I've realized my problem with AoS...

[Denzark]

i the worst thing? i'm part of the problem. WHF has been slipping, stagnating, for years. i've bought exactly three boxes of WHF models in the last five years -- the Wood Elf stag riders because my wife wants to paint them, a 50% off box of Witch Elves i'll be converting to DE, and the new Bestigors when they came out just before 8th dropped. i've got 5000 points of Beasts (formerly of Nurgle, then mysteriously just... not), and another 3000 of Ogres. i've got a 3000-point High Elf army in mostly secondhand bits and pieces that i never got around to in favor of other projects. why would i buy anything? and with that stagnation, something big needed to come out of it.

but AoS wasn't what was needed.

Muninwing - 'AOS wasn't what was needed.' What you actually mean was AoS wasn't what was needed by you. By 'You' I mean the Royal You - including your gaming group etc.

Your commentary about how many minis you have bought in the last 5 years, for me, proves something - that you are not the target demographic.

AoS is about bringing in new blood and countering several criticisms about the problems of entr to WFB - cost and complexity. AoS has completely wiped those arguments away.

So, in order to ahcieve that, WFB wasn't what was needed - AoS may be the cleverest thing in terms of measure of effectiveness - coming up with a plan that achieves objectives - that a company has done for a while.

I offer no commentary as to whether I agree or not - I am just trying to empathise with the plan from the GW perspective. And, as I said, AoS was what they thought they needed.

[Quaade]

Example please.

Lord Celestant on Dracosath for example.

The Stormcast Eternals are described as mean mother****ers who when under the right command will fight to the death. The Lord Celestant's Command Ability makes all Stormcast Eternals within 24" immune to Battleshock tests. Without this rule, the preceding fluff text would be so light as to it carrying no meaning, no gravity. The rule instead reinforces the fluff.

Example of the opposite. Tactical Marines are described as some of the meanest and most versatile mother****ers around, yet nothing in their rules support this when on the table and compared to the cost you pay for them, they are rather subpar when compared to equivalent points elsewhere.

[Mr Mystery]

There's also the 'easy back in' nature of it.

One of the issues Warhammer faced was that continuously long term players found it easy enough to keep up - armies grew with the scope of the game, and 8th Ed made those games more enjoyable (your experience may vary on that point) as more of the vast collection accrued could get involved in the fisticuffs.

But consider those who have the traditional hobby lull - typically those who went to Uni/College, or otherwise found the irritating, pesky real world insisting it intrude on their leisure time.

They may only have been out for an Edition or so, but the game expanded pretty quickly in terms of both variety and quality of models, and the size of armies commonly seen. That can be dispiriting, as you can get the (not accurate) impression that nobody plays below say 3,000 points, and your old force barely scratches 1,000 points (consider when Chaos Knights with Chaos Armour were 80 points a pop. Might actually have been more?). That's a disincentive to dig back in.

AoS, for any perceived failings has helped to do away with this.

People with 'odds and sods' collections can now realistically cobble together a force and get some games in, especially as the rules are free. From there, some might well find it to their tastes, and start buying more models and paints.

And that's the 'hidden genius' of AoS. It's imminently accessible to all. Brand new? Grab whatever you want, because it's now an army. Returning gamer? Dust off the troops, they're an army again. Long term, constant player? Yeah that's a big army, but you can field as little as you want now. Each of those three examples make it easy to generate sales. Boxed set here, pot of paint there - it all adds up.

The plan behind AoS shows something of a change in GW's marketing philosophy. The dependence/intent of 'bigger is better. GO BIGGER' is noticeably missing.

From a marketing point of view, it's a clever, if pehaps somewhat bold, move. Looking to get started? Just grab a Batallion and you've got a decent sized force. And those boxed sets have long been a favourite of newbies and those starting a new army. The price point is about right on them, and the savings make them doubly attractive.

Prior to AoS, unless buying the boxed game you'd be in for....£45 rulebook, £25-£30 Army Book (depending on soft or hardback), Character, Batallion (costs vary according to taste). AoS has instantly taken up to £75 off that entry tag. Price has never been an issue for me as a gamer, so it's not made me any more or less likely to do a given force however I want to do it, but it's opened it wide open.

