Age of Sigmar Range Rotation

[Greybeard86]

GW would probably love to rotate all of its inventory regularly, as I bet that the sales boost it would fuel would compensate for the costs of development.

In fact, it is my understanding that AoS was designed to be a large scale version of underworlds, with small armies rotated out every few years. The fact that many small ranges have received little to no love over the years seems to corroborate this. They probably never intended for them to stick around so long, hence the lack of planned releases. AoS seems to have moved away from this with releases like lumineth, which I really like (the business model, not the actual models, which I do not like :P).

In this particular instance, I think that for us, consumers, this is probably a net loss. Those sculpts can be used nicely in a variety of roles and tend to be more interesting (and cheaper) than the main range counterparts. That said, as long as we don't let FOMO best our impulse-control, we'll probably be fine as this means a stream of fresh releases.

[yukishiro1]

3 hours ago, EonChao said:

In terms of the models not being available for casual Underworlds play where you print your own cards to play with friends, well it's not exactly difficult to make up these Warbands from existing AoS figures with sometimes a little conversion work. And if you're already playing with printed/proxied cards then I'm sure no ones going to get upset if Angharad is proxied using a standard male Liberator, if the Fleshhound standing in for Riptooth has an oval (or rectangular) base instead round, or if Rippa's Snarlfangs are converted out of old wfb Wolfriders.

Well, I mean, yes and no. If you're a player with a large AoS collection of the faction in question sure, you can cobble together some feeble counts-as warband. But suppose you're a new underworlds player without any existing model collection. In the past you could just pick up the reasonably-priced (for GW) box and be ready to go - yes, you might have had to print out some cards if you wanted to use a really old one, but that's not exactly a major barrier compared to sourcing minis. Now you'd have to buy a $50 set of khorne dogs just to get the single fleshhound you need, to use your example, or again go to ebay. If you didn't want to ebay you'd be looking at well over $100 just for the stuff to make a lot of these warbands, for an inferior result.

Now if you're a new player maybe you just take the hint and pick a new warband. But it definitely cuts down options in a significant way. 

Edited April 23, 2022 by yukishiro1

[EntMan]

For what it's worth I just got FOMO'd and went down to my local games shop to order in some Chosen Axes. When they went to order them they were told it could be 180 days for delivery. I'm no GW expert but this makes me think they are doing the "we'll make it to order if you order by..." thing.

Maybe we'll get info in the "week in warhammer" on WarCom tomorrow.

[EonChao]

2 hours ago, yukishiro1 said:

Well, I mean, yes and no. If you're a player with a large AoS collection of the faction in question sure, you can cobble together some feeble counts-as warband. But suppose you're a new underworlds player without any existing model collection. In the past you could just pick up the reasonably-priced (for GW) box and be ready to go - yes, you might have had to print out some cards if you wanted to use a really old one, but that's not exactly a major barrier compared to sourcing minis. Now you'd have to buy a $50 set of khorne dogs just to get the single fleshhound you need, to use your example, or again go to ebay. If you didn't want to ebay you'd be looking at well over $100 just for the stuff to make a lot of these warbands, for an inferior result.

Now if you're a new player maybe you just take the hint and pick a new warband. But it definitely cuts down options in a significant way. 

I think you're splitting hairs at this point. If you're someone who's getting into the game you're almost certainly going to want to buy stuff that's current and for Underworlds that's going to be Harrowdeep/Nethermaze and the newer warbands. You need the boards, dice, tokens and rules ideally (again all things that you could proxy or print but at the point you're going to that effort why would you spend £32 on a handful of models instead of just proxying with other figures or lego etc.

Alternative models exist for almost everything, even if you might have to step outside of GW and most of these have equivalents elsewhere. Nobody wants old models to be discontinued but by the point you're looking at older warbands you're likely already invested.

1 hour ago, EntMan said:

For what it's worth I just got FOMO'd and went down to my local games shop to order in some Chosen Axes. When they went to order them they were told it could be 180 days for delivery. I'm no GW expert but this makes me think they are doing the "we'll make it to order if you order by..." thing.

Maybe we'll get info in the "week in warhammer" on WarCom tomorrow.

When they did the first 40k range rotation they said that they were guaranteeing everyone who ordered them would have them made for them so it might just be what they have to say incase there's a sudden rush on the Chosen Axes that they need to mold more of 

[EccentricCircle]

I think what's thrown me most about this is that its basically shot down a lot of our tactic assumptions about the function Underworlds warbands conceptually serve in the wider ecosystem of the game.

When talking about rumours we often speculate that underworlds is a good way for them to do a "stealth" refresh of something from the main game: Hunter and frostsabres are both old kits which presumably sell badly, so they bring out an underworlds band with newer sculpts for both. DoK heroes are locked in a big warmachine kit... now you can get a hag queen in an underworlds band too. Its seemed like a great way to gradually shift away from the older resin models, and add a lot more variety to the ranges in the process. The fact that an underworlds set has for a long time been the same price as a single hero didn't hurt either.

The fact that they are not scraping them, however temporarily, suggests that we were wrong. They really don't see these models as being anything but pieces for a spinoff game, with the token stats that they tend to give everything in the name of cross compatibility. I probably shouldn't be surprised, since they've never officially said anything else. But, I'm sure I'm not the only one who this is catching off guard.

