EccentricCircle

A code to access the content in an app which has terrible accessibility, and is going to be next to impossible for folks with our disabilities to use. Seriously, my heart sank when I read that it stays phone sized on a larger tablet screen. That is just ridiculous, and if they want us to use their app, then they're going to need to fix that, and fast. Hopefully they will, but if we don't raise the issue, then they might not realise that it is an issue, because clearly the folks they've had designing their app so far didn't test it for accessibility. Also, to respond to the comment above that we should just use a cheap fresnel magnifier, I invite you to try to do that at the table during a game, and see how easy it is to juggle a book with a magnifier which won't be the same size as the book. I don't know if you've had any experience with them, but they are a pain for quick reference type tasks like this. How long does it take you to glance down at your warscroll and read a stat, or a rule? How much longer will it take if you have to get the lens into the right position, and fiddle about with it until you're magnifying the right bit? Is the burden on the company producing a product to make it accessible for as broad a group as possible? Yes, actually, yes it is. There are professional standards about this sort of thing, and even if they weren't its in the company's best interests to make it so that the most people possible will want to buy it. someone on the last page said something along the lines of "would they then not need to make audio and braille versions too? what a slippery slope it would be!" well guess what, they really should be doing that too. We are not asking them to reprint the book, we know that isn't going to happen. However, if we don't make a (polite) fuss about this now, then they won't realise that its a problem next time around. I genuinely don't know why this point would be controversial, since its not as though people without eye sight issues have a dog in the race. On a more positive note, since I've found a thread full of other AoS players with eye sight issues, does anyone have any tips for hobbying and playing the game with disabilities they'd care to share? I know it always amazes me that people can recognise units on the far side of the board, and just *see* how many figures are in a block without having to go over there and painstakingly count them! What do you find works for you? How do you cope with competitive settings?

I'll add to what others have said... Those of us with a visual impairment have generally been going to ophthalmologists on and off for years. I need to regularly get glasses prescribed for general short sightedness, have my retina photographed to make sure there hasn't been any further macula degeneration, and take the eye test to see whether there has been any improvement to the size of letters I can read (which might allow me to drive if I ever pass it). So even if you meant it in good faith, when you say "why not visit an ophthalmologist", our response is generally going to be *Heavy sarcasm* "Really? You don't think we've already thought of that?" Disabled people know our disabilities, so suggestions which haven't been thought through comes across as very flippant and disrespectful. Its not just strangers on the internet though. I've literally had the customer service people for software I use for work say "We don't have accessibility settings, but recommend you change the text size on your computer!" They thought they were offering a useful suggestion, and I'm sure they were just trying to help, but... *Heavy sarcasm* "Well, sure, how do you think I use a computer in the first place!"

So, you are right that in cases like this incompetence is more likely than malice. However, I would disagree with characterising it as a one off mistake. Its not that someone doing graphic design on this book forgot to set an appropriate text size. Rather its a product of a culture in which accessibility isn't considered (or isn't considered hard enough) on a systematic level. What we need isn't for GW to issue a large print version of this book specifically (though that would of course be nice), but rather for them to consider the role of disability in a wider context. Now the challenge here is that no two partially sighted people have quite the same difficulties. For me its all about font size and contrast, i've not had so much trouble with glossy pages as others posting above, and do like books with full colour and shiny artwork. So in that case there is perhaps no one solution which will work for all of us. This is one of the reasons that the ebook versions of the battletomes going away is quite devastating to some. Being able to enlarge a pdf, or zoom in on a relevant section is one of the simplest ways to cope with small print size, and is really valuable for those who find reading from a tablet or computer screen more comfortable. (I actually find pdfs a nightmare on a tablet, as trying to read from a small screen puts more strain on my eyes than a book does. For many though its a lifeline.) So the solution has to be for any publisher to consult with the people who are using their products and get a range of views and opinions. And not make stupid apps which don't use the entire screen available, that too!

