played Armada but they quickly went overboard with that and I dropped it. I play Kings of War but only in 10mm as I don't need that kind of space hogging.

Outside of that I generally play GW. Because I can only get games in generally on a weekend and want to get as many in as possible it means tournaments. Which means GW. Plus I'm actually enjoying both AoS and 40k right now. Which is more than I could say for 7th ed 40k and I couldn't find a game of 8th ed fantasy in our area.

I am not a fan of the direction the games have taken since 7th edition WFB and 5th edition 40K. So I kinda stopped playing by default as my life got busier and I moved away from my long term group, and I have never really started up again.

I went to one KoW tournament a few years ago, and enjoyed myself, but I spend most of my time now painting stuff for Dungeons and Dragons and playing that game with a small group of friends. I would be open to wargaming again, and still have my armies, but I feel much less wedded to the GW system and would likely play something like This Is Not a Test or Frostgrave, or KoW rather than a GW game.

I am paying attention to whatever the plan is for AoS 2e, but I am not too optimistic given the stuff I have seen so far, it looks like lazy design is still the GW way.

To slightly turn the thread on its head, I still adamantly refuse to get into AoS. I'm gonna walk into a GW store for the first time in a year next week, and I know exactly how it's going to go:
"Hey Creed, how were the exams? Good? Great, have you heard about AoS 2nd ed?"
"I'm just here to play 40k and buy overexpensive paint and rattlecans man, I want no part in this sigmarine crap."
But more polite.

I still buy every GW starter in the hopes this time will be good, but it hasn't been for 10 years now. In that time I have dived deep into Monsterpocalypse, X-wing, Warmahordes, Kings of War, Gaslands, Deadzone, Wraith of Kings, Relic Knights, MTG and probably others I'm forgetting, plus wargame-lite board games like Summoner Wars.

No game is perfect but GW is continually the furthest from it.

Since 2015, I've mostly been playing Guild Ball and Bushido.

The key difference between these games (aside from the low model count) and GW stuff is the dice mechanics.

GW... roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. Just an ever decreasing dice pool where probability determines the outcome without much input from the player

I'm not going to go into the dice mechanics of Guild Ball and Bushido, but they are far more interesting and thus so are the games.

A 25 year fan of GW stuff, but lately have been playing in the 40k and Sigmar universes with the rules from One Page Games instead, as they are much more casual and dead easy to teach, while still letting me enjoy the settings and the minis from GW.

In my honest opinion, I'm not sure the hobby would exist in its current state without GW. Not because of the games, but because so much of the hobby is supported for and by GW. My local comic book store carries a full suite of GW paints, miniatures, and books.... and a handful of Warmachine, Army Painter supplies, and Malifaux (with a lot of X-Wing/Armada in their board game section). A place where everybody plays their miniature games is mostly Magic the Gathering with a few extra tables, but I don't think they'd bother to have even those if not for 40k night. Almost everybody who played Warmachine in my group was a lapsed 40k player. It's like GW is this giant pillar by which an industry is hung.

I think GW has by far the best models in the business - nothing else comes close. That being said, I'd rather play Infinity, Walking Dead, or Runewars. I'm looking forward AoS 2e though.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
To slightly turn the thread on its head, I still adamantly refuse to get into AoS. I'm gonna walk into a GW store for the first time in a year next week, and I know exactly how it's going to go:
"Hey Creed, how were the exams? Good? Great, have you heard about AoS 2nd ed?"
"I'm just here to play 40k and buy overexpensive paint and rattlecans man, I want no part in this sigmarine crap."
But more polite.

Yeah, I will not play AoS either. Despite my outright hatred of what they did to Fantasy, I gave it a try, and still hated the system. GW will never get another penny from me along that chain.

I quit 40k a few months before 8th was announced. I got sick of the poor balance, the high prices, and the lack of player agency in the mechanics.

I had the MEDGE starter already, and picked up a crew box for Malifaux and would be playing those like crazy if I had any opponents. And I've gotten back into MTG the past couple months.

I'm still paying attention to GW, and looking for a reason to get back into 40k, or even start AOS, but the rules and cost are keeping me away.

 djones520 wrote:

Yeah, I will not play AoS either. Despite my outright hatred of what they did to Fantasy, I gave it a try, and still hated the system. GW will never get another penny from me along that chain.

Yeah. I think I heard it put best as just not scratching the same itch as WHFB. I really enjoyed the massed ranks, and in 40k I enjoyed the more free form units which made sense with guns everywhere. Now the two rulesets are almost identical as far as I can tell, and I don't need to play the same game with different minis. When you were playing WHFB it was a very different experience (and frankly often more enjoyable) to 40k.