[Path Walker]

While 40k has the Horus Heresy Series, the Night Lords trilogy, Gaunts Ghosts and loads more great novels, the fiction for Fantasy has always been a bit lacking, they tried with the Time of Legends series but it never took off, and barring the occasional Gotrek and Felix book, nothing else they did with Fantasy was ever up there with the feel of 40k until The End Times.

People like to pretend that Fantasy has over 30 years of lore(I've seen people on this forum say they threw away this away), but they've obviously not read the books before 4th edition, that's when it really became a cohesive whole with all the elements in place to form the Old World properly (seriously, read the 3rd edition Rulebook and tell me thats the same world as 8th edition) but it never had the same weight to it, the same importance, that they managed to get with 40k.

People like to act hard done by and as if they're wounded by the change from Fantasy to Age of Sigmar when literally nothing has changed for them, they still have all the books and rules they had 3 months ago, their models can still be used to play the game they like but now a company that wasn't seeing it as a viable product isn't supporting it, this happens every day, people have played earlier editions of games, even Warhammer Fantasy, for years.

I still play Necromunda regularly, a friend of mine plays Ragnarok Online on a private server, I know groups that play OD&D or Retroclones every week, I have board games by companies that have been out of business for years. All are still perfectly playable without support from the company.

A company is a company, they provided you with a product. You didn't take out a service contract with them, they don't owe you 30 more years of a fictional world, they've given you the keys to the Old World if you want them, make it your own now, or don't.

[chipset35]

The only reason I started buying and playing Table Top miniatures (Napoleonics) again after a 23 year lapse and even considered Games Workshop was due to them wiping the slate clean with Warhammer Fantasy and starting anew with AoS.

Now, I loved the Warhammer Fantasy books and video games, but I had no desire to collect or paint them at what I felt was "too late".
The amount of mini's was staggering, and I am content to play Total War: Warhammer as my WHF fix.

Same for Warhammer 40K, I would rather play the PC games than come into the hobby of WH:40K painting etc so late in the game.

However, with Age of Sigmar despite all its flaws and weakness, gets me started at the "ground floor".
I can take my time collecting and painting and reading.

On the subject of reading....when a good warhammer/ warhammer 40K novel comes out it motivates me to play in some way shape of form.
AoS needs a good novel fast!
As what has been released so far is good, but not on par with say something written by Dan Abnett.

[Erik Setzer]

It's funny that people claim the Warhammer world had no stories or anything and was dull and boring. Such people clearly didn't have the WFB army books, or pay attention to the various campaigns and events (not the one they undid), or the fluff in WFRP, etc.

And then to claim AoS is somehow dynamic and awesome? Ha.

We have Sigmar surviving a cataclysm and somehow bringing back all these heroes who died, making their final sacrifice really mean nothing. Worse, we're now to believe they're powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with gods. As an added bonus, when Sigmar resurrected various races, the races all forgot what they were called, which seems rather odd, like maybe Sigmar screwed up his resurrection spell. Oh, and Chaos, getting in on the fun of not being able to come up with new characters, created a new champion and named it Archaon in memory of their old one, who it clearly isn't, because he accomplished his mission and wouldn't want to be brought back just to fight endlessly for gods he doesn't particularly care about.

So we have these ill-defined "realms" which are really just pockets of reality themed after some abstract concept. No civilizations or nations, nothing to actually define how the peoples of the setting interact or anything, other than "They're always fighting." Well, that doesn't actually work, because you'd run out of people.

Oh, and after Chaos devoured an entire world because Sigmar and all these heroes he resurrected failed, we hear that Sigmar failed to stop Chaos at some point with these realms and had to run away to build a secret army, but for some reason Chaos doesn't completely wipe out everything again. And now Sigmar's back, from outer space, and he finds them with a sad look upon their face... Wait, hold on. I mean, he bashes in and starts retaking realm gates, which are important because someone said so, and apparently you can only move between realms if you have control of these gates, but in the fluff the good guys only have control one or two, so it's impossible to move between the other realms, which means that you can't explain different races fighting each other (never mind that the fluff suggests that they wouldn't).

