EccentricCircle

Interesting. that perhaps sheds some light on why they are constantly "rebooting" their core games too. Even if they don't rely on distributors, they may be considering the same factors, and conclude that a new edition is needed when it really isn't, because stores will be more likely to shift it.

WotC is an interesting comparison, as the only other gaming company to really be in the same weight class as GW, and with a similarly lengthy history of lore development. However, its worth noting that they have tried repeatedly to break into the mass battle games market with Battlesystem in the 80s and 90s, a "new" Chainmail in the early 2000s, D&D miniatures game throughout the mid 2000s and Dungeon Command in the 2010s. Even with the full weight of D&D's lore behind them, none of those ever came close to rivaling warhammer, even back in the 80s and 90s when warhammer itself was just taking off. Now the reason is pretty clear. They never had a solid all around product like GW has. For much of the early 21st century their miniatures were pretty bad prepainted sculpts. What also didn't help was trying to sell it like Magic booster packs, they just made it hard to collect. By the time they changed tack and released Dungeon Command (with basically the equivalent of an underworlds warband) there wasn't much uptake and the game fizzled after about six warbands. I think the older metal minis from the 20th century attempts were better (comparable with the warhammer of the day), but it didn't take off to the same degree. So it just goes to show that you can't rely on any one of those pillars of rules, models, lore, etc. You need all of it.

No new AoS army for me this year, as I have lots of chaos tribes to paint from last year's still, and a box of half painted goblins from the year before for that matter. That kind of hasn't stopped me starting a genestealers army for 40K though... I mean, that's a completely different system... right... right?

I'm a D&D player first and foremost, so all of my warhammer collection started out with buying stuff for D&D and then expanding it to full armies. So I have a lot of thoughts. First, I've never found 32mm bases on a grid to be that much of an issues. D&D is pretty forgiving and even when using the squares to count distance and position, it's not as though the characters know they are there. I usually have a mix of 32mm scale warhammer, reaper and lego models and 25mm scale LotR, frostgrave and D&D figs. Lego bases in particular don't fit the squares at all, but they are the most customisable pc figs so it's worth it! If you are still worred I believe that non competitive AoS still doesn't actually require a specific base (unless 3e has changed that). So you could always put 32mm models on 25s. You could also check out LotR which is mostly 25mm bases, and has some gorgeous models for D&D characters, though quite a different style from aos. To actually answer your question, grave lords is the way to go as you get at least a dozen encounters of different combinations of undead out of the standard army, and can ally in other death stuff like the ghouls and ghosts. Cities of sigmar then has all your basic D&D races covered and again can be mixed and matched. Lastly I strongly suggest building warcry bands, rather than a full AoS army. A couple of those built around different themes will rapidly get you more variety for you rpgs, and once you have a couple it gets easier to have a game as you cam lend your D&D players a band to let the try it out!

As someone with chaos dwarf tomb king and third party araby armies I support this unholy alliance of desert power! Sadly have very few brets though!

Yeah, they do a small trial run first, and then if that that sells they release it properly, so it won't be out for a while yet.

The new !magazine looks like it could be great to dip into and pick up issues here and there. No use subscribing for me as there is too much i either have or don't care for, but some of it could be handy, terra in particular. Hopefully my flgs will get it in like they do with the 40k one!

Awesome. That's good to know! Looking forward to this one. Its nice that they aren't just focusing on the traditional "heroes", but are going to make the game playable by any faction. That's very true to the wargame.

I'm afraid I'm going to be somewhat disparaging, and go for older Black Library Authors as well. Kim Newman's books just feel more thought out than most of what we're getting today, and the world is a lot more "lived in". I read a lot of the modern black library books, usually as audiobooks which I can put on while I'm painting. And they are great pulpy fun, but they generally lack the depth and characterisation that you get in the older books. I've kind of enjoyed the new Gotrek books, but the old ones are just better. William King's writing takes a few books to really take off, but once it gets there the characters feel like people, rather than miniatures fighting on a tabletop. Its kind of telling that I don't think I could actually name any of the current batch of authors, or tell you who wrote which book, despite having read and enjoyed a great many of those books. So yeah, Black Library gets my audible credit at least every other month, but it is what it is, and I'm never going to be ranking any of them among my favourite books of all time.

