Bosskelot

No-one seriously bought Dominion to make Thunder Warriors. Are you actually serious? In terms of absolute success of Dominion GW will obviously never say anything, but I really can't help but think it has been a disappointment to them, but only out of misplaced expectations. It's like how the Tomb Raider reboot in 2013 "only" sold 4.2 million copies and was considered a financial failure by it's publisher. 4.2 mil is still absolutely insane numbers, but the amount they poured into advertising, a poorly financially managed development and their own ridiculous expectations that Tomb Raider could do CoD numbers lead to the absurdity of a millions-selling game being considered a financial disappointment at best and a failure at worst. Meanwhile Dark Souls went on to sell 3 million copies and was the most successful game that developer had ever made up until that point, so successful the director/creator of the game was promoted to company president. All because they had realistic expectations about sales (which ended up being massively smashed anyway) and budgeted sensibly. With Dominion if it has sold even half of Indomitus that's honestly really, really impressive considering the relative size of the games. From an objective point of view, that's pretty good. But considering this was meant to be a limited-run box and they produced potentially more of it than they did Indomitus, how pleased will the GW suits really be with its performance? This was not meant to still be on sale 4 months later with a 30% discount off on the webstore. They clearly also did not want it still taking up shelf space by the time the starter sets were coming out.

He's not talking about those youtubers; he's talking about battle report channels like WintersSEO and Tabletop Titans.

As I've said before, Indomitus broke something within GW. I know 3 LGS owners who noticed a change in the GW reps personnel after Indomitus; lotta new people with 0 experience or knowledge about the wargaming industry and hobby trying to force obscene numbers of orders for some of the new boxes. Because Indomitus sold so well, ergo every other big box release must sell equally as well. It's like GW can't look at their own financials and the past insane 4 years and not notice that everything is still being carried along by Space Marines. And this isn't to say their other products aren't profitable; that is the stupidity that killed WHFB afterall in that it was still a profitable game, it just didn't pull in Marine numbers and so they had to make Fantasy Marines and kill the game off to make that happen. (which hasn't led to the sales explosion they were hoping) It's still happening today; there's a queue system for this new KT box when the last KT box didn't even sell out in any insane amount of time. You can still find it on shelves in a few places. And it's not like it did poorly either, but we're a year and a half out of Indomitus and even other Marine releases aren't selling the same at the rate that it did, but GW keeps expecting it to happen.

It's actually the opposite for me. Absolute silence about the future of a system is often poison to continued interest in it. This is why there was so much hype and momentum for 9th in its first year and why 3.0 has basically landed with a damp squib. We know NOTHING about the future of the system at this point whereas this same time last year we knew that the Marine supplements were incoming with Death Guard, Drukhari, Sisters, Admech and Orks too. In the lead-up to the first Codex releases we had extensive month-long previews and leaks about what was actually coming for Marines and Necrons too which helped people plan and get ready for them. Part of why Kruleboyz don't seem to have lit the world on fire is because in the lead-up to Dominion GW's messaging about them was all over the place and we didn't get any sanctioned image leaks of them either. GW seem very ready to leak stuff for 40K which helps to keep its momentum going whereas there's this culture of silence surrounding AOS. It's very bizarre.

Even though 40k is still my main game, I'm more interested to see what the AOS news will be. At this point because of the B&C leak being corroborated by recent reveals we know practically every 40k release coming in 2022 and the rest of 2021 but AOS is still this gigantic mystery. Like, compared to how they managed the release hype and reveals of 9th ed, GW have done an incredibly poor job with 3.0 so here's hoping Saturday really re-ignites some actual hype.

Eh, not really. Admech are arguably the only strong faction right now that need severe re-writes. The other issues can be curtailed through points changes and even Admech themselves can be brute-forced back into reasonability by that method too (although it's not really ideal.) The issue with 40k right now is the glacial pace of Codex releases while GW is also releasing endless supplements and crusade books to go along with things. Not only that but their actual regular balance patches are not so regular anymore which compounds all of the issues even further. Don't get me wrong; 40k at the highest competitive level is really, really unhealthy with certain Admech and one Ork build that you literally just concede to if you lose the roll-off for first turn. Other matches and games are much more reasonable though. Again though, the issue is that they're releasing campaign and codex supplements for armies that don't have a Codex yet or haven't been FAQ'd to bring them up to date a little. CSM are still sitting there on 1 wound a year after loyalist Marines got their 2nd wound and a year after the loyalist chapters got Index FAQ's even though they had their supplements coming out in like, a matter of weeks. It's really bad optics on GW's part. I've sort of heard this too, but not directly from any youtubers themselves. Could you point to the ones who have mentioned it? I'd be interested in it.

