Do you think they’ll ever make more Skirmish boxes again?

[Ravinsild]

I have some friends who basically refuse to get into Age of Sigmar, but it occurred to me that Skirmish might just be exactly the right thing to get them to play. 

Its bite sized Age of Sigmar with most of the boxes coming between 9 and 11 models from what I’ve seen. However apparently none of them are being made anymore and a lot of them are flat out gone. I just bought the last 2 Khorne like Gorefiend Tribe ones and I’ve bought 4 Weirdknob Warbands for my Ironjawz army alone. 

Do you think they’ll come out with any new boxes or support Skirmish more directly again? I would love for my friends to pick an army they love the look of, get a few paints and spend 150$ or less and be able to have a nicely painted tiny Warband for Skirmish so we can at least play that together since I don’t think they will ever go for the full table top games. 

[Ragnar Alpaca]

I expect that they will update skirmish somewhat soon, and when they do I would expect them to bring out some more warband boxes. Just let them look at all the armies and pick an army they like the look of and buy a hero and one or two boxes of infantry, that should be decent enough.

[robinlvalentine]

I think it's probably a ways off, but I wouldn't be surprised if Age Of Sigmar gets its own standalone skirmish game at some point, much like the new Kill Team for 40K. But as I say, probably a ways off.

In the mean time, maybe you and your friend could just pick up one of the new smaller 'Getting Started' sets, like Storm Strike or Tempest Of Souls and play some Open Play or Skirmish games with those? 

[Skabnoze]

I think GW created Age of Sigmar skirmish heavily because they were trying almost any idea they could to dig the game out of the hole it sorta launched into.  I also think a big reason that skirmish has been somewhat ignored was that most of the oxygen was sucked out of the room due to the success that Age of Sigmar finally saw and also from the 40k 8th ed launch & support.

Given how successful Age of Sigmar has become, and also that GW appears primed to finally have figured out a good solution for selling a gateway skirmish game with the upcoming version of Kill Team, I think it won’t be too long before we see an Age of Sigmar version of kill team.  It could even be a semi-resurrection of Mordheim.

I think we will just have to wait for them to be able to a lot something into a production window.

[bsharitt]

5 hours ago, Skabnoze said:

I think GW created Age of Sigmar skirmish heavily because they were trying almost any idea they could to dig the game out of the hole it sorta launched into.  I also think a big reason that skirmish has been somewhat ignored was that most of the oxygen was sucked out of the room due to the success that Age of Sigmar finally saw and also from the 40k 8th ed launch & support.

Given how successful Age of Sigmar has become, and also that GW appears primed to finally have figured out a good solution for selling a gateway skirmish game with the upcoming version of Kill Team, I think it won’t be too long before we see an Age of Sigmar version of kill team.  It could even be a semi-resurrection of Mordheim.

I think we will just have to wait for them to be able to a lot something into a production window.

I'm really hoping for an AoS version of Kill Team. Really hoping it feels like a real designed to be skirmish game rather than the regular game, but take everything in units of one like old Kill Team and current Skirmish. I really want to like skirmish, and it's okay as maybe and introductory game, but has no real legs to is a game to keep playing unless you start doing heavy house rules.

[Ravinsild]

2 hours ago, bsharitt said:

I'm really hoping for an AoS version of Kill Team. Really hoping it feels like a real designed to be skirmish game rather than the regular game, but take everything in units of one like old Kill Team and current Skirmish. I really want to like skirmish, and it's okay as maybe and introductory game, but has no real legs to is a game to keep playing unless you start doing heavy house rules.

Not even doing the narrative missions? I’ve never played Skirmish but it looked pretty fun so I bought the rules for 6$ on Azyr to try it out. 

I have 1820 points in Ironjawz and 4540 points of Khorne Bloodbound myself, so I can pick and choose anything for Skirmish if my friends can get into it.

[Skabnoze]

3 hours ago, bsharitt said:

I'm really hoping for an AoS version of Kill Team. Really hoping it feels like a real designed to be skirmish game rather than the regular game, but take everything in units of one like old Kill Team and current Skirmish. I really want to like skirmish, and it's okay as maybe and introductory game, but has no real legs to is a game to keep playing unless you start doing heavy house rules.

I think the current very thin skirmish rule set is very fun.  Skirmish games in general tend to be some of my favorite games.  I was not expecting AoS skirmish to be as fun as it is given how thin a layer of rules it is on top of a very basic rules system - but I was surprised.  So I am in favor of anything else they add to that.

