The weird state of AoS Forgeworld

[SunStorm]

The Legion of Azgorh has some amazing models, I've got some from way back and have been adding to them slowly, but there is always the risk that FW just stop selling them at any time.  

I love some of the beasts and again have to weigh up buying them before they might just go out of sale. I missed out on the Chaos Mammoth and Incarnate of Beasts and regret that.

I do wish they produce a Tamurkhan style campaign book with some background for the Legion of Azgorh and maybe some new models to go with Shar’tor the Executioner. 

 

[Lobeau]

3 hours ago, Televiper11 said:

I'm reasonably happy with LoA in terms of model line and rules support. But I hate to think the line is stagnant and that we'll never get that K'Daai Destroyer or other cool things.

Like 2h weapon options for the Ironsworn and bull Centaurs =/

[Kyriakin]

My issue with FW can be summed up in two words: Skin Wolves

They are humans who turned into wolves - literally BEAST-MEN!

And yet, not only are they not Beasts of Chaos, but they are Monsters of Chaos that can't even ally into BoC.

I keep hearing that they "don't have an AoS team anymore", but what kind of "team" would be needed to change a single work on a PDF warscroll (i.e. "Monsters" to "Beasts")?

The same kinda keyword nonsense applies to the Preyton too, but at least they are OOP. With Skin Wolves, its like they are actively trying to not sell them.

And who remembers that bizarre points update a few years ago, where the Mourngul went DOWN in points, that was quickly pulled.

Forgeworld are utterly worthless IMHO. They do the hard part (i.e. making the models), but seem unwilling to commit  a comparitively tiny amount of resources to making the keywords make sense and actually selling the models.

Edited July 10, 2019 by Kyriakin

[kenshin620]

1 hour ago, Kyriakin said:

They do the hard part (i.e. making the models), but seem unwilling to commit  a comparitively tiny amount of resources to making the keywords make sense and actually selling the models.

To be fair the same could be said of AoS as a whole in terms of updating warscrolls, especially ones that basically have not change since the creation of AoS.

[Overread]

47 minutes ago, kenshin620 said:

To be fair the same could be said of AoS as a whole in terms of updating warscrolls, especially ones that basically have not change since the creation of AoS.

Yeah it took GW a long time to even sort out the store, even now they've still not released info on what they intend to do with Order and we've got hints that even Destruction might get further combined armies (Ogors force).

 

As for how a FW team would affect things, if you've got a dedicated block of staff focused on a single concept then they can push that agenda in that time slot. So they've a vested interest in making it work and campaigning for it. If they don't have a dedicated team then there's more chance that it just gets swept under the carpet and forgotten because everyone is focused working on other projects or even multiple projects. 

[Remus Prime]

I got the female Stormcast heads, I got them as soon as I found out about them.  I think little upgrades like that are perfect for Forge World to do.  And if they insist on doing the titanic enormous kits, doing some lore friendly ones people are invested in, like an aspect of a god beast or something.  An even larger Nagash.  The realms have so much that could be done.  Cogforts!

[Eevika]

11 hours ago, Num said:

I have been told that it has to do with the rules, because using some FW models would be quite unfair and unbalanced. So they just decided that they can't be used.

Perhaps they would allow them nevertheless if I happen to come to an event with some. But as I don't own any, and wasn't encouraged to buy any because of this "rule", I have never insisted.

I still feel it's a bit of a shame, because I would have gladly bought their Skaven range.

In AoS I believe there are like 2 models from FW that are somewhat playable Mournghoul is good and Troggoth Hag actually pretty great. Everything else is awful just look at stuff like Fimir Warriors 140 points compared to Rockgut Troggoths also 140 points. They dont compare at all. Atleast my local GW allows me to play my Hag and love it. The model always get people to come and look at it

[AthlorianStoners]

There’s models that could easily fit into existing armies and would actually help fill some slots/add variation. 

Magma Dragon = Fyreslayers 

Merwyrm = Idoneth or Scourge Privateers

Dread Maw = Gutbusters 

Carmine Dragon = One of the Aelf factions or Legions of Nagash

Basilisk = Order Serpentis

[Eevika]

16 minutes ago, AthlorianStoners said:

There’s models that could easily fit into existing armies and would actually help fill some slots/add variation. 

