BlooDeck Posted January 27, 2017 Share Posted January 27, 2017 Part of me wonders if the shift to AoS was in part due to the model designers finding it too limiting. Rank and file is limiting for poses and there is only so many ways you can make ranks of elves before the well starts drying. Then again they seem to love their Stormcast Eternals, who aren't exactly stellar examples of diversity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacDuff Posted January 28, 2017 Share Posted January 28, 2017 The other things to consider are that first, Stormcast permit GW to demonstrate (and explore themselves) what a comprehensive single faction looks like, with a full range of force types, suggesting a diversity of ways a full army could be constructed and operate. Second, building out a cornerstone army like this gives them a baseline against which all enemy (and allied) armies can be evaluated and balanced as they flesh them out. As a game designer, I can't think of a better way to create multiple new armies to fight them. The only other approach would be totally ad hoc, hoping they could level each other against an unfolding baseline. What I particularly like is that they added new units as they advanced the timeline, which provides a sense of the evolution of armies over time. There is quite sound method to this seeming madness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cordova Posted January 28, 2017 Share Posted January 28, 2017 On 25/01/2017 at 10:19 PM, WoollyMammoth said: Its perception, point of view. GW did not burn all the old novels and ban people from playing 8th edition in the stores. The old world is exactly where we left it, but it's just a bit older now. Like all old editions we simply put a lid on it as-is and moved the story forward. Whilst that's correct, I think it misses the point as to what upset some people. If you're only looking at the "current" part of the story-line (as some do), the Old World is now gone. Personally, I'm happy to move around in terms of timelines to a period which seems interesting to me. On 25/01/2017 at 10:19 PM, WoollyMammoth said: AoS is a different game, just like 8th was different than 7th, and 7th was different from 6th. In each edition change there were angry haters. Sure they made some more broad sweeping changes, and they needed to because the hate was getting too strong and the hobby was very rapidly dying out altogether. Indeed. I really didn't like 8th Ed (I much preferred 5th/6th Ed, but that could be nostalgia talking), and amongst those complaining about AOS, it's fairly common to hear that they should have simply realised that 8th Ed was a goof, and go backwards, rather than change the formula completely (of course, whether this would have actually worked is another question, and one we'll not know the answer to). To have the fantasy line killed off entirely would have been a great shame (as I prefer the models and background to those of 40K, even though I have some of them...) ... On 25/01/2017 at 10:19 PM, WoollyMammoth said: The idea that everything you loved has blown up is just a concept that you don't have to accept. For example, you can build pretty much any army from 8th edition if you like, lets say Wood Elves. You can still read some old world novels on the black library, like the the Orion novels. You can still read all kinds of lore on the internet. You can still build a beautiful horde of glade guard protected by Wild Riders and SotT, with a Forest dragon. Now you can even bolster it with amazing new 'forest spirit' Sylvaneth models. You can then proclaim that you are the defender of Athel Loren and that the opposing army has threatened your borders, and play out a narrative battle in the old world using the AoS rules. It may even be possible that eventually wood elves get new models in the AoS, even if they are called something other than 'wood elves' officially. The haters are just being stubborn Very much this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulsmith Posted January 28, 2017 Share Posted January 28, 2017 Interestingly, I really liked fantasy when it was essentially heroes with an army along for the ride (I think sixth?) So age of sigmar is great for me [emoji12]Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DynamicCalories Posted January 28, 2017 Share Posted January 28, 2017 Fantasy will continue to exist in the hearts and minds of all mortals who own a copy of Total War: Warhammer, where you can relieve the beatdown of Archaon over and over again, through a thousand mirror universes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WoollyMammoth Posted January 28, 2017 Author Share Posted January 28, 2017 You don't have to look at any time line. Most people playing AoS aren't reading the lore. Very few have been able to keep up with all of it. The same is with the "old" fantasy. Id be amazed if there is any one person who's read every warhammer book and novel. So what is the old world really? What is it that 'blew up' that is so upsetting? Like - the city of Altdorf? Altdorf never existed; it is a city of fantasy. I can understand if you read novels that take place there, and now that it is gone there will be no more new novels - that can be upsetting. Whether the city ever existed or has blown up is entirely in your mind and you can, at any time, declare that your empire army is fortified in the city of Altdorf. In reality, the "GW blew up the world" complaint is really a