In regards to an Age of Sigmar Kill Team, I do think it is likely we see something but it is easily about a year out.  But if you look at how GW has operated in the past, they have very poor support for every skirmish ruleset or game that they have made.  They have never cracked the code for how to continue supporting and keeping those games popular long term.  That may have to do with the issue of production capacity and the work-load that their dev team can handle, or it could simply be that the marketing team and decision makers don't know (or have no interest in learning) how to keep these things as long-term products.  I can't say exactly what their issue is, but from a long-term view they have never been able to support these games for very long at all.  They have shown recently that they are willing to steal ideas from other companies and there are a lot of companies that have been primarily publishing skirmish games successfully for years now - so we know that type of game can be successful.

I think this new Kill Team game will warrant watching in regards to how GW tries to sell it and support it.  I also think that the success, or failure, of that game will directly impact what Age of Sigmar skirmish becomes.  If GW cannot or won't support 40k Kill Team long term (they say they will - but lets wait and see) then what we end up with will be close to what we have now - with maybe an slim updated book.  If 40k Kill Team is successful as it's own thing and supported well then we will likely see GW spin out an Age of Sigmar Kill Team variant that is it's own separate book rule set.

[amysrevenge]

14 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

I think the current very thin skirmish rule set is very fun.  Skirmish games in general tend to be some of my favorite games.  I was not expecting AoS skirmish to be as fun as it is given how thin a layer of rules it is on top of a very basic rules system - but I was surprised.  So I am in favor of anything else they add to that.

In regards to an Age of Sigmar Kill Team, I do think it is likely we see something but it is easily about a year out.  But if you look at how GW has operated in the past, they have very poor support for every skirmish ruleset or game that they have made.  

I agree about Skirmish - pleasantly surprised at how well it worked.

As for support...  It could very likely be a simple dollars and cents thing (pounds, euros, whatever haha).  Expected return on investment.  You've got 100 hours of developer time to spend - do you spend it on a game that requires players to buy 8 models (or, very commonly, to use 8 models they already own), or on a game that requires players to buy 80 models?

I know, it's not that simple.  But it kinda is that simple.  The good-will benefits are worth some expenditure of resources, but probably not worth a continual re-investment of more resources.

 

[Mr. White]

Total guess here, but I'd guess that at the scale GW operates at, and the expectations of share holders, skirmish games are hard to keep going...as much as they would like them to.

What I mean is that even if you have a game like Infinity that is considered a 'success', those games are published by _much_ smaller companies. So even if Infinity is a success for it's company, the same numbers would not be considered a success on GW's books. It's a different level.

My guess is that GW staff still loves the GW skirmish catalogue. Blood Bowl, Necromunda, etc. I think they really do like these games. However, again, they operate at such a level that sales of one-and-done 12 man squads don't cut it. This is _probably_ why you see all these cards, dice, tokens, books, etc for the new BB and Necromunda. The buy-in is a lot higher now and probably because in order for those lines to continue at the GW level...the new iterations have to generate far more money than simply small squads would bring in in order to remain viable to GWs bottom line.

[Ravinsild]

4 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

Total guess here, but I'd guess that at the scale GW operates at, and the expectations of share holders, skirmish games are hard to keep going...as much as they would like them to.

What I mean is that even if you have a game like Infinity that is considered a 'success', those games are published by _much_ smaller companies. So even if Infinity is a success for it's company, the same numbers would not be considered a success on GW's books. It's a different level.

My guess is that GW staff still loves the GW skirmish catalogue. Blood Bowl, Necromunda, etc. I think they really do like these games. However, again, they operate at such a level that sales of one-and-done 12 man squads don't cut it. This is _probably_ why you see all these cards, dice, tokens, books, etc for the new BB and Necromunda. The buy-in is a lot higher now and probably because in order for those lines to continue at the GW level...the new iterations have to generate far more money than simply small squads would bring in in order to remain viable to GWs bottom line.

TBH I'm really happy with the Blood Bowl support. Blood Bowl is what got me into AOS and 40k to begin with. Thanks WoWcrendor and the Blood Bowl 2 Crendor Invitational I moved from the Blood Bowl video game to board game, and found a local GW shop and went in to buy some teams and stuff, but I found it was all online only, but then I bought some Grey Knights because I wanted an inquisition army and started my journey from there. 

[Skabnoze]

22 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

I agree about Skirmish - pleasantly surprised at how well it worked.

