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The Future of AoS...


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12 hours ago, Gorks Pokin' Finger said:

They did say they were going to do another worldwide campaign as well later this year. 

The best feature of the summer campaign was the ability to look at stores in your area and figure out who has active players. I went 6 months wandering from Warhammer groups on facebook, getting snubbed by both salty WHFB players and 40k people alike, looking for active AOS players. Now that AOS isn't a dirty word, I would have loved for GW to leave us with the ability to log worldwide leaderboards. See who's logging wins at stores, see what faction dominates the region, etc. 

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I think gw have learned a lot from the first year of aos, and we're seeing the results of that now. The community interaction stuff is just insane compared to a year ago, let alone to the 2/3 month gap between the end times and aos launch in which there was no wh news whatsoever.

I am thoroughly enjoying the sheer randomness of the release schedule - just this year weve had a massive expansion to Tzeentch, a big expansion and update for Stormcasts, a rules update for Khorne, and a brand new army in Kharadron Overlords. Sneak a Flesh Eaters style update to something like Devoted of Sigmar or Deathrattlers and we'll be golden, with most of the year still to go!

I think gw have nailed their approach to AoS, and i hope they can apply some learnings to 40k!

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With the release of the new Khorne book that doesn't include any new models but just brings it up to the standard like slyvaneth or stormcast I would think that before each new army they introduce they will update one of the old battletomes like they are doing with khorne to bring them all up on the same level.  

This is an excellent choice as it means that those armies with an old battletome such as seraphon won't have to wait for ages before time justifies a massive update while at the same time not slowing down the main release schedule.  

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I'm really optimistic.

So, beardy cheese win at all cost CCG crowd will always find a way to bend the game and to break it.  There will always be 'that guy'.

But to anyone else,  we can ignore lists, we have the potential to build lists we could only have dreamed of in fantasy battle. 

We don't need to wait for army books every four years, and when they do get an update its in line with the storyline advanced in the campaign.

I can see certain model lines slowly being phased away but I'd also like to hope that some lines will just be re-written and repurposed with new story and background... which in turn will hopefully bring them back onto the fold of perhaps a newer faction with a following battletome- such as the slaves to darkness with future chaos releases.

GW have a duty to release new stuff, but if old stuff still sells, then it's going to stick around.  I don't doubt that we'll see the tomb kings models back as a totally new re-write in the future.  I would bet that there is years worth of storyline being discussed at GW HQ, and with it the discussions of what and how to bring back and re-invigorate.

I now look at this game like a mobile phone, it's always going to get updated and it's always going to be invigorated, a year down the line the hot puppy of last year is now the not quite as good, but that's progress.

I think we've got it good at the moment, and regular updates means that it's alive and changing and hopefully they're listening. :)

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It's good at times like this to step back and look and count our blessings.

-Start collecting kits.

-Better pricing with every release.

-Easy to build sets for ultimate entry barrier ease.

-Amazing community interaction. 

-Giving thumbs up to fan-items like the warscroll builder.

-high quality models and boardgames.

-focus on three ways to play rather than go tourney or go home.

-free rules, a great app and community input.

-the existence of Rountree, Duncan and Josh Reynolds. ;)

Taking all that in, we also have AoS main, Hero quest and ShadeSpire(possibly a AoS Mordheim in 2018 and maybe Talisman being brought into the fold) that promise a continued outpour of great models and further world-building.

All that's left is eventually getting AoS videogames which is inevitable with TW mods once the game is finished and everyone moves on and mod restrictions are dropped.

The future is so bright that it's blinding. \`[T]/

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Future of AoS is really bright, though you do have to accept that AoS is also GW's testing ground so from time to time some designs might feel too powerful for that moment.
What I'm extremely happy with is how GW now embraces input from outside. The years I was the most active with WFB this just never happend. Players could say all they want and GW's design wouldn't budge.

As I've discussed on many forums, the way the General's Handbook changed the game is a massive positive change. In addition a yearly Handbook is also very likely the best way to keep things relevant.

What I also have to say is that players in general should accept that GW's main goal remains to sell minis. If you can accept that you also have to understand that sometimes rulesdesign is just insanely powerful because GW wants that model to become a key model within a certain faction (you see this a lot with 40K also).
A yearly Handbook has the advantage of adapting to this much better as hard codex does. By large because every new model requires a reconsideration of costs within factions as certain synergies might open and others might be closed down.