 Sqorgar wrote:
In my honest opinion, I'm not sure the hobby would exist in its current state without GW. Not because of the games, but because so much of the hobby is supported for and by GW. My local comic book store carries a full suite of GW paints, miniatures, and books.... and a handful of Warmachine, Army Painter supplies, and Malifaux (with a lot of X-Wing/Armada in their board game section). A place where everybody plays their miniature games is mostly Magic the Gathering with a few extra tables, but I don't think they'd bother to have even those if not for 40k night. Almost everybody who played Warmachine in my group was a lapsed 40k player. It's like GW is this giant pillar by which an industry is hung.

I think GW has by far the best models in the business - nothing else comes close. That being said, I'd rather play Infinity, Walking Dead, or Runewars. I'm looking forward AoS 2e though.

I think thats pretty local, GW is virtually extinct around here, army painter and p3 are the big paints, very few stores even carry GW/. AoS 2e looks good and for the first time with an edition swap our entire group is good for it. gotta say though I am exact opposite in opinion on GWs model, other than LOTR I think they are among the worst available.

 thekingofkings wrote:
I think thats pretty local, GW is virtually extinct around here, army painter and p3 are the big paints, very few stores even carry GW/.

That's like saying all the movie theaters around you only play French art house films because nobody there is interested in Star Wars and Marvel movies. I mean, it's possible, but I doubt it's a particularly typical occurrence.

gotta say though I am exact opposite in opinion on GWs model, other than LOTR I think they are among the worst available.

??? I mean, you can disagree with the claim of the best (there is competition), but the worst available? Have you ever put together a Warmachine battle box? It's like trying to glue two opposite magnets together, and looks like someone scraped them along the sidewalk. That's assuming your box included all the bits it was supposed to. I'd rather put together Archaon the Everchosen using chopsticks then work with Warmachine restic models again.

gotta say though I am exact opposite in opinion on GWs model, other than LOTR I think they are among the worst available.

??? I mean, you can disagree with the claim of the best (there is competition), but the worst available? Have you ever put together a Warmachine battle box? It's like trying to glue two opposite magnets together, and looks like someone scraped them along the sidewalk. That's assuming your box included all the bits it was supposed to. I'd rather put together Archaon the Everchosen using chopsticks then work with Warmachine restic models again.

I would say that from a technical standpoint GW make excellent models, although in terms of price and design they're most definitely not the best IMO. Outside of a few gems (Blood Bowl, Daughters of Khaine) the recent releases are by and large over detailed for the sake of it, to the point where if it's not organic it's almost guaranteed to have as little of a flat surface as possible. I personally stopped playing GW games mid 7th edition, as I felt burned out with the power imbalance and moved on to smaller games (briefly Warmachine, but I had the same issues there and moved to Malifaux and Batman, where I am very happy now). I'm getting into Blood Bowl at the moment for a foray into GW again, but I can't see myself playing any of their other games with the way the rules are going, they're just too dumbed down for my liking.

My local group that I game with are very much ex-GW players though, and outside of Blood Bowl none of us play anything GW. If it weren't for my local groups though, I'd probably still be playing GW games, purely because I would have a social group to wargame with. I used to play in a GW store, and now that I've moved away from that setting it's opened up my horizons a lot more, which I'm lucky to have. I very much love the Daughters of Khaine models, but I just can't justify buying them unfortunately

For me it's always been the aesthetic and story that brought me towards things, not the rules, so I've never played Warmahordes or Mantic's stuff because I just have no interest in how their stuff looks (I own a few Cephalyx things as they're a bit Dark Mechanicum-y).

So outside of 40K (and Necromunda/Warhammer Quest), the only other miniature game I play is BattleTech. I own oodles of 'Mechs, vehicles and infantry. I've loved BattleTech since the Mechwarrior 2 demo that came on the Win 95 game demo disk, and I think the game is really cool.

The only other to almost tempt me was AT-43, but I never got into that. I do own a heap of Therian stuff because I think they're cool and they were the most unique looking minis from that game. Plus when I wanted something to visualise my homebrew 40K race (the Kyarie).

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
For me it's always been the aesthetic and story that brought me towards things, not the rules, so I've never played Warmahordes or Mantic's stuff because I just have no interest in how their stuff looks (I own a few Cephalyx things as they're a bit Dark Mechanicum-y).

So outside of 40K (and Necromunda/Warhammer Quest), the only other miniature game I play is BattleTech. I own oodles of 'Mechs, vehicles and infantry. I've loved BattleTech since the Mechwarrior 2 demo that came on the Win 95 game demo disk, and I think the game is really cool.

The only other to almost tempt me was AT-43, but I never got into that. I do own a heap of Therian stuff because I think they're cool and they were the most unique looking minis from that game. Plus when I wanted something to visualise my homebrew 40K race (the Kyarie).

being an Aussie, what was your take on Chronopia?

