Sigmarines are really starting to grow on me, as is the AoS setting. I think in time...

You're wrong, and your lack of knowledge is only compounded by the fact that you're so far up GW's asshole that you can't even see it.

Warhammer Fantasy 8th had more support, more summer campaigns, more factions than any other edition besides Third. If you had bothered to google it you'd know that.

You are a butt hurt AoS player who can't accept that your precious game Bombed the franchise, and caused a miniatures stock market crash that we have never seen before.

Why else would the CEO resign, a Generals Hand book with a points system be introduced, and the way GW operates on a Fundamental level change.

You fucker

Well. Huh. That actually kinda warmed me up to them.

I mean, still not a huge fan, but I see the appeal now.

>this game isn't selling so well because we made shitty rules, let Matt Ward write army books, and we haven't updated the models in a long time
>should we fix that?
>no, let's kill everything and add space marines
>people love space marines

You're way too upset and irrational about this.

Also the market didn't crash, even a little. GW is doing quite well.

Doubtful.

For one, there is no real setting for AoS. It's just a mishmash of random shit with nothing to ground it and no real sense that anything is at stake. Oh, sure, the fluff tells you than the nine realms of yada yada hang in the balance, but there's no reason to care when the only real representatives for these realms are faceless, emotionless, eternal warriors.

You can wax poetic all you want about millions of worlds burning in Archaon's wrath, but it still won't hit as hard as one city in the Reikland being pillaged by northmen. There's more audience engagement in that one short story about some Bretonnian child kissing a frog that turns into an orc than there is in the entire AoS setting.

>no, these guys in power armor are totally different than these guys in power armor

But user, your dudes!
You can't make your own shit up in an established setting, no my kingdom, no me.

Which is why I say they should have done this infinite worlds thing without nuking the old world.

Reminder that GW retconned this and told the author to go fuck himself.

Yes, yes it did you moron.

You had a vast migration of customers taking up with companies like Mantic, playing games like Bolt Action, and reverting to board and card games rather than stay with anything on the table top.

We can Prove that. From Facebook group numbers jumping, to tournaments around the world Not Using AoS or any variation of it.

You corporate stooge, you false news peddling sell out, how much is GW paying you to try and re write history? Your game damn near killed the company, the player base, and you want to deny that.

They should have done neither.

All that was really necessary was fixing the mess 8th ed had made of army composition, and introducing a more publicized version of the rules that doesn't really on formation gameplay to cater to more players. Your dudes can exist pretty easily in The Old World. It's a big place.

Failing that, if they really HAD to wreck everything, they should have gone for a post-apocalypse fantasy setting where the remains of the former factions are picking themselves up a thousand or so years after Chaos has been forced back at great cost, allowing for smaller factions rediscovering the setting.

If there are infinite worlds does that mean storm of chaos is canon in one of them?

ICv2 from fall 2013, not the lack of WFB in the top five

(in fall 2012, WFB placed 4th, but it was clearly no longer moving product by this point)

and fall 2016, just after the release of the GHB

Spring 17 again shows AoS falling off the top 5, but to be fair they have had very little in the way of releases for AoS this year (steam dwarves and some tzeentch stuff, but that's it)

Warhammer Fantasy didn't have to end.

They sure as Fuck didn't need to crowbar Stormcasts into the setting, but the old world, the game system, there was no reason for it to die.

It is this companies equivalent of a 9/11 moment. Systems across the board failed to realise how bad of a reaction a change of this kind would cause. And because of that, they've been forced to change overnight

and if you look at 2014 and 2015 it isn't just a fluke either. The sad truth is that WFB just wasn't selling and most of the product line was really old and shitty, but WFB grognards just love to stick their heads in the sand.

Yes I liked the Empire Militia kit that was from the 90s with all the weapon options, but it makes perfect sense why they wouldn't want to keep selling a kit like that.

And yet it still sells better than Fantasy for GW.
Then again their mindbroken fanboys will happily defend even their Australian prices tooth and nail so it's not surprising.