Wow. There's even less reason and less backing in the fluff for most of the armies to fight each other. Progress!

So, the future of the story is... what? That Sigmar starts kicking Chaos out of all the lands? We've seen this setting's darkest hour, and in that moment, Chaos couldn't win. All that's left is the good guys continuously winning. There's no real threat. We've been shown, already, in 96 pages, that there is no threat. But who would even be threatened? There's not any nations or civilizations, just ill-defined vague concepts of "people" who exist only to fight unending war.

Hmm. Ill-defined concepts of people, ill-defined "realms" that are vague themes, all of the main people Sigmar fought with/against are back, Sigmar is the savior of the realms and fights with a holy necromantic army, and it's the Age of Sigmar... Oh my God. I just realized. Sigmar never woke up. He's still hurtling through space and we're playing around in some dream he's concocted to get over the fact he lost it all. His mind is creating lands and people that don't need to work, because they're not real. He's bringing back all the major people he knew at the end of his life. He's setting up the same End Times scenario, but this time with himself being some Ultimate Cosmic Savior who can beat back the Chaos gods. He even worked up a whole history that involves betrayal, much like what happened during the End Times.

Suddenly it makes sense. The reason this setting is so devoid of detail and life and can't work is because it doesn't have to, it's all in the mind of some guy floating in space suffering from severe PTSD.

Mind blown.

[Katharon]

Gods and moresuperawesome powers of doom everywhere. Makes it as boring as them gameplay itself for me.

This is one of the biggest caveats for me. My Empire army that I crafted over the years had characters I created, from named company commanders like Josef 'Giant Balls' Hef (who is so called because he always managed to land a last wound to a giant, repeatedly, over several games) who led my Great Swords, or my Master Engineer Fritz 'the Blitz' Fitzgerald (who desperately thought the army needed *more* black powder weaponry). If they died, either in a normal game or a campaign, I genuinely cared and would feel a little sad that they hadn't made it through that particular story.

Now with every Stormcast being brought back by the Dragon Balls, I feel like there's no impact to their deaths. Sure, they lose some of their memories (I've watched Log Horizon, and they do it better), but there isn't the same impact for me.

[Cutter]

Lord Celestant on Dracosath for example.

The Stormcast Eternals are described as mean mother****ers who when under the right command will fight to the death. The Lord Celestant's Command Ability makes all Stormcast Eternals within 24" immune to Battleshock tests. Without this rule, the preceding fluff text would be so light as to it carrying no meaning, no gravity. The rule instead reinforces the fluff.

Example of the opposite. Tactical Marines are described as some of the meanest and most versatile mother****ers around, yet nothing in their rules support this when on the table and compared to the cost you pay for them, they are rather subpar when compared to equivalent points elsewhere.

I've got you, ta.

[Path Walker]

blah blah blah.

I thought you had the book now? If you'd read it you'd answer all your own questions.

[Charistoph]

This is one of the biggest caveats for me. My Empire army that I crafted over the years had characters I created, from named company commanders like Josef 'Giant Balls' Hef (who is so called because he always managed to land a last wound to a giant, repeatedly, over several games) who led my Great Swords, or my Master Engineer Fritz 'the Blitz' Fitzgerald (who desperately thought the army needed *more* black powder weaponry). If they died, either in a normal game or a campaign, I genuinely cared and would feel a little sad that they hadn't made it through that particular story.

Now with every Stormcast being brought back by the Dragon Balls, I feel like there's no impact to their deaths. Sure, they lose some of their memories (I've watched Log Horizon, and they do it better), but there isn't the same impact for me.

Who said that you have to play Stormcast? Why can't your army still be who they are, Free People fighting to save their/another city/Realm from Chaos/Destruction? There are plenty of Humans across at least half of the Realms that fight in puff and slash and one is bound to have some "big balls".