Entirely irrelevant to the actual topic of my post.

You're starting to see this with a lot of boxed set releases now. One could argue that maybe GW are getting better at producing stuff to meet demand, but when even a Space Marine army box release doesn't manage to sell out in its first week, with LGS's having 10+ of them in stock still, clearly there must have been a shift in consumer behaviour. It's either that or GW really lost the plot after Indomitus and just assumes any big box release will automatically equal the same level of sales. In my conversations with LGS owners this does actually seem to be the case; GW has a load of new sales reps who have little understanding of the hobby and are basically strong-arming these businesses to accept ludicrous numbers of orders. One local had the GW guy trying to make him take 200 boxes of the new Blood Bowl because "REMEMBER INDOMITUS THOUGH????"

I don't really think this is an unpopular opinion.

@RexHavoc nothing there is really contradicting the core of what I said though. There was an aesthetic shift late in WHFB's life and even back then it was controversial and not everyone liked it. There was an increased focus on giant monster centrepieces with really crazy, out-there designs and other oddities like flying Elf chariots and Steampunk mechanical horses. In fact if you want to pinpoint some of the blame for WHFB's decreasing sales over this time period I wouldn't be surprised if that played a part in it; GW kept making kits that not only weren't very good on the tabletop, but they increasingly clashed with the (at that point) very firmly established tone and aesthetics of their setting. Oh for sure, I just meant general aesthetics. Reading through the 6th ed VC book and the SBGL book it's really apparent how bland a lot of the actual Vampire rules are in comparison in the new book. But that's not necessarily an AOS problem, that's a modern GW problem.

Not just ruleswise but design/aesthetics too. The SBGL refresh is just straight up Vampire Counts; nothing there would look out of place in WHFB. Same with Cursed City. The Lumineth have some out there designs, but are a clear play to get all the High Elf lovers back. Witch Hunters are back now too. I have it through good 2nd hand info that the SBGL release was one of the most successful ones for AOS in its history. Y'know, the release that basically just stuck to WHFB design principles and didn't try and re-invent the wheel in an effort to be more "unique." I wonder how that will influence the design studio's work going forward.

Tupavko's post above is a really nice summation of a lot of issues I have with AOS's current lore and presentation. I personally think that setting should always trump narrative and AOS's obsession with its narrative is going to end up backfiring on it in a major way unless the actual worldbuilding of the setting improves. You can point to all manner of impactful things happening in the recent narrative all you want, but unless I actually care about the consequences it's sort of moot. This is most obvious with maps and how despite GW making a big huzzaw about finally including maps in 2.0-onwards, a lot of them feel exactly what they probably are: slapdash, thrown together and with little actual worldbuilding thought put into them. All I see are placenames placed randomly with no real greater context. Just look at the lower Empire and the River Reik; you can tell a lot about what goes on there on a macro-level with just a little bit of extra outside information and you can also understand that if, say, Nuln was sacked and destroyed how impactful that would be on the Empire as a whole. Same with Blackfire Pass and the Border Princes and the Badlands beyond. You see interconnected areas that, if something happens in one of them, ripples outwards and effects things further up. In AOS Morathi invaded some Anvilguard or somewhere I guess. Why should I care? Apparently the Lumineth invaded Shyish and fought across most of it, liberating nations and so on. What were they? Who lived there? In a semi-ironic, GRRM-way; what were their tax policies? Of course under the current way of doing things these are issues AOS is not concerned with. It's all big, bombastic, God-level melodrama and epic setpieces. Which is fine if you enjoy it, but I increasingly do not. It's like a big flashy action scene in a film that really has no narrative or thematic importance; it might be enjoyable to watch in the moment, but it can leave you feeling emotionally unsatisfied or bored if it keeps going on for too long.

Actually every Drukhari player in 40k uses Namarti Thralls for Mandrakes now; that's where sales of that kit come from. 😂

40k it's actually Harlequins. They had a planned 2nd wave that's been indefinitely shelved because of poor sales from the initial stuff. GSC have had two waves and look like they're getting at least one new model soon (with a new Codex and battlebox).