It was said a while back that in 2016 AOS had started to sell slightly better that WFB. It took them almost 2 years and a shit ton of investment to do it including a huge revamp in the game design. All that time their money and name was in the the fucking shitter while Total War Warhammer was making a fucking killing.

Remember how people started playing when End Times happened? And then AOS bomb dropped and everyone stopped? Imagine what would have happened if they just invested in the existing game in those years.

>And then AOS bomb dropped and everyone stopped
again look at the reports

people stopped buying WFB long before AoS was released. AoS was a response to product not moving.

>Then again their mindbroken fanboys will happily defend even their Australian prices tooth and nail so it's not surprising.
but isn't everything crazy expensive in australia for no reason? I know australians complain about it a lot. Even steam games cost arbitrarily more in australia

That only explains a little of the inflation, not almost costing double.

The main problem with AoS is, while there *is* a setting there, they've made it as obtuse as possible to learn about it.
Every main book for 40k, going back to the original, has given a primer on the Imperium of Man and the various other races.
The first main book for AoS just had lots of big pictures saying 'Here's Chaos!!! And here's Sigmarines! And THEY FIGHT!!!' and fuck-all else.
There's been no big book explaining anything since then - there's been battletomes giving a tiny sliver of knowledge about individual factions (and because of the way we classify factions now, this is *very* random and *very* specific), and the occasional novel, and that's it.
Doesn't help that a few too many fans think shouting 'READ THE NOVELS' counts as providing a helpful primer on the setting.
Then again, it *also* doesn't help that critics of the setting keep reposting the shitty maps from the initial release.
All in all, they could have handled the initial launch way better, and they really should have gotten their shit together and given some sort of primer since then, but I'm willing to believe there's a decent setting in there. It's why I'm sort of excited about the upcoming rpg; hopefully some gaps get filled in.

Wait....WHAT?
When?
I thought the whole point of Stormcasts was that they were dead heroes returned to life? If that isn't the case anymore, what are they? What got changed?

>implying fantasybabs will ever relent in their retardation

fantasy tabletop was fucking shit, fucking DOGSHIT

I'm glad it was killed, and I'm glad AoS happened. It's so much more fun.

>believing people this easily

it's just another assblasted fantasy fanboy, they give zero proof for their claims

(You)

yep that's a very fair gripe

but if the AoS rules were in an 80 dollar book set with lore, people would have been pissed off about that too.

I think a good in between would be to release a big book of maps, pictures, stories, and descriptions of all the mortal realms, the history, etc.

>babs
>mostly derided as grognards
Don't start contradicting yourself, I know the dark elves, sorry the darkling aelves, are the good guys now but try and have some semblance of cohesion.

AoS would have pissed anyone off.
>take your army you've been building for years
>now put them on round bases
>also static hit/wound rolls
It's like a bad copy of KoW.

I'm perfectly prepared to believe that Age of Sigmar is a better game and product than WFB and maybe even good in its own right.

But that will never change that the stormcast look fucking ridiculous.

wtf i like sigmarines now

It's already happened. Only sour 9th age grapes hang on to the by now completely pointless rage. Fuck, I've played WFB for over 10 years, and I'm glad they pulled a reboot, 8th edition was just awful, and it was clear they wrote themselves into corner regarding future expansion options.

they didn't tell anyone to rebase their models

and static hit/wound rolls are not really a problem since saves and wounds were adjusted to compensate

I heard the guy who set his army on fire on youtube ended up playing AoS later

I think we all can say at least we liked or loved the Old World. But just to out one note: As much as we and other nerdy gamers knew warhammer fantasy, to an outsider it was near indistinguishable from other fantasy games. It was not uncommon to see people drawing comparisons to warcraft. Besides Total Warhammer where still many fantasy fans reside, the brand could not stand on its own two feet in the general market to potential new buyers. An orc is an orc is an orc.

I dont agree with how GW handled the old world by squatting it but I can fully undrstand why they rebranded it. The first year and a half was rough but once they started focusing on it, it grew exceptionally.

Even myself who loved Warhammer, did not buy the figures, only the books. Mainly because building an army was obscenely expensive, even for a warhammer investment.