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13 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

 

-Better pricing with every release.

 

I agree with your other points but this one puzzled me. The price of new minis keeps going up and up. I remember when blood knights used to be a big deal because they were so expensive. Now we have Archaeon being super pricy and lots of normal units also being the top tier price threshold. Not that the quality isn't equal to the price. But I would never say the price is going down.

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Hmm, that's a fair criticism but I was thinking of releases like the Beastclaw Raiders, Flesh-Eater court and the repriced Liberators that are overall cheaper.

There are things like the Tzeentch release that saw a price bump, though. So maybe it'd be better to say they're leaning towards a better pricing model.

Edit: Yeah, better value is probably the best description for it.

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7 hours ago, Oppenheimer said:

I agree with your other points but this one puzzled me. The price of new minis keeps going up and up. I remember when blood knights used to be a big deal because they were so expensive. Now we have Archaeon being super pricy and lots of normal units also being the top tier price threshold. Not that the quality isn't equal to the price. But I would never say the price is going down.

Cough ..looking at Witch Aelves pricing :D

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Personally I think the future is quite bright.  We're seeing really good support for the game, amazing community interaction, some very reasonably priced model deals and some really fresh new ideas.  The new ideas very much harks back to the time when GW would create a model simply because they fancied doing one and I'm optimistic at what else GW has up their sleeves - I'm certain we're going to see a lot more brand new armies appearing.

I'd say that I've two concerns as it currently stands.  Firstly I feel there's a growing gap between the "top tier" armies and ones underneath.  Although most game systems have something like this, I felt with AoS we originally didn't have too big a gap.  Secondly I hope the level of complexity stays the same - four pages of rules (plus rule of one for matched play), battleplan & army trait's is just about enough alongside your warscrolls.  Any more and we risk bloating what is a refreshingly straightforward game system.

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I'm not too concerned about power differences between factions. At most levels the skill of the player is more important, and unless you're going to a tournament most players aren't the type of person to bring their power game against a newbie.

I think long term we'll see two tiers of battletome. The first will be larger books like DoT covering a major faction that most players will field alone. There's also a lot of scope for smaller books concerning mini-factions that act as an add on to the grand alliance. I can see a new unifying faction coming out for Death soon, perhaps even a single Grand Alliance book.

In terms of sheer wishlisting, I'd love to see:

- Beastmen make a return as the true Children of Chaos - far more varied appearance, the reintroduction of Gave Children, Bovigors and god-Specific beasts. Bringing monsters, Dragon Ogors and Bullgors back under the same banner would be great too.

- More on the mortal aspect of the nine realms shown in City of Secrets.

- Rotbringers being fleshed out (so to speak) potentially with a plague aspect folded in, or the full incorporation of Pestiliens.

- Slaves to Darkness or else a Chaos Undivided faction, possibly as an Everchosen Battletome.

- Elves.

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I think it's fair to assume every fan will recieve something.

However as a rule of tumb I do think that the pictures depicted on square bases on GW's site and the app are a good indication of what GW will change and what they will keep. I say this basically because I know that GW has a ton of stuff on new bases painted by the 'Eavy Metal team but somehow can't be bothered by applying these pictures everywhere and I believe that this is a hint on what to come, what you can expect to slowely leave and in general what Age of Sigmar will become.

As I'm also involved on the other Warhammer Fantasy, Ninth Age and general GW's Fantasy brand forums I think that many of the new skool are 'better off' starting with the newer models promoted by Games Workshop.