Magma Dragon = Fyreslayers 

Merwyrm = Idoneth or Scourge Privateers

Dread Maw = Gutbusters 

Carmine Dragon = One of the Aelf factions or Legions of Nagash

Basilisk = Order Serpentis

I personally think the monstrous archanum should be an ally choice to all armies 

[Ghark]

1 hour ago, Eevika said:

In AoS I believe there are like 2 models from FW that are somewhat playable Mournghoul is good and Troggoth Hag actually pretty great.

Well, it was the case for mounrgul, it's just utter garbage now

Still nice model to play though, but you won't field it for its rules!

[EMMachine]

On 7/10/2019 at 8:43 AM, Eevika said:

PS. I think everyone should show more support to Forgeworld maybe they give us new models if we show our interest? I currently own 6 kits from them and so far all the horror stories most people tell about resin has not been true. Sure you need to use greenstuff when you join two massive pieces together but its a fun modelling project and the models stand out on the table like nothing else. 

Maybe I'm the strange one but I would maybe support Forgeworld if I could go into a GW and order the stuff like Mailorder (actually I could say the same about Black Library books and audio CDs).

In the end it's really not only AoS that is in a weird state.

When looking at the channel of "the outer circle" on youtube. There is even much stuff of 30k Horus Heresy, that was discontinued while 30k was one of Forgeworlds maindomains.

Edited July 11, 2019 by EMMachine

[Eevika]

1 minute ago, EMMachine said:

Maybe I'm the strange one but I would maybe support Forgeworld if I could go into a GW and order the stuff like Mailorder (actually I could say the same about Black Library books and audio CDs).

This is a super weird thing. Like it ships from the same place as the regular models just put them in the box thats leaving to the GW stores. I think all shops that stock GW models should be able to place orders for FW models I bet there would be waaay more orders when you dont have to pay for the expensive shipping 

[Tenshi]

I buy FW models because they're cool models, but their rules are not great.

I wish GW would release a proper Fimir army. Destruction could always use another faction and plastic Fimir would be my ruin (but less than resin Fimir) 😅

[JPjr]

51 minutes ago, Tenshi said:

I wish GW would release a proper Fimir army

Fimir are a tricky one, I think they occupy as 'fond' (if that's the right word for what are disgusting beasts) a place in my nostalgic Warhammer heart as they do for most grizzled 40+ overgrown kids still into the game but they're intrinsically always going to be problematic.

They ballsed up their introduction to the game back in the 80s leaving them effectively DOA and I'm not really sure that decades on there's enough people desperate for Fimir to genuinely make them an army worth developing properly, and dedicating all the time and effort need to doing a full release.

From GW's POV I'd guess it would be much better to  create something totally new with no baggage, it's that or you'd need to do a total lore re-write to ease them back in and that would almost inevitably result in spilt milk and toys being thrown out of the pram by the very people who would be your niche market.

All round probably best to leave them shrouded in the dismal mists of time where they're happiest anyway.

[Eevika]

7 minutes ago, JPjr said:

Fimir are a tricky one, I think they occupy as 'fond' (if that's the right word for what are disgusting beasts) a place in my nostalgic Warhammer heart as they do for most grizzled 40+ overgrown kids still into the game but they're intrinsically always going to be problematic.

They ballsed up their introduction to the game back in the 80s leaving them effectively DOA and I'm not really sure that decades on there's enough people desperate for Fimir to genuinely make them an army worth developing properly, and dedicating all the time and effort need to doing a full release.

From GW's POV I'd guess it would be much better to  create something totally new with no baggage, it's that or you'd need to do a total lore re-write to ease them back in and that would almost inevitably result in spilt milk and toys being thrown out of the pram by the very people who would be your niche market.

All round probably best to leave them shrouded in the dismal mists of time where they're happiest anyway.

They pretty much had a full Forgeworld line up coming we have 2 units released and there were i think 3 at a wip stage. If they had released those it would have been nice we would have had a good fimir line up. Seems like they just threw the wips in trash and now we are left with a weird 2 unit army

[Overread]

Honestly I don't know what the plan is for FW moving on and I don't think even GW really knows. 