But by what metric? In terms of fineness of detail, and amount of components crammed on a sprue, certainly, they are the best, and that is the benchmark against which they want to be judged. I am also quite impressed on a technical level by the easy to build sprues and how they've made the models work as push fit. But none of those things are the primary thing I look for in a mini. I want the model to be accessible, so that I don't break the pieces trying to get them off the sprue, or hurt my hand trying to get the clippers into the really tight spaces. GW sprues fail on both those marks. Then I want variety and customisability. For all the material they cram onto the sprues, its actually really hard to use it to build anything other than the two monopose builds which those bits are supposed to combine into. Compare this to something like the frostgrave wizards kits, where any piece can connect to any other, and you can really customise to your hearts content. Now frostgrave models look nice, but they are chunkier than GW ones, and never go together quite as seamlessly. So as far as GW and fans of the art go, they are inferior, but as an enjoyable experience to build and get the result I want, I'd take the wizards over a newer warhammer kit any day. Some GW sprues are also really difficult to build. I've sat there for 10 minutes trying to fit pieces together and failing spectacularly, when I could have built several less detailed figures. I consider that a major mark against them as an enjoyable model kit, even if the result of those impossible to match pieces is a really nice looking model. (Their instructions are at least getting better, but when half the joins between the pieces don't really look like anything it becomes more a 3d jigsaw puzzle than a model kit!) In essence if you let GW dictate the metric by which their minis will be judged, they will always make it look as though they come out on top. But my point is that the question of which is best is a multifaceted one, to which there is no right answer. It really depends what you want out of it, and What you care about! So that gives you three or so reasons why I consider Frostgrave Wizards to be the better plastic kit, but you may well value different things, and be willing to put up with oddly fitting pieces, fragile minis and hard to access sprue arrangements, whereas I'll gladly put up with needing to fill gaps or remove mold lines from time to time, because the build experience is more enjoyable, and I like the end product better. Your mileage will vary.

It's somewhat alarming how many folks buy into the propaganda that GW stuff is "the best" when realistically it's anything but. That whole claim was based solely on the artistic merits of the miniatures which are certainly impressive works of sculpture. However, in making them so arty, they actually now fail as both model kits ( they are often a nightmare to build and paint), and as gaming pieces ( they are too fragile, and cannot be handled safely without risking damage.) Add to that the comments that have already been made about the quality of the rules, book editing and translation, and peripherals like the apps and it all does seem quite a ridiculous claim. But by setting themselves such a narrow definition of excellence and promoting themselves to (and through) display painters, they've created this illusion of greatness. Its the last legacy of the old "we don't care about rules" era gw and one which isn't likely to change any time soon. What you are really paying for isn't a quality product, it's access to a well established setting, and an active community. Those externalities more than anything material are what keep gw on top.

As a middle earth collector, i can tell how it works there. Firstly everyone has stats, regardless of whether the model is sold. So while older models are discontinued, nothing is ever actually squatted from the game. There is then a core of plastic models which form the main characters, and the basic troops for the key factions. Some resin and metal characters are still permanently on sale, but are gradually getting turned to plastic. The then sell the minor armies and specialist troops for their last couple of campaign books. Generally when a new campaign drops a handful of sculpts come back to make sure the whole army list is in stock, and a few things go away. So recently a couple of hobbits got phased out to make room for fall of the necromancer. So wherever the lore is focussed, the needed models are made available. Things can be gone for years though and may not return at all. I doubt they destroy much. I'd guess stock levels are so low that they actually have to cast a few more to meet demand in the run up to it being removed. They then do themed made to order runs pretty regularly. These are usually for older models that have been out of circulation for years, or were replaced by newer versions. They know the old metal Perry era models are iconic, and there is demand for them. So its quite FOMo driven, but kind of works. I don't see it happening soon for AoS as they've been pretty brutal at just squatting things. With less of an established setting there is less demand to keep things in the game. Whereas LotR is an established canon, which the game needs to represent. 40k is !ore like that too. I'm sure fans of these marine characters won't be pleased if they lost their rules, but we already lost an entire old world full of special characters, and they haven't made many new ones relatively speaking.