The result of this is that I expect a massive overhaul for a lot of the factions, including:
Chaos Allience
- Beastmen (who will likely eventually recieve their Undivided status again and are part of Tzeentch otherwise, changing bodies etc)
- Khorne (Blades of Khorne) being the prime guy with Chaos Warriors in Chaos Armour (much like the initial WFB editions where Chaos Armour was a Khorne gift)
- Nurgle being the Tough Chaos Warrior again, expecting more wounds and durability as their prime strenght. 
- Everchosen becomming their own battletome (Undivided) with the eventual 'blend' of "Mortals only" but with the big monsters, such as the Slaughterbrute, Giant, you name it.
Death Allience
- "Death Chaos Warriors" like the Dwarfs I think Death is up for a larger suprise also, with this I think that Mannfred will become the 'Archaon of Death' meaning I expect some really cool armoured undead that arn't unlike the Deathknights from World of Warcraft, meaning they will likely kill and summon Ghouls, Undead and Zombies from those killings. Thus less 'weak Necromancy based' and more "Deathknight".
- As a result I expect that more new Death releases will look more like Nagash essentially, bone plate armour that makes the elite of the Undead look really cool.
- Vampires will likely remain but only as characters of the past. What will happen to the old skool Necromancers is unclear to me, my assumption leads me to think that they will eventually dissapear. 
Order Allience
- As above I expect Aelfs to be the trifecta as seen in Chaos, Death and eventual Destruction
- I expect High Elfs to essentially remain the Good but slightly Arrogant/Superior Aelf, allied with Lions, Eagles and general larger beasts. Where Dwarfs are high-tech or barbarians these are more akin to Hunters as seen in several PC games like WoW again.
- I expect Dark Elfs to essentially remain the more Edgy and Scary Aelf, allied with scaled monsters essentially. Hydra's are likely to remain, I expect a lot of cool flying Pirate ships. 

In general I think every Allience will follow a path akin to that what we've seen so far. Sub-factions being really unique and the overlap that was easier found in Warhammer Fantasy will slowely but certainly dissapear. Mind you I do think this is a good thing as it adds character in a logical way.

With Blades of Khorne as the latest example, army design for 'Khorne Chaos' has never been this logical, which is a great thing. As even the WFB lore confirmed that each sub-faction most certainly was more commonly seen as a mono-god army instead of a massive mix of all kinds of monsters, goodies and unlikely alliences (such as mixing Wizards in Khorne or Dwarf armies). 

Lastly I do think that Age of Sigmar 2nd edition will move towards something that is more akin to the old WFB system. I think that Warscrolls will have point costs included but also having the book strictly saying that this is only there for competative purposes.
In fact I wouldn't be suprised to see a AoS 1.5 having a special footnote for this on their Warscrolls eventually. Even narative play benifits from this sort of things because it's more clear to what is a common soldier and what isn't, simply based on cost. A campaign that would add 100 additional points to spend every weak is easier to create a nice game than having a campaign that allows you to add 'A UNIT' every week.

Cheers,

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OK, so partly what I think GW are aiming to do, and partly what I want (:D).

  • Have a scaleable sales strategy that gives a variety of entry points. Once Shadespire is released later this year we have the foundations of this strategy - Shadespire is a very low cost buy in, and could easily be sold in places like Walmart (US) or Waterstones (UK) so giving an entry point to non wargamers. You then have a number of 'steps' up so that whatever level people are at you can have a conversation about how AoS would suit them - something like Shadespire - Warhammer Quest - Age of Sigmar Starter - Generals Handbook and the full glories of the game.
    • I would also love for them to look into the possibility of an Epic scale AoS game. Reading about the battleship scale Kharadron Skyships has me really wanting to field them!
    • I understand the concern about rules bloat but on the other hand GW wants to sell AoS to everybody, and some portion of the market will not buy if the added complexity is not available. Key is to make it clear that GW wants players to decide for themselves what is fun and run with that.
  • Link releases through an aesthetic and a shared reality but give freedom to their creative people to do what they think is cool / will sell. The blowing up of the Old World was the start of this, and I think that we can see with the Kharadron that the aesthetic links to the rest of the range are there but we are getting releases opened up to the whole range of what is possible.
    • From a sales point of view I think one of the issues with Warhammer was that GW were essentially competing with themselves for sales. By way of an example, in 8th Edition they released new Hammerers. These kits would have competed with the previous iterations of Hammerers all the way back to the Perry designed late 80's release. Compare this to the new Kharadron Endrinriggers. What competes directly with these?
  • Give players more things to do with their models, but not release lots of individual things to sell for specific little games. One of the reasons that TSR went bankrupt was that their market reached maturity, and instead of reducing product production to a level where number of sales equalled demand they produced MORE product. Inevitable result was that total sales stayed the same but cost of production continued to increase. We also know that was one of the reasons the specialist games fell by the way side - they did not in the aggregate increase demand they just gave the current market base different things to spend money on (there is an argument here that GW did not advertise these products effectively which meant there was no scope for the products to create their own market in addition to the main ranges, but let bygones be bygones).
    • Evidence for this in AoS is really the Shadows over Hammerhal game. You can use a range of models in this game. The models for this game are not unique. This means that it may only contribute slightly to increasing total sales, the costs of producing it are marginal, and there will be some players who get into AoS through it, or who maintain a positive view of GW through continuing use of their models.
    • It is really clear in the case of Shadow Wars - absolutely designed around allowing you to buy and use existing assets. Compare to Necromunda that would have required dedicated resources to continue.