Err... most of them? I have large armies of Tomb Kings and Chaos Dwarfs. The Tomb Kings were my current project when End Times hit, and I had a bit of a scramble to finish my collection before the range went away. I managed it though, and now treasure that set of models. The Chaos Dwarfs were kind of my protest army. Having got into the second hand market to finish my Tomb Kings, I then figured I'd collect some more retro armies instead of buying anything from GW, and for the next two years or so I gradually put together 90's era Chaos Dwarf and Lizardmen armies, which were great. I ultimately did branch out into the forge world Legion of Azgorh models, which brought me back to GW, around the time I started taking interest in AoS. Its thus a little ironic that they have now joined their elderly cousins in the squatted collection. Then there are the armies which are half and half squatted and not. I have fairly large collections of Dwarfs, High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, and the Empire. I'd say about half of those are still functional cities of Sigmar units, which makes CoS my largest single army if I were to put them all together. I have a few elderly Bretonians serving as Knights and Archers in my empire/freeguild army, so they count too. Then I was just about to start collecting orcs and goblins when the older Greenskin stuff got removed. Sadly I never really got many of them, so just have a few shamans and an ork or two which hang around with my much larger Gloomspite force. (I also collected a 90's era Night Goblin army, but they are actually all perfectly playable as Gloomspite so don't count.) I also quite like the Forge World Monsters, so have the carmine dragon, the dread maw, and a few others which look like their days are numbered. So I think I've been caught by just about every wave of squatting since the end times. Honestly this doesn't really bother me that much. I'm more of a collector than a player, and actively like and collect retro armies (mostly 90's and 00's so I guess "middlehammer"). Thus the main stress has been trying to pick up the models to round out my collection when they are discontinued, rather than the angst of no longer being able to use them in games. (I've never played a matched play game, and have no plans on starting, so legends is actually just as good for most purposes.) I'm kind of tempted to try to put together an 80's to 90's era Kruelboy army using the older, smaller orc sculpts that seem to have inspired this newest wave. We'll see if anything happens with that...

Thanks for the warning. I was on the fence about getting the GHB and now know not to. I am partially sighted, and so also struggle to use a lot of gaming products comfortably at the table. Warscroll cards are too small to be much use, and apps are generally a no go for me (I can just about read text messages, but doing more than that on my phone is a challenge.) I think companies really need to consider how their products are going to be used, and hire people to consult on accessibility. For me there is a massive difference between what is comfortable when I'm just sitting quietly reading a book, and when I'm hurriedly trying to look up a statistic, or check a rule while in the middle of a game. I always end up feeling self conscious when I'm trying to find something in a hurry. Warhammer books are quite variable in quality/accessibility, but at least they are not 5e D&D which takes the prize for worst accessibility ever for printing page numbers in tiny font, using brown ink on a beige parchment. Their indexes are also unusably small.

Some of the art is pretty fantastic, and the t storyline is actually pretty compelling, which can't always be said for war game campaign books. If you like lore then you'll enjoy them greatly, even if you never use the rules.

The new models look really cool. Not my kind of thing this time around (which is just as well), but cool nonetheless. The most interesting thing from the preview for me was the updated trade dress of the new battletomes. I'd assumed the red box/book of Dominion was going to be like the green of Soul Wars, and the rest of the range would stay in white packaging. Now it looks like they actually are going back to the "classic" red of warhammer fantasy. GW stores will certainly look a bit different in a year or two!

Great force! Lets hope that they soon get some new rules for 3rd. I've been doubtful of Chaos Dwarves getting anything new in the past, but the mention of them in the Hobgrot background stuff makes me hopeful that our time may be about to come!