combination of smaller concepts. You may have really liked the way that units looked in movement trays. You may not aesthetically like the look of the new core Stormcast faction. You may be an elf, dwarf or empire player who has been neglected so far in the AoS. You may like the traditional European-lore based Tokien 'high fantasy' - while the old warhammer mirrored it, the new warhammer is trying to create its own unique concepts instead. You may like 500 pages of rules and complex army building and rules-lawyering and argumentative rules debates and thus 4 pages of core rules seems childish and boring to you. My theory behind the "blowing up" of the world was that it would filter out all the angry haters who cant abide such an insult, so that only the nice easy going people remain. The kind of people who just want to have fun and enjoy beautiful models and can't find a lot of hate in that. Then with a simple ruleset and a lot of nice easy-going people around to teach you the hobby, a new age could begin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ollie Grimwood Posted January 28, 2017 Share Posted January 28, 2017 I'm a big fan of AoS both rules and fluff but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little moment (of sadness) when Marienburg sank and Middenhiem fell in the End Times (my first Warhammer fantasy experience was playing first ed WFRP). That said I was glad things happened that way, better to burn out than fade away. One story ended and a new one began. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veterannoob Posted January 28, 2017 Share Posted January 28, 2017 I've grown to think of the old world at this point in AoS fluff as Just history. I do like that this time they kept Age Of Myth open for a potential like the Horus Heresy and the realms are just as infinite as they need to be like the galaxy in 40k edit: I should also mention in interviews with all the AoS fic authors, while NOT confirmed as happening, they agree it is a wise move and potential is there. Heresy is the creation myth (now setting) of the highly popular 40K. Imagine what they could do for AoS: Fantasy/Old World (Time of Legends wrapped up there), then Age of Myth, then now, then even the next age one day. Me likely! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thornshield Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 I've grown to think of the old world at this point in AoS fluff as Just history. I do like that this time they kept Age Of Myth open for a potential like the Horus Heresy and the realms are just as infinite as they need to be like the galaxy in 40k [emoji6] edit: I should also mention in interviews with all the AoS fic authors, while NOT confirmed as happening, they agree it is a wise move and potential is there. Heresy is the creation myth (now setting) of the highly popular 40K. Imagine what they could do for AoS: Fantasy/Old World (Time of Legends wrapped up there), then Age of Myth, then now, then even the next age one day. Me likely![emoji3]While I too think the Age of Myth stirs something strong within me, I find it hard that GW would go down this route given their poster boys for AoS (the SCE) won't have existed yet. But I do think they'll try to do something similar to the HH if they can think of it. As long as it's not just Stormcast against Traitor Stormcast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davor Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 On 1/25/2017 at 1:49 PM, Cordova said: but a fair few of the AOS releases have sold out pretty quick... Well to be fair when you under produce and demand is there, it will sell out. Just like I am sure Nintendo "switch" will sell out as well. I have a feeling all these Age of Sigmar releases are not done in a scale like Dreadfleet quantaties so yeah, they will sell out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacDuff Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 22 hours ago, Ollie Grimwood said: I'm a big fan of AoS both rules and fluff but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a little moment (of sadness) when Marienburg sank and Middenhiem fell in the End Times (my first Warhammer fantasy experience was playing first ed WFRP). That said I was glad things happened that way, better to burn out than fade away. One story ended and a new one began. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk I was even more saddened by what happened to the whole planet of Cadia. To me it rivaled HH's Betrayal book for epic devastation, except worse. One of the strengths of GW's writing/narrative design thing is daring to really shake things up in a BIG way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhsellwood Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 On 29/01/2017 at 10:01 AM, WoollyMammoth said: You don't have to look at any time line. Most people playing AoS aren't reading the lore. Very few have been able to keep up with all of it. The same is with the "old" fantasy. Id be amazed if there is any one person who's read every warhammer book and novel. So what is the old world really? What is it that 'blew up' that is so upsetting? Like - the city of Altdorf? Altdorf never existed; it is a city of fantasy. I can understand if you read novels that take place there, and now that it is gone there will be no more new novels - that can be upsetting. Whether the city ever existed or has blown up is entirely in your mind and you can, at any