The really weird thing is that they literally just released warcry stats for all these models. Its like the canons all over again, where one hand doesn't seem to know what the other is doing.

[Clan's Cynic]

Rumours are the Champions format of Underworlds (AKA the deck building) is getting taken out back next season and will just be Rivals. 

If one huffs a bit of hopeium, it might be they end up re-released with cards redesigned for Rival decks for the new season.

[sandlemad]

@EccentricCircle That idea of WHU offering the chance for small scale range refreshes has been untenable for a while unfortunately. GW never seemed to commit to it, if it was really there, and as a theory it was undermined by overall poor integration of these kits into the rules and wider ranges (i.e. inappropriate base sizes, mixed loadouts, weird warscrolls, WHU minis coexisting with their resin predecessors or even other new plastic versions). I think this is really a final nail in the coffin of that idea rather than a wholesale destruction of it.

More generally though this suspicion that they’ll be repackaged to tie into the new Rivals format seems pretty plausible and honestly a good idea but then so many decisions around WHU lately have been disastrous so who knows…

[novakai]

I always just seen the warband are just alternative sculpt that you can use as proxy and never meant to refresh or act as replacement for older models. it not like you can viable buy enough Hrothgorn mantrappers to fill out enough Sabre tusk for your army, same can be said with those Skaven gutterunners too. Even if certain ones like Zarbag is an updated sculpt for a outdated madcap shaman model, he is definitely not the official replacement of that said model at least in GW minds

[RuneBrush]

I'm not actually that surprised to see this on the Underworlds warbands.  It's a shame as the models are great (although range rotation items do get brought back), but I can't remember the last time I saw somebody buy a set of Underworlds models specifically to include in their AoS army as the named warband.  I've a feeling that many of these boxes may have been simply been sat on shelves collecting dust, so it makes sense to rotate them out for a bit and use the space for something that people are buying.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

On 4/23/2022 at 4:08 PM, EntMan said:

For what it's worth I just got FOMO'd and went down to my local games shop to order in some Chosen Axes. When they went to order them they were told it could be 180 days for delivery. I'm no GW expert but this makes me think they are doing the "we'll make it to order if you order by..." thing.

Maybe we'll get info in the "week in warhammer" on WarCom tomorrow.

I'm in the same boat, decided to grab the Sepulchral Guard that I have had my eye on for a while. Not sure I'd call this FOMO marketing, though. It's unclear right now when, if or how the Underworlds warbands will return. I think giving a heads-up that these warbands will be unavailable for a while is pro-customer, even if it results in some extra sales for GW.

More generally, I don't know what to make of the announcement that the older Underworlds warbands are no longer being sold. It definitely sucks for Warcry players, where the warbands just got stats in the Tome of Champions and are actually considered to be pretty good. For Age of Sigmar, its not as much of a concern because I think very few warbands are widely played. But once again, this whole thing highlights my dissatisfaction with the Battletome release model, many of which will now have rules for models you can no longer buy.

Underworlds is such a strange game. In theory it's a game that I should be excited about, since I like card/deck building games and miniatures, and would like to get into a skirmish game.  But I have always found the choice not to have an "eternal" Underworlds format where you can just play any warbands against each other kind of baffling. Also, the choice to not even sell base decks for old warbands. And now, with the models being removed from the store as well, that doesn't really fill me with a lot of confidence regarding the game.

[EntMan]

2 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Not sure I'd call this FOMO marketing, though. It's unclear right now when, if or how the Underworlds warbands will return.

My FOMO'd comment was all on me. The Chosen Axes had been on my long list for a while so that's why I rushed out to buy them. Not implying GW did it as a deliberate strategy (not on this occasion anyway!)

[EonChao]

5 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I'm not actually that surprised to see this on the Underworlds warbands.  It's a shame as the models are great (although range rotation items do get brought back), but I can't remember the last time I saw somebody buy a set of Underworlds models specifically to include in their AoS army as the named warband.  I've a feeling that many of these boxes may have been simply been sat on shelves collecting dust, so it makes sense to rotate them out for a bit and use the space for something that people are buying.

I definitely buy them for the purposes of both using them as alternate sculpts and to include as a version of the named unit (usually painted to match my army with the fluff adjusted to fit). But I also tend to buy them as Underworlds releases so I have the cards and boards to play that with if I want to.

[EccentricCircle]

I've just grabbed the last few that I wanted. I've never had any interest in playing underworlds, but I love the warbands just as painting projects, and have made quite a few over the years as little tasters of armies that I like. I was very excited at the prospect of being able to use them in Warcry.

[Gitzdee]

Cant seem to decide if i want to buy the briar queen as i own a small Nighthaunt army at the moment and have to many Leaders already. Nighthaunt also has a few new models incomming and those are also good ones. What to do, what to do....

Edited April 26, 2022 by Iksdee

[EonChao]

2 hours ago, Iksdee said:

Cant seem to decide if i want to buy the briar queen as i own a small Nighthaunt army at the moment and have to many Leaders already. Nighthaunt also has a few new models incomming and those are also good ones. What to do, what to do....

If you can afford it it's a really cool set of figures. Yes you can run it as a hero but also I just like having the alternate sculpts to mix into my Chainrasps