The state of the game in your area

[Karchev23]

Sup Guys! 

So i've been playing AOS since July/ August last year down here in little old New Zealand, and since then I have seen the community here grow in leaps and bounds. I attended my first AOS tournament in November, it was 2500 points and was the largest in NZ so far since it released and had about 16 players. The last tournament was 22 players in early January. NOW the next big tournament ( NICON held in Auckland ) and its currently expected to be 30 + players! and that's also at 2500 pt's. Thats almost double in the space of afew months. 

 

So I was wondering how the communties are going in your area, doesnt have to be national level, ( seeing as NZ's tiny and all )but you get the jist of it. Have you seen a large growth? More younger players or migrants from 40k? ( like i was ) 

[Arkiham]

Really strong, my one of the three local groups has just moved from upstairs in a pub to a larger area in a cafe ( is that good?  ) but there's the possibility of using both but on alternative days.

I'm considering once I get some free time and money to renting a hall in a local political club for cheap alcohol and a large hall for a tournament maybe.

Which I'm surprised isn't a thread on good tips to starting and hosting a tournament 

[Tiger]

I play with a friend, don't know anyone else interested in AoS. Most of old WHF community plays T9A.

[Veterannoob]

I sorta go between two areas 1000 miles apart and in the Charlotte area on US east coast the scene is stupid strong, in terms of sales and hobby and players. In Madison, WI it doesn't look as strong as Fantasy did but you have players spread out over several stores. When @StoneMonk hosted last gaming night there were, what, 16? Like, out of the blue. A good sight.

[RuneBrush]

I think the best word would be "growing".  @Chrisdanish, @Splitbristle and myself now play roughly every 3 to 4 weeks at a club local to the three of us.  Yesterday we played a 3-way game and there were two other games going on of AoS which is pretty good going considering that before Christmas we were the three newbies and nobody else was playing AoS!  It's not large by any extent though, but some of that is likely the lack of gaming clubs in the Wiltshire area.

[Chris Tomlin]

The state of the game in my area is awesome.

Since AoS dropped, my long term group of local tournament gamers has expanded and joined a club, combining the two into a massive (relatively speaking) local group with a wide range of players, from all across Dorset and surrounding areas, playing different sorts of games but all loving Warhammer.

Stretching wider afield, the UK tournament scene is booming with almost too many tournaments (I mean this positively; too many as I cant possibly attend them all, as much I'd like to!) and a plethora of new people coming into the scene. The game is going strong here in the UK for sure. Now all we need is the GH2 to drop and shake things up a bit!

[CoffeeGrunt]

Locally, Age of Sigmar has devoured all other competition, almost too much, tbh. Before the GHB dropped we had a pretty split-up playerbase with Dropzone Commander, Malifaux, 40K, WarmaHordes and even Halo Fleet Battles played, though in small groups.

Post-GHB many of those games have died off locally. 40K now feels clunky and awkward for most including myself, and we have only two players in the larger area  who play with any regularity, though we have many players with armies who simply don't feel like playing.

WarmaHordes Mk3 unfortunately landed on the same weekend here as GHB2, and was an unpopular redo of the rules that coupled with a lot of people enjoying AoS and thus an incredibly unexpected exodus of WMH players here to AoS. HFB collapsed under the weight of Spartan Games' incompetence and Malifxaus fell off a cliff after enduring with a small-but-loyal fanbase due to soaring costs after the GBP crash.

Dropfleet Commander popped up and has endured, though it lost a lot of face after serious Kickstarter delays, there's a group here that play it fairly irregularly, as they're normally painting and playing, you guessed it, Age of Sigmar.

We also have a massive group for Guild Ball who only really play tournaments and tournament prep, and most of them are out of town, so we only see them at tournaments much of the time.

In the end, AoS is a game almost everyone here enjoys playing, and regularly pulls punters in for tournaments in far greater numbers than anything else, save Guild Ball. The store owner was telling me that they were selling 4x as much product for AoS this January than they were the previous January, and that was with a small core of loyal Open Play players buying stuff.

[Splitbristle]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Yesterday we played a 3-way game and there were two other games going on of AoS which is pretty good going considering that before Christmas we were the three newbies and nobody else was playing AoS!  It's not large by any extent though, but some of that is likely the lack of gaming clubs in the Wiltshire area.