As for support...  It could very likely be a simple dollars and cents thing (pounds, euros, whatever haha).  Expected return on investment.  You've got 100 hours of developer time to spend - do you spend it on a game that requires players to buy 8 models (or, very commonly, to use 8 models they already own), or on a game that requires players to buy 80 models?

I know, it's not that simple.  But it kinda is that simple.  The good-will benefits are worth some expenditure of resources, but probably not worth a continual re-investment of more resources.

 

I think that GW has historically thought about it that way, but I think it has been an overly simplistic view on their part and they have left a lot of money on the floor due to it.  There are a number of companies that have bloomed from nothing into respectable sized game companies purely off the backs of Skirmish games.  There is more money to it, if you implement it right, than I think GW has given credit.  There is also the economy of scale thing to consider.  You can make a fair amount of money selling cheap products to a larger customer base as you can selling more expensive products to a smaller base of customers.  If you view the purchase it takes to play an average game as a single product, rather than each individual model kit, then it is easy to see how GW has failed to grab customers who don't want to fully invest into large games like 40k and Age of Sigmar.

This has always surprised me given that GW has shifted over time to try to grab a younger audience.  But then during that same time they shifted their games to require a larger collection in order to play standard games.  Those 2 things don't really mesh.  Skirmish games, and more inexpensive games, are better for younger audiences.  They are easier to paint and collect, cheaper to get started into, typically play faster, etc.  Then as you grab those customers you can potentially ramp them up into your big games over time.  GW has always had a big hole where their entry-level size games should be and skirmish is the perfect fit for that.

They are also in the position to be able to utitlize their main game model kits for skirmish rules - so the two products don't really compete.  Sure, some players will prefer one over the other, but I bet that the total body of customers ends up being bigger in that situation rather than smaller.  I don't buy the idea that a well implemented skirmish game will cannibalize the main games - unless they butcher the rules for those core games.

There are plenty of examples to look at over the last decade or so.  Warmachine & Hordes and Malifaux have both been quite successful running long term.  And there are tons of miniature based board games that are effectively skirmish games that have had long production runs that GW could have tapped into.  GW started the concept with Space Hulk, Warhammer Quest, and Hero Quest and they never really did much with those other than reissue them a few times.  Look at how well Fantasy Flight has done with Descent & Imperial Assault.

Anyways, I hope that GW has been mostly worried about their total production capacity rather than an erroneous and simple return on investment strategy.  Because there are tons of examples that show that skirmish style games can have a very good return on investment.  My hope is that GW has realized that ignoring that section of the market allowed other companies to thrive and start becoming real competitors. 

[amysrevenge]

I hope you're right and something can be done.

My fear is that they don't want to make, say, a Skirmish game that is so good that it ends up being a destination in and of itself, rather than a stop along the way.

[Skabnoze]

34 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

the new iterations have to generate far more money than simply small squads would bring in in order to remain viable to GWs bottom line.

I think that is because they have always failed to figure out how to continue getting players to purchase items.  Their skirmish games have always been designed so that once you own a small collection of stuff you don't need anything else and they have never provided much else for people to buy.  A lot of other games out there have been much more innovative in regards to how they continue to keep some of those games popular and profitable and GW is just now appearing to have figured that sort of thing out.

Take Shadespire as an example - it is almost a carbon copy of how Fantasy Flight builds some of their games.  Imagine if Warhammer Quest was designed at a slightly smaller initial price point, and then they regularly sold rules for using various other hero models & enemy units from AoS.  And from there they could sell packs of extra tile sets for different types of dungeons - and probably terrain sets as well.  

Terrain is another place where GW is really good and they could emphasize that with skirmish rules.  Skirmish games generally want tables that are more cluttered with terrain and GW could use a good skirmish game to boost sales of their terrain.  This does appear to be what they are doing with the new Kill Team.  Take a look at their "Kill Zone" packs that they announced.  I don't buy that skirmish games would not be profitable enough for GW.  GW prior to the new CEO was shrinking rather than expanding and held on tightly to a lot of out-dated sales ideas.  They were not at all innovative as a company for a long period of time and it allowed a lot of competition to sprout up.  Now, none of those companies are as big as GW, but collectively they managed to get enough traction to hit GW in the pocket-book.  On the flip side, it appears that it may have forced GW to shake things up a bit and the last couple of years has been pretty great for customers.

[Skabnoze]

6 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

I hope you're right and something can be done.