I started by setting out to try to build everything. I've not got much hobbying done over the last six months at all, as I've moved house and been busy with work and D&D. I'd tried to paint models a few times, but was so rusty that it just left me in a bit of a malaise. I decided that the best thing to do was crack on with building, and slowly build back up to doing the painting. So far I've built about half of the plastic stuff I had on sprues, and cleaned up and washed maybe two thirds of the resin and metal, so that will be ready to build once all the plastic is done. But then I got a bit burned out trying to keep up with all the new edition articles, and ultimately decided that I wasn't going to bother with 3e AoS, and will just stick with Warcry, (and frostgrave). Everyone here plays 40k more anyway, so there isn't as much time for mass battle fantasy games. I was feeling immensly rusty having not had a game in a year, and keep losing 40K, which was frustrating so I tried to look for the things that really excite me about gaming in the first place. What I enjoy most, and what keeps me playing RPGs when wargames take a backseat is world building. So I decided to jump on that and run a 40K narrative campaign to bring some of that focus to my wargaming hobby. Meanwhile I've been busy designing a dedicated setting for my next fantasy wargames campaign, which will work as a companion to my D&D world. I initially couldn't decide whether to make it a warcry campaign, a frostgrave campaign, or something else... Then some cool game mechanics literally came to me in a dream last week, so I've spent most of the weekend writing my own indy system to go with my new setting. I'm so much happier than I was trying to figure out 3e stuff! Its really put the spring back in my wargaming step and I can't wait to get enough written up to start playtesting!

This is the best list I am aware of, though last I checked I don't think it was complete with all of the campaign books etc. I wanted to see how many battle boxes there had been, and whether I could pick up the scenarios second hand, but wasn't certain that they were all covered. If anyone knows of a better source I would also like to know. https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/List_of_Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar_books#Age_of_Sigmar

I agree with what others have said. I don't think that something went wrong with Dominion, and that the sky is falling. Rather I think that they just happened to make enough boxes to meet the demand this time around. Its just that its been so long since we saw what a limited edition release without the added scarcity looks like, that it seems strange that its taking a few weeks for them to sell out. GW clearly does well out of FOMO, but for all practical purposes its bad for business to make something which is so limited that your customers can't get it unless they happen to have a spare £125 to spend on a specific morning, with only a week's notice. I wish my hobby budget was that flexible, but really if I want to buy something I need at least a month to plan, and so whether I can get limited editions or not depends massively on where the release falls relative to pay day. All I can really speak to is why I didn't buy Dominion. So... Would I have liked to have gotten a copy? Yes, on balance. I like Yndrasta a lot, even though stormcast aren't really my thing, but I have enough from 2e boxed sets that I could have made good use of the stormcast half if I ever got around to painting them. I do like the orcs, although they are not spectacular, and I suspect would be fiddly to paint. I want to read the lore in the new book and see where things are going. But... I've only just bought Cursed City, which has eaten up most of my hobby budget for the next month or so. I'm currently saving up to get Kroak, and he definitely takes priority over dominion. While I like the new orcs, I have 200 half painted goblins who would much rather that I finished painting them than that I bought them new friends. I've got enough part painted models to keep me busy for a while, so really don't need to get another massive box of models right now. While I'm keen to see where the lore goes, I've come to the conclusion over the last few weeks of new edition coverage that I just don't care about the new edition. I've not played for over a year, and barely played in the year before that. If I get a game in in the coming months its most likely to be Warcry. If I am called upon to play a mass battle game, I don't game with anyone who cares enough about AoS that they will insist on playing 3e, so basically I'm good with 2e for the forseeable future. If, in a few months time, I see Dominion floating around at my FLGS, and I have nothing better to spend my hobby budget on then I might pick it up. I'm not convinced it will stick around that long though, and I'm pretty much fine with that.

An apt description of the GW PR department if you ask me. I'm getting increasingly hopeful as far as Dwarves are concerned. New Chaos Dwarfs would be a dream (second only to the proper return of the Tomb Kings, not that I think that will happen now that we have Bonereapers). I was initially quite sceptical that new CD's could be coming, even with the new hobgrots. However, given how overtly the CDs were mentioned in their description I now have hope. I will also be delighted if anything happens for order dwarves too mind. A new dwarven alliance would maybe not be as good as big expansions for KO and FS, but any update would be great. Its time for the Dwarves to rise again, after all the elfy-ness of the last few years.

This would be a fantastic idea, and I think it would feel less like the thread gets derailed every couple of days, if each topic were allowed to grow as its own thread. The current behemoth is just laughable at this point. Its basically the general chitchat, wishlists, and complaining thread, with occasional added rumours. The fact that the whole concept of a rumour is somewhat loosely defined doesn't help either.

Interesting, thanks that does make sense.