time, declare that your empire army is fortified in the city of Altdorf. In reality, the "GW blew up the world" complaint is really a combination of smaller concepts. You may have really liked the way that units looked in movement trays. You may not aesthetically like the look of the new core Stormcast faction. You may be an elf, dwarf or empire player who has been neglected so far in the AoS. You may like the traditional European-lore based Tokien 'high fantasy' - while the old warhammer mirrored it, the new warhammer is trying to create its own unique concepts instead. You may like 500 pages of rules and complex army building and rules-lawyering and argumentative rules debates and thus 4 pages of core rules seems childish and boring to you. My theory behind the "blowing up" of the world was that it would filter out all the angry haters who cant abide such an insult, so that only the nice easy going people remain. The kind of people who just want to have fun and enjoy beautiful models and can't find a lot of hate in that. Then with a simple ruleset and a lot of nice easy-going people around to teach you the hobby, a new age could begin. Just a quick note that I am reading the lore and actually really enjoying it. I think for me the point is that the basic premise is you have space to develop your own little corner of the world. One of the things I loved in the 3rd Edition Warhammer 40K book was the two page spread with about 12 or 15 different types of worlds. You immediately could tell that there was a huge range of types worlds, and a huge variety within these types, so you were immediately given both license to create and also rules about what was universe appropriate. AoS is developing to this - we know what Excelsis looks like (City of Secrets), we will know what Hammerhal looks like (Silver Tower II), we are getting a more complete picture every release of what the Realms look like. We may not have every corner of Marienburg mapped out but we can create our own universe appropriate setting. On the topic of "GW blew up the world"... they did. I think the point is there is three responses - one, eh, Oldhammer it is then. Two, that is a brilliant end to the world. What's next? Three, I want new releases but also everything to be the same as ever. It is the third group that have the issue, and every edition has the same thing happen. It is just that this time the reaction is magnified as we have a complete change of both setting and rules, while the whole aesthetic has changed. One thing to note in terms of the question of whether Fantasy is dying, is where you get your data from. If you are looking at forums and saying they are dead, well, does that reflect on Fantasy or on Forums? What is happening on Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat etc? What gets clicks and or views? What products are actually selling? The reason being that how audiences change, changes how you need to measure the vitality of a thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kramer Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 On 1/30/2017 at 2:58 AM, mhsellwood said: On the topic of "GW blew up the world"... they did. I think the point is there is three responses - one, eh, Oldhammer it is then. Two, that is a brilliant end to the world. What's next? Three, I want new releases but also everything to be the same as ever. It is the third group that have the issue, and every edition has the same thing happen. It is just that this time the reaction is magnified as we have a complete change of both setting and rules, while the whole aesthetic has changed. I just like to say that although I'm in group two I understand group three. I personally encourage the change because it got me back in the game. But If you invested hundreds of hours and 'moneys' in the last year of 'the old world'... I get a pissed of reaction. It is a different game. It lacks the years of building rules upon rules and story on story. And I can understand people not liking that change. And let's be honest.. when the switch came communication wise it really felt somebody at GW just said: 'People are going to complain anyway so why bother making a effort'. Also in response to the Fantasy question. Fantasy as a general theme goes up and down. Right now, culturally Sci-fi is growing and historically it always means interest in fantasy drops. Mostly based on cinema, books and tv but I looked at Warhammer again after a good fantasy battle (or actually I think it was the battle scene in Troy ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karch Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 Fantasy is alive and well, it's just split into several different warscrolls with the "fantasy" keyword Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamopower Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 10 hours ago, Kramer said: Also in response to the Fantasy question. Fantasy as a general theme goes up and down. Right now, culturally Sci-fi is growing and historically it always means interest in fantasy drops. Mostly based on cinema, books and tv but I looked at Warhammer again after a good fantasy battle (or actually I think it was the battle scene in Troy ) Well Game of Thrones is quite popular... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kramer Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 46 minutes ago, Jamopower said: Well Game of Thrones is quite popular... Well Star Wars is quite popular... And just look at the release lists of from 2007 to 2012 and 2012 to 2017 and i'm willing to bet the focus has shifted more towards sci-fi. I'll try to look at this tonight as I feel I need to fact check this. But this interest in different genres fluctuating has been proved. The correlation with playing warhammer/AoS is purely based on my own experience. edit: Looking at the most popular movies of 2016 by IMDB I see more sci-fi movies vs fantasy in the top 50 titles.http://www.imdb.com/search/title?count=100&release_date=2016,2016&title_type=feature Looking at the most popular movies of 2007 by IMDB I see more fantasy settings in the first 50.http://www.imdb.com/search/title?year=2007,2007&title_type=feature&sort=moviemeter,asc Beowolf, Pirates of the Caribbean, enchanted, Harry Potter, golden compass to name a few. And of course their also a lot of popular Sci-fi movies Resident evil, transformers and I am Legend. Also I realise this is a small sample size but it correlates with the research on the subject I read when I started filming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulsmith Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 Whilst this is an interesting line of thought, I think at the moment without further investigation it's only correlation. As was said, fantasy is arguably on the rise due to game of thrones particularly. As well as gritty, historical shows such as Vikings, and recently The Last Kingdom did alright. Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WoollyMammoth Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 You cant label every fantasy movie as GW style fantasy. That's like saying if you liked Twilight you would be into playing Death. Harry Potter, enchanted - these are not the kind of fantasy most of us are into. The closest thing to warhammer I've seen is certain aspects of GoT and the Hobbit movies. Warcraft of course, since the original warcraft was very obviously made by fans of Warhammer. Nor can you really say Sci-Fi movies are all cut from the same. If you like 40k you are not necessarily (or likely) going to like Passengers. However, you might watch an Aliens movie as a Tyranid player, you might want to buy a Sentinel after watching Star Wars. As a fantasy player I might be excited to see Star Trek or Star Wars but I'm not interested in playing a 40k army. There is just not much of a correlation between entertainment genres and tabletop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ollie Grimwood Posted February 1, 2017 Share Posted February 1, 2017 I did buy a Chaos Marauder during the Endtimes because I was watching Vikings. Of course they are Bloodreavers now. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WoollyMammoth Posted February 1, 2017 Author Share Posted February 1, 2017 Yeah i started wood elves after the Hobbit II. Unfortunately GW is actually intentionally removing its traditional fantasy elements that tied it to other media and instead is creating all unique IPs. What are you going to watch that inspires you to play stormcast? GW is so so obsessed with removing the ability for other companies to mirror them, that they are throwing away all their ties to media that they themselves are mirroring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacDuff Posted March 26, 2018 Share Posted March 26, 2018 I stumbled across this old thread from the AOS frosty days while Googling to see what's become of Warhammer Fantasy 9th (not much of late could I find). Back when I was posting here I was just starting my ever-expanding love of this new incarnation of GW fantasy. More than a year later I have newly imagined battle boards with tons of painted scenery (even digging out old unpainted terrain kits and AOS-ifying them). I have 3500-4000 points of painted Sylvaneth, Seraphon, Free People, Disciple of Tzeentch, and Maggotkin armies (with Battletomes & both General's Handbooks), along with twice as many partially painted Stormcast, Bloodbound, and Undead forces (finishing slowly for Skirmish & Paths to Glory), and also the ST and SOH boxed games. I've also started a Firestorm campaign, collected the start of a DoK force, and I'm eying Deepkin and Sky Dwarfs. In the WHF days I had a smattering of old minis, but nothing like this! Did the AOS reboot rekindle my interest in fantasy after painting thousands of LOTR minis (and building Helm's Deep)? Heck yeah! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bsharitt Posted March 26, 2018 Share Posted March 26, 2018 New Death unit: The Zombie Thread! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacDuff Posted March 26, 2018 Share Posted March 26, 2018 Good things never die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lousy Beatnik Posted March 26, 2018 Share Posted March 26, 2018 Starting a new thread, perhaps a decent write up of your AoS adventures, might have been better than reviving this thread... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DinoTitanedition Posted March 26, 2018 Share Posted March 26, 2018 I do understand why the revisit here was interesting thou - the evolution of AoS and an overall more positive thinking community has emerged since the hard cut from WHFB to AoS. Sure, there was a lot of ranting in the beginning, but I believe most people wouldve ranted just to rant. So in the end the cut turned out good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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