So while killing the old world was far from ideal, I think the rebranding was the best solution to the stagnant sales. The easy rules and viability of entry cost I actually bought a box of figures after god kniws how many years. So there is one example where it got new money where it would never have before. Not a huge fan of the fluff but the game seems far more appealing mechanically.

Stormcast really should have gotten proper medieval helmets. The facemasks they wear really turn me off.

Replacing a game where you might need to paint formations of 80 goblins or skeletons to have a competitive army with a round-base skirmish game that noobs can easily get into seems like a sensible move. Hell if they'd done something like that but kept the old setting I'd have been tempted to get into it, and I haven't played Warhammer in more than a decade.

That guy was a retard anyway. Made for some interesting imagery, though.

AoS has a skirmishgame of the week - tier playerbase.

Static rolls are in no way worse than S/T charts when 90% of units were within 1 point of each other in those stats. There wasn't enough granularity of stats to warrant the chart.

Yeah, that. Honestly, it's what I want, even now.
And it's true that a really expensive rulebook wouldn't have helped matters either, they really managed to paint themselves into a corner by killing off Old World. (Not gonna argue the merits of the decision or anything, just saying.) It seems like having a book that explicitly states 'Oh! That old army of yours? Here's the basic gist of the new lore!' would have been worth a try. Yes, it would have resulted people sperging out about not liking the changes to Their Dudes, but it's better then, for instance, making vague noises about the nature of Dwarves, but only talking about the Doozers and Scrooge McDwarf.

I don't mind static hit rolls, but static wound rolls are dumb.

The thing is, the sorry state of 8th was direct result of their greed.

>Replacing a game where you might need to paint formations of 80 goblins or skeletons to have a competitive army with a round-base skirmish game that noobs can easily get into seems like a sensible move
Except for the existing fan base you're burning, and that the prices went up ($45 for 10, and you're gonna need at least three boxes at least).
Also it was entirely wasteful since they already have a simple skirmish game that's a recognizeable ip in lotr.

I don't get why we need both. Just clutters gameplay for no reason.

The problem with that is that the mortal realms right now are a post-apocalyptic settting. The apocalypse happened, chaos won. Only survivors were in very hard to get places (slayer-dorfs in lakes of lava castles or in clouds) or in Azyrheim, where all races live under Sigmar's gaze in cities and villages, and there's probably not much in way of unique culture left beyond somebasic stereotypes.

>kow
>each unit has their static roll an enemy needs to wound them, no saves, and they may have abilities to modify this roll
>aos
>each unit wounds on their own fixed roll, and the enemy still needs to save do there's a third set of rolls and after that you may have to see multiple damage
They fail at simplification.

Burning old fanbase was a plus. You got rid of some absolutely rancid waac-ers and grognrds who had a genuine abused-spouse view of the company. You don't want to hold on to this kind of toxic fanbase if you want to market a new product to wider audience.

I forget which one, but some of the books talk about chaos worshipping humans living in the other realms. The silver tower barbarian was seeking to bring power back to his clan.

and the hidden city book and shadows over hammerhal game suggest that even sigmar's cities are more diverse and nuanced than expected

it's insane that they would rewrite the whole game and not think about making it so a simple attack doesn't take at least 3 rolls to resolve. why would you ever need more than a static to-hit and armour save, especially when there are plenty of effects that can modify these rolls?

there were chaos-humans, btu that's still chaos really. Hammerhal and such are fairly new, I think lore-wise we're now moving into stage-2 (with stage one being sce vs chaos for initial bridgeheads) where we have settlers and non-sce armies from azyr striking out in a sort of stargate-wild west way.

Free people/empire are getting spotlight next seemingly. We will see how that goes.

Why would you market this new game instead of the already existing game you just paid to renew?
All the work is done, it even has popular movies and books. Why just let it fester there?
You want to advance the setting? Advance it, put us 500 years after storm of chaos. Give us new characters, new things in the old world.
How about those other factions like Tilea, Estalia, the border princes, Araby, Cathay, Nippon, Ind, Khuresh, the hobgoblins, there was so much to be explored.
Maybe in the future the empire is in an industrial revolution? Fuck.