So this is a genuine question, not trying to be sarcastic... What do people like about battle reports? Warhammer is a slow game to start with, I can think of few things more tedious than spending three hours watching someone else I don't know play a game. I'm not even that fussed about watching my friends play games, and there I can join in with the joking and discussion. But clearly there is a major appeal? Is it a way to get your gaming fix if you don't play often? Do you follow certain player's careers as though its sports and want to see how their armies are doing? Is there somehow enough of a story in there that its worth wading through hours of dice rolling and minis being moved to get too? I don't get it?

I agree with many of your points, and wish you all the best. Have fun with dystopian wars, I've always thought that looked like a fun game, but never got into it sadly. I'm on the fence about 3rd edition too. I don't think I can be bothered with it, given the miniscule amount of time I actually spend playing the game. I'm enjoying the lore, and will probably keep getting books to keep up with that, but I'd like to step back and decouple myself from the GW release hype a bit. At present I've got enough models to last me a year or more of painting fun, and nothing that I want seems particularly endangered. I dislike the rate at which the edition cycle goes, so am seriously considering just making a rule that I only care about even numbered editions or something like that. I have no interest in playing competitively, so keeping playing 2.0 until 4th ed comes out shouldn't be too much of a hassle, indeed the thing I'm most excited about at the moment is to try to arrange a Tomb Kings vs Bretonians game with either AoS 1 or WFB 6e rules. I guess if Chaos Dwarves do come out then that might convince me to buy into 3e, but we'll just have to wait and see on that one.

Well, the price is better than I expected, but the content still seems a bit "meh". The white dwarf archive could be cool if there isn't too much of a delay to get new ones, and they eventually extend the back catalogue back further than 2020. (They'd never do the entire run of White dwarf though, as it would include far too much content for games they no longer support.) There seem to be a lot of cartoons but... how to put this delicately? We have yet to have any real indication that they will be any good. If its kind of like Black Library quality then maybe it will be worth paying for, but a lot of the time a game company's idea of gripping television is a little too focused on marketing. Black Library is already a little hit and miss, in my opinion, and the long form stuff tends to be better than the short stories. As for the hobby stuff and lore videos, I agree that the community already does this well enough, without having to pay for it. I don't have a stake in electronic rules content since I prefer books. On the whole I think it might be worth it if next year's model is one which I really want. If I want to buy that, and would be paying £25 for it already, then paying ~£25 more for the rest of the package would perhaps be fine, if the content has stood the test of time over the preceding year. For now though, its a no from me.

Just organised my first narrative event (kill team this time, but the next one will be warcry). Three two player games each in an afternoon, advancing the plot as parties move across a map, then a bit four player finale to cap it all off. I lost every single game I think, but the story was great and that's the main thing!

So I take it they didn't accidentally get their fanbase to launch an inadvertent DDOS attack on their website this year?

To echo what others have been saying, the great thing about tabletop games is that GW can't make you do anything. Don't "burn your armies", you can still do whatever you want at your own table. Play old editions, or adapt old rules and battalions to the new edition. If a rule invalidates the army you've been building for years then change that rule. (or put the army on a shelf and wait for the cycle to swing around again. If the new Hobgrots teach us anything its that what's old is often new again after a while, and you can always proxy things or hack the game to suit you. I know that Matched play can be a bit restrictive, but its not the be all and end all of the game. For every group who are diehard sticklers for matched play there are several playing the game however they want. if the local 40K scene is anything to go by, narrative campaigns could well be big this edition. That's what seems to have happened with 40K 9th. So if you want to do things a little differently, just ask. And if your opponent wants to do things a little differently then be open to the possibility. Its our hobby after all.

The Kruelboyz also have ancient cave paintings depicting the god who's return was prophesied, whom they call "the beast". Kragnos looks a lot like this beast, and it may well be that the ancient paintings were of him in the first place. Thus the Kruelboyz believe that his being teleported into their swamp is a sign.