Does anyone know whether print copies of Champions of Death are shipping yet? I ordered it and the order book togeyher. Champs of order shipped right away, but haven't received death yet, so I'm wondering whether it is still on pre order. I'm planning to email them, but figured I'd see if anyone else has the book in their hands yet before I get too worried.

Has any faction actually gotten better with the edition change, or have most been nerfed? I wonder if they are just generally scaling back the power level of the game? In which case they should have done it all at once via index books so that old factions don't dominate?

"Metal models to go up by 20%" Skaven Players: "Haven't we suffered enough!?" Am I happy; no. Am I surprised; also no. This was bound to happen sooner or later, and even if they could absorb the costs into their massive margins, I don't think anyone expected them to do so. Mini wise this doesn't bother me much. I think I have all the resin and metal models I want for AoS & 40K right now, and most of the plastic ones. I can theoretically be quite happy painting away for months without needing to buy anything new. I might consider getting some stuff for Lord of the Rings before the rise though, as that is likely to be hard hit. The annoying thing is likely to be a cost increase on books, as they have already jacked the prices up on those with the edition change, and its getting silly. I was already on the fence as to whether I wanted to collect the Battletomes and codices for my armies this edition, or whether to just wait and see what I play most, and get the rules if and when I need them. I think this means that I won't be playing AoS until fourth ed drops, and might not worry to much about 40K either honestly. I can be happy playing Warcry and 2e/legends with the books I've got for now. I'll save my pennies for Lord of the Rings and Necromunda releases and see how things look in a couple of years.

Its funny cos its true... I think the longer a faction is oop the more fanatical its fanbase becomes!

My guess would be Lord of the Rings quite soon too. At least a week of the release schedule will be Defence of the North and the models that are coming out for that. So they have far from run out of other games to cover before they need another AoS release!

I was expecting them to release the DoK and nighthaunt heroes. So not dissapointed at all, that's a really nice box which could be the next thing I get. No tomr covers is surprising, but I've been expecting the worldwide disasters of the last couple of years to have an effect on the schedule further down the line. I guess this is it.

I've been expecting dwarf soup for a while, so if it comes to pass, I won't mind. Its cool to have each faction be distinct, but fundamentally there shouldn't be any reason why they can't still do that as subfactions sharing a book. I know that hasn't been true to date, so maybe its too much to hope for, but from a pure theoretical game design viewpoint, there is no reason why it should be impossible. While I like FS and KO, its the dispossessed that have always been my favourites, so if this is the only way we get anything solidly new for them, and get to ally them with their skyfaring and firefighting kin then I'm actually all for it.

Interesting analysis. I guess we'll find out. Though my guess is that this week won't tell us anything that far ahead, and if they do announce something big, it will come completely out of left field. We shall see!

KR multicases are pretty good, but these days I often just buy individual trays. There are loads of folks selling foam trays on ebay, so if you measure your models and type in the dimensions you need, you can usually find something the right size. Pick and pluck foam is also good in that respect. Yoy get a block and remove sections to make exactly the right spaces. Great for big monsters and fiddly things! Lastly you can often find second hand trays that have been cut up fairly cheaply. They don't look as nice, but some times you can put a big model in two sells and if the divider remains that can tuck in to fill space and keep them secure.

Right, and if you look at GWs history there was a point where there was the Games Workshop side doing RPGs and the Citadel side doing wargames. While theu kept both names, its the Citadel side we have today, and I wonder if they feel branching out too much into rpgs would be a step backwards or dilute the warhammer brand that's been the cornerstone of their success, or something like that? Maybe?

Its great how joined up with the ongoing AoS narrative Soulbound seems to be. Its clear that they have a lot of access, and are able to really expand and detail the setting in a meaningful way. Even if you don't play RPGs they are great as lore books about the setting. GW have always been funny about supporting their licensed RPGs, even back in the day when Dark Heresy was big, they didn't really acknowledge that it was a thing. I wonder whether it was the forces within the company which shifted it away from doing RPGs in house in the first place. I wonder if some of the higher ups are happy to license it out, but are worried that it will somehow split their player base or stop people buying models if they invest heavily into buying books from C7. I don't think that's a logical position, but its the only one I've ever been able to think of to explain it.

I guess I'm assuming that new edition means that everyone will get a new book sooner or later, and the order they come out will bear little to no resemblance to who actually needs one!