Greybeard86

I read dozens of times a dwarf batrep in an old white dwarf I was gifted at a GW store. Hype is the ultimate seller, but with great power... I still think it is a crabby move to release so many rule books and constantly cycle the meta like this, but I guess we all find that spot in the hobby that brings us joy and it doesn't need to be the same for all of us. Personally, the balancing approach and rule release schedules put me off and in my second year after coming back to the hobby I have yet to buy a rule book. And this comes from someone who was scouting for the old Dogs of War army book for a time.

I thought the community surveys I linked had settled this one

What you says makes sense if people were on some sort of "limited budget" and bought one or the other. I bet that, in many cases, people buy the book and then some extra plastic. The book is a way to hype you more and sell, and it seems to work well because GW keeps doing it, now at an increasing pace with multiple books for similar armies. We pay for the publicity, fellows, ain't that great? The constant re-release of books does not need to market to the same people that would only buy every now and then. This is for those who want the latest rules, aren't willing to get them elsewhere (i.e. internet), and then, of course, it also limits the second hand market for new players. I agree. Battletomes are giant printed ads, but you pay for them. It is a wicked genious move. It is like a giant catalogue that keeps coming out with "new cool stuff" and we even pay for more than its cost.

Who says they do not make money out of the books sales alone? I am quite convinced they do. That said, one must understand GW s business as a “total” business. Not only from the industrial / production point of view, but also because it spans across media in a remarkably integrated manner. They hype their own products via magazines, novels, and also rule books. We cannot judge the performance of any of these supporting elements on their own, but as part of a hype machine to sell models. They release books so fast and stagger their product releases on purpose to maintain a high hype state and keep people buying. It is a planned / designed business plan and it is working well for them. Lots of people are satisfied with it and frankly it is no different than what phone / computer / clothing companies do. Hype is perfect because it taps into the irrational / impulsive part of the buyer. Now, insofar no one is getting in too deep and hurting themselves with those impulsive purchases, I guess we have collectively decided that this is ok. Personally, I find it annoying and try to keep a cool head when making those purchases.

@yukishiro1 already answered. Lack of toughness and carry over compress roles massively.

Same boat, do not worry. Exactly why people don't like that varies by person, as expected. This is just a collection of such opinions. I am not claiming any opinion carries more weight than another, but it is clear that they are not a popular army. Hopefully if anyone at GW drops by these forums now and then (and they do), this might give a tiny bit of an insight to them. Again, I love slayers, I hope they turn it around for FS.

This is with regards to damage dealing, in the context of the equivalences of anti-tank, anti-infantry, etc. Quite clearly they removed that to a large extent when they simplified away toughness.

Yes, you can. But currently AoS is not set up that way, there are no serious unit specializations. There is a tad of difference with rend, but it tends to erode away anyway. At least that's my understanding.

Me an aprox. half the people voting in this poll. The point is not to crab on Fyreslayers, there is no need for that. Overwhelmingly evidence tells us they were a bust. What I intended is to have a conversation on why that was the case, which we did, to a certain extent. Why? Because I like slayer sculpts and I'd rather see them getting support than axed because they missed the mark with FS.

I understand what you mean, but note that a lot of the lore comes from places other than rulebooks. For example, the black library. And those other sources are not perishable cash grabs like the rule books. The rule books prey on a captive audience, even if they are crabby people will buy them. Novels need to sell on their own merit.

There is very little reason to buy those books anyway. Between battlescribe, people shoving pdfs into your hands, and online resources you can access all the materials easily. I did really like having my books back in the day, and reading the little funny stories on the sides. They are good at hype building. But nowadays I can get an inifite amount of such things in a lexicanum or other resources, so I do not really need the books for that. The more they go in the direction of book bloat, the more people won't be caring about them at all. Same thing happened with FW; some ranges were expensive and of dubious quality, both rules and model wise, and they discontinued models constantly and similar shenannigans. Result? Massive recast market for forgeworld, several top tourney players admitting they simply 3d print. For all they might want stores and hobby gatherings to police the tables for GW only models, no 3d printed, oficial rule books in your hands only, the truth is that it is a losing battle. This is not like DLCs or microtrans that can be enforced via digital control. Of course, the staggered released of models such as battleline options might catch people off guard. Specially since often it is unclear whether a new release is planned soon after. But that's only for those who build to play heavily, and I wonder what fraction of the costumer base that is.