Overall I really enjoyed it, and the broken realms saga as a whole. I think they did a good job of weaving a compelling narrative. Morathi was probably my favourite book, though I loved all the stuff with Lord Kroak, especially in Belakor which felt much more like his book than this one oddly enough. I think Teclis was maybe the weakest storyline, though the splash page showing the fate of the mortarchs was beautiful, and I hope we get more narrative art like that. For this book, I agree that it felt a little disjointed. Kragnos was a cool character, but I think that introducing him here kind of stole Gordrakk's thunder, and made for a bit of an anticlimax. Most of the individual scenes he had were great, in fact that could be said for the story as a whole. But it didn't quite fit together as coherently as it could have done. I agree that it probably should have been two books, (though I'm not so sure about the conspiracy theory that it was meant to be.) I would have liked the seraphon to do more in the story. Again all Kroaks scenes were great, but it didn't feel like they had the role in the story I would have liked after their showing in Belakor. I was waiting for an army of lizardmen riding carnosaurs to come over the hill Riders of Rohan style to break the siege of excelsis, and it never came. I also agree that the chaos plot felt a bit tacked on and ended up a bit disjointed. I was really hoping that it was building to something more, and either a) The leaders of Excelsis in their fear and desperation were going to turn to Chaos, and betray the Knights Excelsior. They could have instead embraced the twins, and summoned an army of daemonettes to defeat the orcs, with the witchhunters then caught in the middle and trying to stop the fall of their city. I mean, what is Chaos if not the seductive whisper that offers the easy way out of yoru problems, but at the cost of your soul? or b) the slaaneshi cults would have overrun the city and enslaved it population, so that in an ironic twist of fate the great Waaagh! ended up liberating Excelsis from Chaos at least partially by accident, but maybe tying into the prophecy which Skagrott hoped to enact. It would have turned all our expectations on their head and ushered in a very different "age of destruction" to what we were all expecting. world where the forces of Order can no longer ostracise the orcs, and treat them as wilderness barbarians, but actually have to work with them, causing even more conflict downt he line. Either of those options would have been better than the two finales, which while awesome in their own right, didn't really mesh as a coherent narrative.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this should have been renamed the "complaining and wishlisting thread" long ago. Have their been any rumours about the price of dominion? Are we expecting £125 again, or do we put it past GW to push the price up on this one since its the start of a new edition? I'm really on the fence about this one.

Yeah, the yellow colour scheme is unfortunate to say the least. If these existed in a vacuum then it wouldn't in and of itself be racist. But it doesn't. Hobgoblins in warhammer have always had a "mongolian" aesthetic, and a little of that can still be seen in the arms and armour here. Giving them a distinctly different skin tone to the other Orcs and goblins is fine, (and its certainly not an actual Asian skin tone), but it really does evoke those "yellow peril" propaganda images, and that is uncomfortable in the extreme. D&D has depicted goblins with that kind of skin tone in the past, perhaps even to distinguish their goblins from Paizo and GWs, but that didn't have connections to a history of fantasy counterpart cultures in the Old World and how the way the different factions fitted into that scheme of analogues wasn't always very politically correct. I agree they look much better green, and that's how I'll paint them if I ever get any. (I love the Old World to bits, but it is very much a textbook example of the role of Orientalism in the application of Fantasy Counterpart Cultures. But that's a whole other essay and not appropriate for this thread!) Edit: I'm certainly not saying that this was deliberate racism on the part of the painters. I'm sure that they had the best of intentions. I'd always far rather presume incompetence than malice. The question though isn't just about the intent of the creator, but whether it causes harm. It certainly makes me somewhat uncomfortable, and based on the last few posts I'm not alone in that. If it makes folks of mongolian heritage feel unwelcome in the hobby then that would be a problem. Warhammer is for everyone after all.

Its a nice idea, but I'd say best to run it for people who know enough about AoS to get the joke, otherwise the pay off is likely not going to be as great for them as if they are at least fairly familiar with the Flesh Eater Courts lore. You ideally want a group who won't question it at first, when you tell them that they are crusading freeguilders or whatever, and send them off on their mission. But you do want a group who will be able to potentially figure it out themselves as the clues build up, and you add in more and more little hints at what is really going on. Some of the best moments are those ones when the PCs suddenly say... "wait a minute..." It might actually work best if you recruit one or more of the players to be in on the secret, so that they can kind of help you to steer the rest of the group in that direction. It would be tricky to pull off, but so rewarding if it works. Good luck!