Not him but fantasy as a setting was not distinguishable enough from generic fantasy to the main body of customers. As in potential new buyers. We know all the fluff but many dont. Orc and human? "OH ITS LIKE WARCRAFT!" or "Oh its just another fantasy game".

An expansion would have kept the setting alive but not the customer base. Keep it relatively the same, no new minis, no major fluff changes and barely new customers.

It urgently needed a rebrand.

>Empire Militia
You have no idea how salty I am that went. Still have one of the last they sold in a white box.

It needed to be rebranded as a wow clone?

Wow is hardly a thing anymore, grandpa. And many people want just that, orcs and elves. I fail to see how rebranding the same models with new, trademarkable names improve anything form the customers point of view.

>indistinguishable from other fantasy games
>the widespread guns and steam tank are indistinguishable from other settings
full retard

No though I do see the oarallels. It needed more eye catching and immediate appeal. Space Marines sell. A LOT. If I saw a knight fighting a hulked out black orc on a poster I am going to assume 1. D&D 2. Warcraft 3. Generic fantasy. I shrug and move on.

If I see hige armoured warriors in gold fighting hulking red armoured warriors? That stands out and that is what GW needed to attract new customers. I love Fantasy as a genre as much as most here. But its been done to death so standing out is very hard. Hell its why I dont play KoW. Same thing, different label.

Ah, yes. Like they removed or replaced all the old or older sculpts, like zomb... sorry. DREAD SHAMBLERS?

To us it is. Not to the majority of people/ potential new customers. That is the truth user. If you are into nerd culture sure. But if you arent its just another generic fantasy game.

I think that's your PoW, not generally shared by GW's target audience, teens and their wallets, aka parents.

Like AoS is right now?

>calling someone a grandpa when he is championing new things

fuck off you thinly veiled grognard, no one likes you and barely anyone liked fantasy tabletop

the free guilds are getting an update next, and after them the elf factions

AoS is shaping up to be a great fucking setting, with multiple worlds to fight for

>If I see hige armoured warriors in gold fighting hulking red armoured warriors?
That sounds like WoW.
>hating on KoW because it's not shiny enough

As a complete outsider, age of Sigman has a strictly inferior aesthetic to late WHFB and all of GW's games have a strictly inferior aesthetic to their products out of the 80s and 90s.

This opinion is objective, universal fact.

Its certainly more distinctive than medieval fantasy with orcs and humans. I loved the fantasy setting but giant golden armoured dudes stands out more than medieval guys going at it with orcs. To s certain point both are generic but one stands out more than the other.

Its more an observation and *something* worked if GW is happy with how its selling.

>literally nothing but an empty void to project yourself into
Archaon the hedgehog really makes this post a work of art.

But why? Why are you shilling AoS on Veeky Forums of all places? Are you the guy who bough GW shares? Redshirt?

Yeah. Take a hike, geezer.

Honestly, where modern fantasy's been going lately, golden armored dudes on big animals just blends into the crowd; they're not blazing a trail, they're following along.
Which worked pretty well for Fantasy for a long time, so I'm not gonna knock it, but they ain't special or stand-out.

>sounds like WoW

Sure but its more positive association than medieval humans fighting orcs. That picture you posted by itself catches my eye immediately more than any coloured fantasy warhamner poster could. Hell look at LoL which dold mainly off its colourful art.

Im not hating KoW. But KoW type games relies on taking people from the current market of consumers. AoS was trying to get NEW customers. More of the same wont work trying that.

>medieval
I imagine Kirby's fuckup not killing them is good enough for them.

Still not buying it. Ask someone, whether golden knightdood or pompus guy with a big sword are more generic. You might be surprised.

Its no creation of the wheel user or revolutionary. I guess the best way I can try to say is: Old Fantasy is dated. It isnt with what we see now required in the gaming market where shiny and colourful sells. Not rough and bleak.