I suspect this is very much the vase. I think AoS was spearheading massive changes in the way GW conducted business and treated their IP. Before, they had "long lived armies" they regularly added to and upgraded. Some collections had been "tournament legal" for decades! The game was fairly complex and aspired to be a "lightweight wargame". The lore was poking fun at "fantasy tropes" and, for 40k, it was a mixture of social satire of the time and obvious sci fi references. In general, "everyone" was "bad" at some level. Then, AoS came and it broke all conventions. They nuked huge chunks of the existing ranges and they beging to progressively retire the rest, often without warning (e.g. chaos dwarves, some ork kids, etc.). The lore is more serious, and there seem to be more "clearly good" folks, even though there remains some "little bit of grimdark" (sigmarites aren't perfect). The game became more of a "board game" than a "wargame simulation", with simpler rules, to the point that it became unplayable in tournies (AoS at release). Armies were much narrower in ranges, and I too suspect that they intended to game "seasonal" armies much like the warbands we see in their smaller games. I do think they have since reverted a bit from these radical changes. They having been retiring space marines in 40k at a slower pace than they had retired models in fantasy. The rules have gained a bit of complexity and there have been some balancing efforts. Armies are not being discontinued, and some see more waves of releases. That said, I do think that all of GW's products are caught in this weird impass. Transitioning between worlds (old business of supporting wargames and miniatures that lasted decades, new business of board games and seasonal collectibles), but still finding its identity. I think this is related to the hobby finding a new space in new times. At the same time, it has become a lot more "corporate run" over the years, even though GW has been like that at some level for a very long time. So yeah, the release strategy is clearly inconsistent. IMO this is because it wasn't really formulated by the same people, even though it is the same company.

They wanted to capitalize on the old slayer's following, that's why. But they failed at it, badly. It is not only that; all the non mounted heroes are barely different from the baseline troops in terms of sculpt, hardly justifying their price tags. I got all of mine second hand, it felt like a bad decision to buy a single heroe form 20+ euros with the same level of detail as a 45 euros 10+ box. Same idea with hearthguard. Honestly, go the custodes way. Most "regular" shield captains (leaders) can be constructed from the basic box of "battlelines" just using some of the "upgrades" it has (a cape, etc.)., Greed kills the cow, sometimes.

From a player standpoint, absolutely. Hobby focused individuals have a bit of insurance against that; unlikely that you bought x4 kits of wardens just to create a display army. That said, there is a line somewhere between not being able to release new models after a new wave and purposefully staggering similar units to maximize sales. Where that line is, I don't know exactly.

The part that you are missing is: provided that they are a successful release. Then there are also limitations associated with production, stocking, marketing spotlight. It is quite clear that GW envisions the players as individuals collecting multiple armies, often simply following whatever GW is hyping at the moment. The era of players heavily invested in a given faction is over. Or at least that's what GW is attempting, via staggered rule and model releases with cycles that can take years.

I understand. Still, from a hobby perspective, this is quite critical. Fyreslayers is the obvious example. In any case, I do think that painting 60+ models across 2 variations, plus a few heroes, is dreadful (for me). I understand why, from a business standpoint, GW insists in representing 1 to 1 models in units. But many other systems either go full skirmish when they do that (so far fewer models), or they do abstract representations (those archers are 10 models representing 100). In that sense, squares offered room for that because what mattered was the footprint.

I imagine that making those sort of decisions requires an understanding of the hobby, which I expect a lot of the management doesn't have. Or maybe they do? Some of the folks around here worked there, care to enlighten us?