Overall I think that we will see more investment into AoS over the next few years. At the moment it seems to be a real up and coming game (check ICV 2 - Fantasy Battle had dropped out of the top 5 over the past few years, AoS is now back into it) and GW seems absolutely committed to improving it, improving their community interaction, and generally making things better.

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6 hours ago, mhsellwood said:

Have a scaleable sales strategy that gives a variety of entry points. Once Shadespire is released later this year we have the foundations of this strategy - Shadespire is a very low cost buy in, and could easily be sold in places like Walmart (US) or Waterstones (UK) so giving an entry point to non wargamers. You then have a number of 'steps' up so that whatever level people are at you can have a conversation about how AoS would suit them - something like Shadespire - Warhammer Quest - Age of Sigmar Starter - Generals Handbook and the full glories of the game.

I don't think Shadespire will be on general release like that - I think the game that comes with a play mat and you can use the box as terrain is more likely to appear in non-GW stores.  I don't think GW's attempts to get into non-GW stores has been particularly successful either as we've had the really cheap "airfix" type kits about for a while which don't appear to have been massively popular.  More than happy to be wrong on that though :)

6 hours ago, mhsellwood said:

I understand the concern about rules bloat but on the other hand GW wants to sell AoS to everybody, and some portion of the market will not buy if the added complexity is not available. Key is to make it clear that GW wants players to decide for themselves what is fun and run with that.

I don't think (hope) the core AoS game will become more complicated.  Based on what we've seen so far, I think we're more likely to have an expansion to the core rules (in the same way HH is an expansion to 40k) that adds complexity for a specific environment.

 

7 hours ago, mhsellwood said:

Compare to Necromunda that would have required dedicated resources to continue

Necromunda is still on the cards to be done by Specialist Games, but not going to come out for some time (unsubtble hints being dropped suggest that it's being worked on currently).  I think SW:A is a bit of a toe tipping exercise to see how popular some of the 2nd edition rules are such as armour save modifier (aka rend) and modifying to hit rolls for things like scenery.  I'm not on my own in thinking that this will ultimately appear in 8th ed 40k

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There are three things GW got right with AoS that I think are essential to their strategy going forwards:

1. Stop rules from being a barrier to entry (but still a source of profit).

I say it time and again but the big reason I and many others got into AoS rather than 40k when it comes to playing is that for 40k you often need to spend hundreds of pounds on rulebooks, codecies and supplements before you've bought a single model. AoS has struck the perfect balance with the new battletomes. If you just want a mixed grand alliance army or to start playing straight away, use the free rules. If you decide you really like those Khorne chaps, invest in a battletome and get access to the perks of an all Bloodbound army. No barrier to get into the game but a very real incentive for players to pick up the book, unlike the first few battletomes.

2. Openness in army building whilst retaining incentives for themed forces.

The great thing about the grand alliance structure is that it allows you to pick up those one or two units you like and play them without needing to start a whole new army. This is great for GW because a) it removes a barrier to entry for new product lines and b) It means players are more likely to complete a viable army despite Hobby Butterfly Syndrome. This last piece is important because as with many products, the value of GW armies increases the more people that buy in. This is because it's easier to find opponents, inspiration etc. and you're more likely to find gamers who share your approach to the hobby in any given place. 