I guess one big issue is because there really isn't anything new being marketed and pushed by GW and because the rules are fairly lackluster compared to their regular counterparts in the main game; the sales for Fantasy stuff are just not strong. It's an issue of GW's own making, but if there isn't the energy/drive/management desire to push it then dwindling sales on AoS stuff might well spell doom for GW making anything new. It might even be that its all on the "shelved" listing and that most might get retired once their moulds break. 

Thing is we don't know the sales rate, but we can estimate that sales of FW AoS models are not all that strong at present. Heck even in a thread on this forum there don't appear to be all that many FW owners and forums tend to have a higher proportion than normal of FW owning members. 

I guess one issue is that FW has become a bit stuck in that "that's super cool I want it - but not today" gap. Ergo many of us always talk about wanting to own, but even when opportunity comes we don't always get them anyway. Of course it doesn't help that a huge number of the big beasties are locked up in destruction, which is a Grand Alliance with currently the least amount of support form GW (they have 1 Battletome for 2.0). It also doesn't help that things ilke the myrewurm haven't gained the ability to be used by several factions that they'd fit ideally into. So all those Idoneth players are sitting there wanting them, some willing to buy, but simply not because they can't use it. 

[RuneBrush]

2 hours ago, Eevika said:

This is a super weird thing. Like it ships from the same place as the regular models just put them in the box thats leaving to the GW stores. I think all shops that stock GW models should be able to place orders for FW models I bet there would be waaay more orders when you dont have to pay for the expensive shipping 

One of the problems with doing this is that Forge World wouldn't be able to keep up with demand - they simply don't have the factory capacity to increase the supply, so have artificially limited the demand by making it more difficult to get hold of.  In all honesty, getting hold of FW is nowhere near as painful as it once was now that they've a cheap £3.50 shipping option rather than 12% of the order.

1 minute ago, Overread said:

I guess one issue is that FW has become a bit stuck in that "that's super cool I want it - but not today" gap. Ergo many of us always talk about wanting to own, but even when opportunity comes we don't always get them anyway.

Think you've hit one nail on the head with saying this.  When you look at the amount of Age of Darkness stuff that's been put on last chance to buy over the past 2 years, you realise just how many people actually don't buy stuff.  It's actually one conversation/debate I've had a few times at work - if you have a customer that's never bought anything from us or nothing in the past year, should we refer to them as a customer*?

* this is a debate everybody has their own views on of course

[JPjr]

@EevikaI just feel like it's different times man, maybe at the start of AoS when it was all about Grand Coalitions and a small faction of 4/5 models could slot into a big old mix of different models but now, I just don't see it.

Certainly not something worth putting too much time and money into developing, even if there was enough of a market to make some money out of it the way things are today I can't see GW suddenly giving Fimir a push without it blowing up in their faces and causing them a load of hassle.

It'd just become another pathetic flashpoint in the ongoing culture war and opportunity to create divisions and rustle people's jimmys. Nah much as I like my one eyed weirdos I'd say it's best to move forward, create something new.

Or, of course, bring back Zoats and Elementals...

I do realise saying all this that in around 30 minutes Warhammer Community are probably going to post an article on the surprise new 30 model Fimir faction and dedicated stand alone game they're due to release in the autumn.

 

 

 

Edited July 11, 2019 by JPjr

[Overread]

@RuneBrush aye and when it goes on last-chance you get a lot of "well I was going to get it" comments by all those who wanted it but never got it. Heck if things like the Warpfire dragon vanished I'd be in that camp right now (though owning some wolfrats and a malanthrope I've at least started some FW collecting!). 

 

I wonder if its something the community could drum up on their own - if a few big name started putting FW models into their tournament winning armies; if a few keystone painters started painting them up more etc... Ergo if the community actually made an effort to promote it on our own and push it we could turn the tide and up the demand and desire. Though its kind of odd thinking we'd have to do GW's marketing for them, but in all truth that's actually pretty common for most wargames which aren't GW with bags of advertising money (heck many waragmes are make or break on their community outreach - even the mighty Privateer Press has suffered terribly since they did away with their community Press-Ganger system) 

[zilberfrid]

3 minutes ago, Overread said:

@RuneBrush aye and when it goes on last-chance you get a lot of "well I was going to get it" comments by all those who wanted it but never got it. Heck if things like the Warpfire dragon vanished I'd be in that camp right now (though owning some wolfrats and a malanthrope I've at least started some FW collecting!). 