My fear is that they don't want to make, say, a Skirmish game that is so good that it ends up being a destination in and of itself, rather than a stop along the way.

I hope so as well.  I think a skirmish game that happens to be both a destination and a gateway can easily exist.  It just will take GW to actually realize that and put in a bit of effort to make it happen.  And they would need to decide that it is worth their effort.  But, I would say that just in regards to competition in the market it is worth their interest to put directly competing products up against other companies.  

[Urauloth]

8 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

Imagine if Warhammer Quest was designed at a slightly smaller initial price point, and then they regularly sold rules for using various other hero models & enemy units from AoS.  And from there they could sell packs of extra tile sets for different types of dungeons - and probably terrain sets as well.

They really should be doing this right now. They need to put the hero card set back in print, give us rule cards for new heroes and then look at starting up a new boxed game for the new edition to tie into the necroquake and the changes to the realms. A game set in Shyish, for example, with periodic expansions to bring in extra heroes and adversaries and keep the story moving forward, would be amazing. If everything was cross-compatible with ST and SoHH as well, it would be perfect.

[Skabnoze]

2 minutes ago, Urauloth said:

They really should be doing this right now. They need to put the hero card set back in print, give us rule cards for new heroes and then look at starting up a new boxed game for the new edition to tie into the necroquake and the changes to the realms. A game set in Shyish, for example, with periodic expansions to bring in extra heroes and adversaries and keep the story moving forward, would be amazing. If everything was cross-compatible with ST and SoHH as well, it would be perfect.

They could just keep the main game and sell small card tile packs.  Look at how Descent, Imperial Assault, Zombiecide, Super Dungeon Explore, Arcadia Quest, etc handle support.  The key is to split things into a lot of smaller purchases rather than big huge expensive boxes.  I own practically everything for Imperial Assault and I am not sure that I would have bought it all if everything was sold in huge $100+ boxes.  But, if you look at how much I have spent on the whole I expect that Fantasy Flight made more money off selling me lots of small purchases than if they had packaged all that stuff into a couple big boxes.

GW is really missing the small impulse buy market.  Even their single model characters or game accessories often are priced at the level where I stop and consider it rather than just snagging it because I don't think about sub-$10 purchases.  I have plenty of spare cash, but once you go above $15 there is something in my brain that causes me to think about the purchase and that is almost everything that GW sells in their store.  Big $100+ boxes cause me to really think about if I want that thing right now and whether I have the time to open it up and do stuff with it.  I often postpone those purchases until I have hobby time to do something with it.  But the Imperial Assault $40 mini-expansions I am willing to snag on release.

GW can easily sell a game like this in the same way.  I hope that they realize this with Kill Team.

[Ravinsild]

Honestly, for people like my friends, I keep asking if they want to play AoS or 40k and it's /always/ a definite NO. However, ironically, one of these friends is the one who suggested we buy the actual Blood Bowl table top game itself! Which I did! And it's amazing!

I think Skirmish games are the /only/ way to reach people like my friends who stubbornly refuse and resist getting into the larger games, but buying 1 or 2 packs of models for skirmish they may tolerate. 

[Skabnoze]

So I am a huge miniature wargame nerd and have been since I was a kid.  I have been playing these games since the 80s (started with BattleTech).  I own a ludicrous amount of little toy dudes.  I also have 4 kids and I am not terribly interested in trying to get them into any of the big games like 40k or Age of Sigmar.  As a parent, those games do not appeal to me as something to try to get my kids into - which is odd considering how much I like them myself.

For my kids I prefer smaller skirmish style games, dungeon crawl board games, etc.  These games are just much better for kids to get into.  They are simply more accessible in every way.  The kids have to assemble and paint less stuff.  This is much easier for young kids to do.  Kids are usually much more interested in the game and less in the hobby.  They have to grow into enjoying the hobby more over time.  Smaller games let them get to playing with their toys much faster. 

They are also priced much better for young kids.  If I give my kids a $10 weekly allowance, or I let them do chores to earn some money, it still takes a while for them to be able to afford much for the big GW core games.  Average price for a unit is $40.  That is a full month of saving with a $10 allowance and kids don't always have that level of patience.  A Start Collecting box would take a couple months to earn or they would probably have to ask for it as a birthday or christmas gift.  But when a game sells models in small packs for $8-20 then they can buy something small each week or save up 2 weeks to get something else. 