Had to look up what that was, if that's any indication.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Had to look up what that was, if that's any indication.

no worries, I saw it extensively in Perth and Fremantle back in the 90's so thought it might have been bigger over there (at least back then)

 Da Boss wrote:
I am not a fan of the direction the games have taken since 7th edition WFB and 5th edition 40K. So I kinda stopped playing by default as my life got busier and I moved away from my long term group, and I have never really started up again.

I went to one KoW tournament a few years ago, and enjoyed myself, but I spend most of my time now painting stuff for Dungeons and Dragons and playing that game with a small group of friends. I would be open to wargaming again, and still have my armies, but I feel much less wedded to the GW system and would likely play something like This Is Not a Test or Frostgrave, or KoW rather than a GW game.

I am paying attention to whatever the plan is for AoS 2e, but I am not too optimistic given the stuff I have seen so far, it looks like lazy design is still the GW way.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
To slightly turn the thread on its head, I still adamantly refuse to get into AoS. I'm gonna walk into a GW store for the first time in a year next week, and I know exactly how it's going to go:
"Hey Creed, how were the exams? Good? Great, have you heard about AoS 2nd ed?"
"I'm just here to play 40k and buy overexpensive paint and rattlecans man, I want no part in this sigmarine crap."
But more polite.

Yup, my feelings on AoS are well known. And you know, I've tried, I really have, they've addressed a lot of the issues with the setting since launch and when they're not releasing yet another variant of Malibu Sigmarines(...but this time they ride birdies! ...but this time they have robes! ...but this time they have new hats! ) some of the models and faction concepts have been quite interesting even if they're still all a little over the top...but I just can't. Every time I try and dig into it, it just makes me miss WHF, and then I get annoyed at how they handled the whole thing and end up being put off the hobby for a while, so I just stopped. If folk like it, good for them, I'll stick with Mordheim and avoid GW stores so I don't have to listen to them pissing on WHF to try and upsell me some Blobernorble Deathkillers or whatever.

I've also drifted away from 40K, for me it was more the tone and setting than the mechanics which were never really the main draw for me anyway, but the time period of what I consider a decline matches when you started having issues Boss. Everything was getting a bit "noblegrim" even back in 5th and it just got more and more so until this whole timeline advance silliness turned it up to eleven.

That said, I've not stopped buying GW models or gaming, occasionally, with their systems and settings, it's just not been the systems and settings they're flogging right now. I still play and model and write rules for Mordheim, as I said. I do INQ28 stuff sometimes. Smaller-scale Heresy projects as well. I still go back to the other previous incarnations of Specialist Games too. Frankly though, if I was a game-gamer rather than an "I like Warhammer Fantasy and 40K as IPs"-gamer, GW would have lost me entirely years ago, as it is I'm just enough of a sucker that all they've lost is the portion of my hobby budget I spend on models from other companies that fit the GW aesthetic and scale. Until recently anyway - I've diverted almost my entire hobby spend towards Star Wars Legion since it launched and I fully intend to build up fairly substantial forces for both present factions(and Scum too, if they decide to do a third).

Not all doom and gloom though, before the Negativity Police swoop in to have a pop - while I have issues with the release model and maintain that I won't be fully buying in to N17 until they release a complete, proofread, ideally playtested compilation book containing at least the rules for the Houses and a functional campaign system, I've bought at least one of each gang that's come out and have no intention of stopping that(for now I only plan to take Goliaths and Delaques to actual campaign-playable gangs, but the rest make for great conversion fodder). I've put aside a decent chunk of change for Adeptus Titanicus. I'm intrigued by Kill Team, if it's sufficiently detailed it could serve as an excellent basis for INQ28 games for those of us who prefer actual games to the more "just roleplay and roll 4+ when you want to do something" attitude the community's bigwigs seem to have decided is the One True Way of Narrative Gaming, hell if it's sufficiently flexible it might serve as a good basis for porting GorkaMorka into which would be awesome. And Plastic Sisters, of course, is a big deal.

So, yeah, it's weird - I've never had more issues with GW than I do at the moment and they've never had a less absolute hold over my hobby spending, but they're not the same issues I had with the company during the Dark Times under Kirby, and at the same time they're also putting out a lot of stuff that really appeals. Honestly I don't ever see myself not being involved in GW in some way because WHF and pre-all this modern guff 40K are two of my favourite fictional worlds, but at the moment the reason they're still getting a reasonable amount of my money is that nobody else except FFG are producing games with settings I care about enough to spend such a lot of time & money on, and if that were to change? I dunno.

text removed.
reds8n

Battletech was my first wargame, 40K my second. I've always been a roleplayer first though, so I didn't play much of either game - and didn't play 40K after 2E, even though I still collected the models. I tried WHFB, but had such a bad experience I sold the models (and I've never done that with any other miniature game I've owned).