I understand they want to rebuild entirely the range for AoS. That said, to keep selling kits after WHFB was killed and then retiring them over 5 years is just terrible from the consumer's perspective. This happened in cities but I also hear that orks suffered from it badly. I prefer releases of "newer" and "improved" versions that are more backwards compatible. For example, why are swordsmen free guilds restricted to the old empire kit? I believe that if the theme is "militia" many of the old dwarf units would fit there: -- dwarf warriors with two weapons / miners -- > halberds. -- dwarf warriors with shields --> militia with shields. -- thunderers / quarrelers --> crossbowmen and gunners. Make that official (I know many people just do that) and you'll have happy players. Or, in other words, re-think how you treat "legends". Collecting miniatures is expensive and time consuming; while I understand they would love for us to constantly replace old ones with their newer releases, this is not a card collectible game that can work in "seasons". What happened to the company that was happy simply re-sculpting old minitature ranges? How many space marine versions are out there? And people still bought them without the need to go full primaris on them.

Shouldn't we talk about models, not warscrolls? I don't consider the two squig varieties or eel types to be fundamentally different models. That said, I'd prefer factions to have "redundancy" and support multiple full playstyles. I do not consider gitz to be a good example of that. What I mean is several armies with a variety of models (besides support heroes), all supported at all levels of play.

What irks me is that they no longer support their product lines for as long as in the old times, and this is tied to releases. Sometimes they'll release something, like fyreslayers, that one cannot help but wonder if it won't be killed without a word of warning like Chaos Dwarves. So, release cycles are erratic and show what they believe they can push more, and they seem to "squat" things more frequently. Either hard squat (Chaos Dwarves), or soft squat (fyreslayers getting absolutely no love). A bit more commitment, please!

No offense taken, you kept it mostly to yourself But honestly, it is a matter of preference, so there isn't right or wrong. Hey, as things stand, the status quo is more like what you prefer than my ideal. That said, I am doing just fine mostly painting.

That's a tricky one. Personally, I find it more immersive when we are all battling with lists that "make sense". But I do not want to dictate someone else's fun, so it is difficult. Again, from a personal preference standpoint, I like more games where there are multiple units representing multiple roles, and high skew armies are just fluffy gimmicks best left for narrative. But I would probably settle with "at least not worse", for balanced lists.

Very nice post explaining the differences. The only thing I want to add is that lack of unit variety makes the hobby side of some armies more tedious (at least for me). I don't really want to pain dozens of the same units. The rest is more about how we envision the fluff of the armies and how much we care that it might be represented on the table top. The competitive viability is important to me. I like "wargaming" games, not "board games". Thus, I would like to see the lore more represented in how the armies are built. I do not think that army level battles (which I think is what 2k points are) should be dozens of demigryphs and 2 support heroes.

Here is where we disagree strongly. Yes, it d rather have good internal balance. But there is so much more variety in 40k armies than in many AoS ones. They feel more like an army, whatever that might mean in that dystopian future. you could say AoS simply not having enough units plays a role, but then you get books like the gitz one where the designers actively work against variety.

I honestly believe gits and other cases are not that hard to fix. Instead of rewarding buff stacking a single type of unit, give buffs to combinations of units. Examples were given in this thread. It is purely a design choice, that we see hyper focused lists, it really isn’t some feasibility issue. I mean, support heroes are already a thing, just make more support units. And that’s without fundamentally changing how the game is played at other levels. Personally, I’d favor bringing back specialized roles for units. But that is not how AoS is built right now. The plus is getting more people to play, imo, since the gaming side is often at odds with the hobby. I do not want to paint 18 trolls because that is the only way to bring some trolls into a battle without them being terribad. I ll paint a bunch of trolls, some gobbos, some squiggs; that’s how I imagine most hordes would look like. Then, some day, instead of facing them off in a diorama against my dawi I’ll join a game. Hopefully without them being hot trash and still putting up a fight against a gaming list.