It's obviously total nonsense because the Lumineth release was not disrupted by covid in the way that post claims. The initial release and initial book was written and printed long before lockdowns started to happen. The small first release and a second bigger one a year later was ALWAYS intended; the only thing covid did was lessen the time between them since that first release got delayed. Also, with regards to Craftworlds they need far more than that. I see more people put off by the old Guardian sculpts and the terrible DA box than resin warp spiders. The army cannot continue on with all of it's 4 core troops choices being ancient 16+ year sculpts or finecast. It's actively poison for an army to draw in new players. It doesn't matter that some of those are plastic; Necron Warriors and Ork Boyz were newer than Guardians and still got updated. This also of course ignores things like the Avatar, Warlocks, lack of customizable foot Autarchs, Autarch on jetbike etc

Really disappointed that Squats seem likely to make a return to 40k. Not only were they always a lame idea, but the game struggles to support its already existing factions and in fact has plenty of critically important ones in-lore that have no representation on the table yet. To overlook all of those and bring back the worst idea is just really bleh.

I mean this was happening in 2.0 too. Just compare the Lumineth books to DoK, HoS and SBGL.

It does suck but also was anyone really expecting anything different? £30 has been the cost for 40k codexes since 9th dropped. They weren't just magically going to make AOS the exception.

Being over-produced is also a valid explanation without it necessarily equating to being a sales bomb too. Like, it's still available on the GW web store and LGS' are struggling to shift the copies they have. Obviously this is good for potential consumers (and we should all prioritize that over unfeeling faceless corpo profits) but I really can't fathom a world in which GW intended for Dominion to still be on sale with the Starter Boxes also being available.

The delay between Dominion and the Tomes is actually less than Indomitus and the Codexes. It was a 3 month wait for those, whereas this is going to be 2 months. What's making this feel longer is that GW are being far more tight-lipped about the direction of AOS than they were with 40k 9th. On Indomitus release day, they had their Codex show livestream that revealed basically everything remaining modelwise (I think?) but also showed off a ton of rules too. It also had sneak peeks of the new DG, Admech, Drukhari, Sisters and Ork models which gave people some idea as to what was coming next. Not only did the Dominion livestream not reveal any rules, it didn't have any previews or sneak peeks for other upcoming AOS releases either. And the trickle of information since then has been slow and minor. In September 2020 the Codexes were still a month out, but we still knew a lot of rules information and knew that after Marines and Necrons, we were getting BA/SW/DW supplements and Admech, DA, DG, Drukhari, Sisters and Orks at some point after those. What information do we have about AOS lmao EDIT: and what makes this even worse is that one of the factions in the Dominion box set is basically unusable in-game currently.

The time between Indomitus and Codex release was even longer, but even then I feel like we had more information. The Codex show Preview stream they did on Indom launch day showed off a load of rules for instance. The equivalent for AOS3 had.... nothing like that as far as I can recall?

I still hope for support for round bases, just because I feel the game should take a page out of KoW's book and be about unit vs unit entities. There's no need for a game like WHFB to be on an individual base by base system. This is sort of what I mean:

GW sales reps have been incredibly pushy with indie retailers ever since Indomitus apparently. Really trying to make them order Indomitus levels of stock for every single box release, regardless of the game or the local scene. At my local, he'd had the gw rep trying to justify 100+ boxes of Dominion because he'd sold 125 Indomitus boxes. The rep just didn't understand that despite AOS's growth, it's nowhere near 40k popularity in the slightest, especially locally. He ended up ordering 30 only half of which have actually been sold with the rest now sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

Indomitus was two 1k armies. Plus they were also legal armies to actually use in matched play, unlike the Kruleboy half of Dominion.

On the flipside several different community surveys I've seen have put Gloomspite and Ironjawz as two of the most popular factions in the game. And, like, people have this idea that Lumineth are popular but that's just because they had a big release and they get a lot of discussion because of their intensely crunchy rules that have a lot of controversial elements to them. There's little evidence any of this has translated into mass sales. It's not like Lumineth videos on youtube (lore/painting/battle reports) get uniquely higher numbers than usual, in fact a few channels I watch it's sometimes the opposite. Of the two LGS's near me, both still have stock of the LE army box and both managers have said the range isn't a massive mover despite the local area having an active AOS collector community. It's obvious GW intend for Lumineth to be a significant sales presence and they have pushed them aggressively, but I'd say they've been out for long enough to get a rough idea that they've not taken over the game by any stretch. This is unlike something like Sisters of Battle where they were very vocal about the basic squad box becoming the single biggest seller of any of their products in 2019 (outselling all of the Marine stuff btw) and are now aggressively marketing them as being one of the new faces/postergirls of the game.