It was quite interesting to see the 2 other games of it going on yesterday, does seem to me that people are coming around to how much fun the rules are to play. I think we are lucky that the club isn't heavily into 40k and the other guys there are quite open to trying something a little different.

[chord]

In the Charleston, SC area it feels pretty sparse for AOS,  some regulars play at the GW store, but the area seems to be mostly 40K dominated.

[Dez]

It was a really rough start here. I was pretty much the only one interested, and gradually started getting people to play. The Online Campaign helped a bit, and the GHB was a good shot in the arm too. I just kept at it, organized a few events and kept spreading the word. 

Things have really picked up as of late, I've been trying to organize all the local stores and clubs into one group. I was super stoked that at a tournament last Saturday we reached capacity of 12. I know that's not a lot, but given any of the tournaments here in the past few years that's pretty darn great. I think this is just the start, and AoS will become really great in our area!

If anyone is in the New England area or just wants to join a group looking to talk with other gamers let me know! We have a great Slack group, just send me a message here for an invite.

[Olincay]

Having only played AOS my knowledge of the pre existing fantasy scene is pretty vague.
At the beginning on 2016 my local gaming club started a small escalation campaign, which drew in around 8 people playing pretty regularly.
Since then we have really focused on building our community. Starting off with a personal chat for fb and now moving on to a group for our local city that now has 50 members in it.
We will be holding our first tournament in March, which has sparked some interest in new people.
So on a whole it's a pretty small community *coming from a small'ish city doesn't help*  but it's slowly growing.

 

[Sleboda]

It's gone from almost nobody playing (vet sticking with 8th or moving to 9th Age after a brief flirtation with Kings of War) to a nicely growing group.

I have two main groups of gamers I play with, plus a third I see once or twice a year. The two main groups totally hated on AoS when it hit. The other group is centered around the guy who runs Fantasy for our largest convention, Adepticon. That group grew as its leader embraced the game (people are sheep, waiting to be led). When Tzeentch hit, a few guys in one of my regular groups got back in.  Variety, full "army" books, points (points!), and a few key enthusiasts got them back. Now only the other main group is holding out, and that is because a couple of guys in that group are running 9th Age at Adepticon.

 

Adepticon feature heavily in my local scene. I am happy that two of my groups contain a key contributor to the Adepticon events schedule, but it also means that major shifts are tied to Adepticon since we are always playtesting new scenarios or rules for Adepticon. 

I think we are going to see AoS kick ass at this year's Adepticon in March. Between that and GHB2, it looks like AoS will be on a huge upswing very soon.

 

[Turragor]

On the rise in stockholm sweden for sure

[wayniac]

Somewhat small in my area, I'm only aware of our GW as where AOS goes on (one of the other stores is anti-GW although they wouldn't stop us from playing, they don't stock anything).  However as far as the quality of the game in my area, IMHO very poor.  Hardly anyone plays scenarios, most of the time they can't be bothered to use battleplans or even the terrain rules, and in general hardly anyone seems to actually know the rules but think the rules work the way they worked before, or just kind of wing it.  Very laid back and not serious meta.  I am trying to encourage more serious gameplay.

[hobgoblinclub]

Things round this way have been steadily growing and, just recently, the popularity of the game seems to have exploded. 

I've gone from one regular opponent in 8th, to a small group of players (my D&D group were all convinced to get on board), and now we have a local club: Newcastle Warlords. The club has grown so popular it's recently gone from every three weeks to every two weeks. 

I'm running a slow grow campaign (250 points every four weeks) and the first night attracted 19 players! 

In addition to the success of our club in Newcastle, there's a new gaming venue opened over in Sunderland called Battle Bunker. This place has some superb tables of GW scenery and is gonna be running regular tournaments of up to 36 players! 

It really feels like the local scene we dreamed of when AoS dropped is now coming into being. We're kind of isolated here in the North East - most other big cities are 2/3 hours away - so it's genuinely exciting that we've got so much of our own going on. 

Long may AoS continue to grow! 

[karch]

On 26/2/2017 at 7:57 PM, Tiger said:

I play with a friend, don't know anyone else interested in AoS. Most of old WHF community plays T9A.

Same here, except there's 3 of us.

 

[Dez]

13 hours ago, Turragor said:

On the rise in stockholm sweden for sure

Stockholm Syndrome!

[Turragor]

6 hours ago, Dez said:

Stockholm Syndrome!

Applied for old WHFB I think, there was definitely some hate in the cool scandinavian air!