 

I wonder if its something the community could drum up on their own - if a few big name started putting FW models into their tournament winning armies; if a few keystone painters started painting them up more etc... Ergo if the community actually made an effort to promote it on our own and push it we could turn the tide and up the demand and desire. Though its kind of odd thinking we'd have to do GW's marketing for them, but in all truth that's actually pretty common for most wargames which aren't GW with bags of advertising money (heck many waragmes are make or break on their community outreach - even the mighty Privateer Press has suffered terribly since they did away with their community Press-Ganger system) 

FW could also help though. 

For my faction at least (Free People), there is no reason to buy any of them, except for maybe the generals (that would amount for 46 euros for a single general, a guard captain and a lunatic I can't fit in any unit).

If I am paying 40 euro's for a guard unit, don't make me take the swords out of a regular guard unit, similar for the Ironsides where I would need to take the guns out of regular handgunners. Because it's Freeguild, I would need a stack of the same weapons, and this would give me a lot of waste.

Why put stuff up there without a warscroll? I'm looking at you, Elspeth...

 

Now this is just one faction, but I can't really recommend Forgeworld based on their offers.

[JPjr]

9 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Why put stuff up there without a warscroll? I'm looking at you, Elspeth...

Because most people that own this stuff buy it to just put in a display cabinet and talk to on long, lonely, winter nights?

[Dr Ben]

14 hours ago, Kyriakin said:

My issue with FW can be summed up in two words: Skin Wolves

They are humans who turned into wolves - literally BEAST-MEN!

My skin wolves are going to end up as gorgers, so they'll be neither man nor beast (when I get around to it....) 

Given that we already have god's (or avatars of them anyway) on the table I'd love to see FW make a god beast range. It would fit with the classic FW niche of doing giant things and allow epic recreations of battles from the lore (Also the giant KO ship mentioned in the battle tome) 

I hear the comments above about people not buying that much Aos FW, but at least some peoe bought the khorne dragon. As also mentioned above a lot of the other stuff just isn't as epic as the regular plastic. Why would you buy a warpfire dragon when you can get a regular dragon Lord or stardrake which is much more playable and no less cool. So I reckon more epic is the direction to go. 

[zilberfrid]

11 minutes ago, JPjr said:

Because most people that own this stuff buy it to just put in a display cabinet and talk to on long, lonely, winter nights?

That could well be, and the quality would merit that, but she could easily be a nice dragon option of a death  wizard for the College, they have a light on the Luminarch, Beast on the griffin, Celestial on the hurricanum, so there is still room.

Start out with a Carmine dragon, add 80 points, give chance to cast and unbind, add a death spell (soulsteal as the unique, which sucks, but having a wizard on a dragon does not suck) and add college keywords. It's not that hard.

[Luck-a]

I agree that FW is currently in a bit of an odd position. It doesn't help that it's often not promoted by GW proper. At my local offical GW store, we're completely banned from using FW models under the reasoning that 'we don't sell them'.  I understand this of course but its still dissuades me from purchasing FW models for anything other than my display cabinet. 

[Overread]

15 minutes ago, Luck-a said:

I agree that FW is currently in a bit of an odd position. It doesn't help that it's often not promoted by GW proper. At my local offical GW store, we're completely banned from using FW models under the reasoning that 'we don't sell them'.  I understand this of course but its still dissuades me from purchasing FW models for anything other than my display cabinet. 

See that's just daft to my thinking because its not a 3rd party product its a 100% GW product, its just something the store manager can't get on commission/sales records. Thing is in the UK at least, you can order through the store and it does count as a sale to the store. Why GW can't do that for overseas GW stores is baffling - even if the customer has to pay regular shipping costs/etc...

That coupled to higher overseas pricing just makes one feel that GW is out to make FW a UK only product line