When I got back into 40K, I quickly realized the game was still as unbalanced as ever, so I started branching out - Dust, AT-43, Bolt Action, X-Wing, Blood & Plunder and a half-dozen others. Of the many games I have tried, Bolt Action and X-Wing are my favorite. 40K 8E is only fun because it's dirt simple and I'm limiting myself to games of 1,000 points.

I did try AoS, but wasn't impressed. However, I did just pick up the AoS starter box and do have a Seraphon army (...and an elf army and undead army) I'd like to use for something. I'm actually going to try and use the sigmarines as Custodes in 40K.

Honestly, I just like to collect and build the minis. The games are a lot less important to me - I've tried several rulesets and nothing has stuck, so overall I'm happy with what I've got instead of what I'm gaming with.

I play tons of other games, the main ones since I started were Bolt action, Flames of War, Drop fleet/dropzone, and X-Wing, but I've dabbled in several others. Like many I started with 40k but I hardly stuck with it to the exclusion of anything else.

40k is very much the gateway game for most people who get into tabletop wargaming these days, as historicals mainly appeal to an older crowd. It just has such a different look and setting that it stands out very easily from the crowd. Say what you want but no other game out there really has such a crazy amount of stuff going on at any given time. And for all the people who play it for the lore or models, you'll also see people who don't care at all about that, and play it purely because it's what is played in their area. 40k just has that combo of IP and momentum. That said, the crazy uniqueness it has with it's setting and models doesn't always extend to it's gameplay, so you see lots of people moving on to other games to scratch the itch they initially wanted in 40k.

So for example, you'll see people frustrated with melee move on to fantasy settings, players who prefer pure competition move on to games like warmachine, people who like imperial Guard move on to historicals, etc. In addition, sometimes people just get burnt out on a game and want something different. I'm hitting one of those spells for example, I've been playing lots of 40k since 8th dropped and I miss playing historicals, so I'm probably going to take a break soon and do bolt action for a while. I may also give X-Wing V2 a go and see if they fixed all the dumbness that crept into the game lately. Signs look good but I'm waiting till I see it in action.

Variety is the spice of life, so it really doesn't matter how good 40k could be, I'd still play other games and take breaks. Nothing wrong with that. The difference is back in 7th I mothballed a lot of stuff because I knew I didn't want to play, whereas in 8th it's more just to the fact that I miss playing other gsmes and still plan to play 40k as well.

On a bit of a tangent here. How exactly reliable is ICV2? I'm having a discussion on a semi-related matter and it just popped out as an argument,

Kirby may have been a douche, but his alleged assertion that Games Workshop is not a games company wasn't far from the mark.

GWs core games mechanic has not changed since the 1980s (1990s Blood Bowl, Battle Fleet Gothic and Shadespire aside).

Game design has moved a bit in 30 years and there are far more innovative rule sets kicking about that are more fun to play.

I've come back for Necromunda nostalgia trip and found they have attempted to freshen it up a little, but it's still basically the same principles.

Interesting points people

I think there is quite the element of GW momentum and 'the only game in town' in making people adverse to dabbling outside the bubble, in my corner of the shire we haven't had a non-GW FLGS in over a decade so finding players can be tricky, although FB and the like help

My gaming club has pretty much given up on GW, not as any glorious hipster stand, just a sort of passive enough is enough groupthink (the mess of mid to late 7th was a nudge mind) although if someone was looking for a 40k game several players would be able to oblige

Most of what is played is usually picked up off Kickstarter or people's annual looting of the UK Games Expo

I started with "moderns" (mid 80s cold war era - not quite the "balloon gone up" of TY) in the late 80s.


Then I moved to Battletech, and a few others, including "Laserburn", which led me to 40k. Also picked up early WHFB at this time. The fantasy left in 1995 when my army was stolen off my porch when I was moving house. Other games played by other makers were Void, Warzone, Kryomek, Stargrunt and full thrust.

About 10 years ago, I started playing Infinity.
I stopped playing 40k after 5th edition.
I got back into WHFB in late 6th edition.
I've tried KoW, but it wasn't for me. Not enough granularity.
I played two games of AoS - again, not for me. Waaaaay too simple and the local meta were the people I never liked to play against in 40k anyway (odious personal skills and/or a flexible approach to the "rules")

The major thing that allows me to change from game to game is not being locked into a "store club". The majority of games clubs in this country ARE NOT located within stores (much like NZ or the UK). So wandering into a place and getting a pick up game isn't really an issue. WE are mostly grown ups who know how to use the internet to tee up games in advance.