3. Keeping the crunch separate from the core game.

In the decades I've been involved in this hobby, narrative and competitive play have both had their times in the ascendancy as far as the studio and community are concerned. Whenever one style is dominant, the other styles (and their players) get marginalised. With the general's handbook, GW seem to have finally found a way to decisively split the two whilst giving both sufficient attention.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 4/3/2017 at 5:02 AM, AGPO said:

- Beastmen make a return as the true Children of Chaos - far more varied appearance, the reintroduction of Gave Children, Bovigors and god-Specific beasts. Bringing monsters, Dragon Ogors and Bullgors back under the same banner would be great too.

 

If they brought Beastmen back and also linked them to the Tzeentch Arcanites stuff, that'd be so ****** cool...

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In general i think the future is bright in terms of success on GWs behalf and popularity of the game! Theyve managed to sell this very difficult product to more and more people (compared to how hard it was to make a friend start with whfb). Theyve really done a brilliant job in lowering the entey barrier, yet keeping the game deep and competative, and i think thats how they will continue to develope stuff. Open play getting more crazy and more free - encouraging more roleplay/scenario and giving the power to the players imaginations, while pitched battles will probably become more fleshed out. More clarity in the rules, more detail regarding terrain, LOS, units etc.

 

in terms of new releases i think we will see even more fantastical and wierd stuff down the line, as it seems like GW is teally trying to make everything in AOS unique and impossible to find anywhere else. They want to brand themselves and their races more wich imo is good because god knows the fantasy genre needs some fresh winds. 

So overall - more crazy, fleshed out and probably succesful!

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I've just discovered FFG's Runewars has become a giant hit with our tournament community and they are aggressively recruiting for it and that may take a toll on our fragile AOS community.

While that sucks I have been very curious about precisely that for runewars because of ffg's focus on tournament type games. I have yet to try it myself but that reason alone has me curious about it.

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk

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I have never heard of runewars but just found a quick breakdown from someone in 2016 saying they dont like GW games due to rules complexity and runewars is super simple.

The images of the game being played look like a amnic artist with his own card, template and dice making machine has been off his medication for a week.

There's cards, trays, stands, range templates, moving templates, dials, wheels, dice, different dice, more dice, counters, tokens, more counters, more tokens, probably counter-tokens!

I am therefore confused.

I am sure it's interesting but it doesn't look like my thing if it's scaled like AoS. If it was smaller warbands maybe.

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Anyways back to AOS, I think GHB2 will show us how good/bad the future is.  Right now, AOS feels stale in the "meta", you almost always see the same things with little deviation, and too many things are just completely unserviceable.  So hopefully GHB2 relieves that a bit; I wish GW would actually treat AOS like a living rules set and tweak warscrolls since they are freely available, but that never seemed to come to fruition.

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5 minutes ago, wayniac said:

Anyways back to AOS, I think GHB2 will show us how good/bad the future is.  Right now, AOS feels stale in the "meta", you almost always see the same things with little deviation, and too many things are just completely unserviceable.  So hopefully GHB2 relieves that a bit; I wish GW would actually treat AOS like a living rules set and tweak warscrolls since they are freely available, but that never seemed to come to fruition.

I think it's more a question of resources - tweak what exactly and according to suggestions from whom?

Competitive gaming can be a buffet serving only cheese and whine. A defeat at the hands of a merely decent list can morph from "I must do better against this kind of good list" to "OMG there is no way I played poorly, this list is OP as f%&#" in the minds of different people.

Stuff like this needs a firm process or it'd do more harm than good.

Ofc, they may just do a yearly GHB and maybe that'll work fine too.

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9 minutes ago, wayniac said:

Anyways back to AOS, I think GHB2 will show us how good/bad the future is.  Right now, AOS feels stale in the "meta", you almost always see the same things with little deviation, and too many things are just completely unserviceable.  So hopefully GHB2 relieves that a bit; I wish GW would actually treat AOS like a living rules set and tweak warscrolls since they are freely available, but that never seemed to come to fruition.

It is interesting that you find the metagame stale, where do you play?

I have found that its moving pretty fast, 6 months ago it was all about warrior brotherhood, clan skyre and kunnin ruk, three months ago it was gnarlroot wargrove and stonehorn/thundertusk mixed destruction, last week it was 2++ stardrakes, and at SCGT over the weekend I am expecting to see quite a bit of tzeentch and khorne. 

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