Yes they are following trends while also trying their own spin as to appeal to a wider audience to try to expand their customers. New stuff sells with their high fantasy stuff. Old fantasy lotr style doesnt. Ifmts bern done. So GW is now catching up.

But can it keep it?

God forbid we expect a shred of artistic integrity from a company.

Tabletop gamer? Golden knightdood.
Non gamer? Medieval dood. Too much clash with D&D and other rpg in the non tabletoo consumers mind.

This.

But it's not medieval, bucko. See Unless they're history buff, they're probably not seen something like it before.

Who knows? If Gw can fix the accessibility of the lore maybe.

Well I feel tabletop gamers standards are too high due to familiarity of more restricted times where creativity was prime. Cant expect integrity in cultures where its dying rapidly even in art.

user as stupid as the average consumer is, they see sword and that kind of clothing, they likely will assume that. You dont need to be a buff to identify that.

>That picture you posted by itself catches my eye immediately more than any coloured fantasy warhamner poster could
That is 100% a matter of personal taste and you know it.

>As much as we and other nerdy gamers knew warhammer fantasy, to an outsider it was near indistinguishable from other fantasy games.

Actually, I've always found this not to be the case.

Generally speaking the people I've known who aren't into fantasy on the whole can easily distinguish between the two. I've met a lot of people who say they'd be much more willing to play a fantasy game that looks like Warhammer than one like Warcraft. Hell, I literally met one for the first time yesterday. Guy barely had any knowledge of the setting beyond what he'd seen in videos of TW: Warhammer and he still knew there was a difference.

I think you severely underestimate the ability of people to distinguish between different styles.

It isn't the accessibility of the lore, it's the lack of substance.
All you have is a wow ripoff except the elves are bigger cunts and not as sexy.

So he's a generic because he has a sword? Flawless logic.

>as stupid as the average consumer
So you ARE the investor. Was wondering.

>Static rolls are in no way worse than S/T charts

They really are, because they remove any pretense that the game is simulating interaction between models. Your target's states are irrelevant, which is bad.

Furthermore, AoS doesn't actually simplify anything. You still roll to hit, to wound, and to save. The process isn't any faster or more elegant, it's just less interesting because, unlike in better games, there's no interaction between the models in a combat.

Even Warmahordes, where everything is simplified and fine-tuned as much as possible, is careful to keep the simulationist side of the game intact. When you roll to hit, you aim to roll higher than your opponent's DEF. When you roll to wound, you aim to roll higher than their ARM. This encourages you to think about what targets you're attacking with what (or how to shut down attacking units), how best to distribute buffs, etc. Static rolls are bad from both a mechanical and simulationist perspective.

Bright colours tend to attract more so than dark and gritty. WoW and LoL were fuelled by this, LoL more so. user I am not talking about OUR demograph, the old school nerds. I am talking the wider market, regular consumers who may not know what even D&D is. To them, yes bright colours do atteact more attention. Like atteactive characters. Is it 100% absolute? No. But its certainly a positive trend.

>Generally speaking the people I've known who aren't into fantasy on the whole can easily distinguish between the two.

Ok that is a fair point. But im going to go out on a limb here and assume the people you spoke with are video game fans and/or already have a passing knowledge of the nerd culture. Take the TW guy. He is involved with the setting as he plays a gane of it. But I am discussing people who are fresh completely to this area. Like: Wtf is warcraft tier.

To them medieval dark doesnt work. Orcs, dread knights, soldiers with swords. Its another lord of the rings to them.

Only exception is Dark souls but thats the video game medium which ours makes look mainstream.

The fact that you made this thread is great evidence to the contrary.

>Fantasy didn't have enough eye-catching interesting designs

Bull.

Fantasy has always had the most iconic bigmclarge huge armoured bad guys on the scene.

WHFB is extremely distinct from most fantasy

The clothing as well user.

Investor? What?

Your average consumer IS pretty dumb. How do you think we sell most products to people? How do you think people have structured an entire section of business and psychology out of it?

Its not easy to becopme filthy rich as an entreoreneur. But it is easy to understand the mindset of cobsumers.

AOS players are sick and tired of them so they'll kill the game sooner than later