I want to get my kids into the hobby, but I would prefer to do so in a way better suited for kids.  GW has never really served that demographic well in my opinion.  They market heavily to them, but they price the game for people with much higher levels of disposable income.  As a parent I am more interested in games like Malifaux for my kids.  Not only is that a fantastic game, but it is much more accessible for kids.  I would really love if GW would start doing this sort of thing as well.  If they did then it would be much easier to ramp kids up to the bigger games.

[Mr. White]

^ Shadespire?

[Skabnoze]

4 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

^ Shadespire?

Sure, I like Shadespire.  It does not ramp into Age of Sigmar games well though.  It does ramp into skirmish games - if you are willing to fudge up the points for them yourself.

But even Shadespire is not priced where my kids could make weekly or bi-weekly purchases with a small allowance.  The only thing they could get with those are card sleeves or dice packs.  If Shadespire sold individual models it would be a different story, but it is not set up like that.  Malifaux is still a better proposition.  The game is deep, the factions are broad, and it can be bought in small purchase installments and that can last for a long time.

[Mr. White]

Eh, I wouldn't want kids on the consumption treadmill anyway. Better they don't get trained to make weekly purchases, IMO.

Shadespire's bar is low enough, it sounds like they can save for a few weeks (in your example), buy a warband, share cards, and play Shadespire for months. Even with Dad, as it's multiplayer. Great family game! Or let them choose a model from their warband and run it as a hero in your WHQ game. Multiple use for these small model packs.

If you really want to use those models for skirmish...they're in the skirmish book. Liberators, skeletons, skaven. Nothing fancy here.

or if you prefer:

I feel this is coming down to personal preference though. From where I sit, GW has made it entirely viable for the younger set to get into one of their games. It isn't the large AoS or 40k in full, but like you say, they wouldn't enjoy that much hobby requirement anyway. Allow them to take their time with Shadespire. When there's enough models, and enough interest, combine the warbands along Grand Alliance lines and have some small battles. AoS rules are free.

It can be quite cheap.

[Skabnoze]

13 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

Eh, I wouldn't want kids on the consumption treadmill anyway. Better they don't get trained to make weekly purchases, IMO.

If you give your kids allowance or allow them to earn it with chores then they are going to spend it anyways - unless you hold onto it for them or make them stick it into the bank or something.  I would rather they spent it incrementally on a hobby than just tossing it on some other junk.

Whether or not you believe in letting kids earn money or having allowance is a different story entirely.  I am just using my own situation with my kids as an example for this topic.  I don't push them to GW games because of how front-loaded the cost and hobby investment is.  These games are not really built well to gradually ease into.  Other games are and I prefer those for my kids.  If GW had a game set up like that then I would be more than happy to try that with them.

And you are right, it very much is a personal preference thing.  That was my point in bringing it up.

Again, I think Shadespire is great.  But the game does not really grow other than buying new warbands.  There is no mechanism in the game for someone who really likes one warband to expand it aside from buying warbands they might not be interested in for the cards.  It is a bit of a similar sales mechanism to Xwing with the upgrade cards, but at least with Xwing you can buy a new ship for fairly cheap.  In my experience young kids have more fun getting small things semi-frequently than big huge things on rare occasions.

Your mileage may vary.

[Mr. White]

We're clearly stepping into the realm of parenting and finances, so I mean no offense. It's all very subjective at this point.

Is the item bought worth the time in work necessary to attain the item? What's the difference between 'hobby' and 'junk'? What is 'incrementally'? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Should people be comfortable being groomed as consumers?  Maybe it's too philosophical.

However you cut it, seems some purchases offer more return, or gaming value, per dollar spent. Looking solely at that value...this being a gaming site.

From where I sit, the shadespire warbands seem to offer a very favorable gaming/dollar ratio. There's a lot that can be done with them for little cost. They even cost less than anything GW will peddle as a 'skirmish' warband. See: Skirmish boxes, BB/Necro boxes or the new Kill Team squads.

Carry on though.

[Mr. White]

Hmmm... @Skabnoze I think we were editing our posts at various times within a short timeframe. the flow of discussion seems off now.

Anyway, I hope you guys find way to enjoy the games in whatever capacity you're comfortable with. It's something we (I) struggle with as this hobby can balloon way beyond what's reasonably necessary.

[Ravinsild]

I pitched even just AoS Skirmish with the 65 Skirmish Boxes and they were pretty resistant. I may just be a poor salesman though. Although they seem keen to try out Shadespire, and Warhammer Quest.