RexHavoc

Those that have left that created a lot of the older lore and settings were also history buffs, architects and had degrees in history and stuff like that. They stuff they crafted WFB from is often real history (or older legends/tales), which I have always assumed why some of the older books and settings seem more realistic and well crafted. A lot of AoS & 40k (and even a lot of wider wargaming hobby) reads like it was created by people that grew up with warhammer, but not the things like the real history that warhammer was built around. I don't dislike AoS lore- I'm often found crying foul at loosing the eight lamentations sequels. But I can see why people can be put off by it. Its almost like a parody of a parody at this point. Edit: Ninjad by @EccentricCircle by mere moments who worded it far more elegantly! 🙂

I've zero desire to actively get 'better' at painting or gaming. I actually put some posts up a few years back on a huge painting forum about learning to paint 'worse', as I was totally sick of being bogged down with this idea that you have to paint to improve, painting anything less than the GW box art is wrong, or start throwing a gaming studio logo on everything you post online as if you were trying to outdo actual commission painters. This isn't a job or something I'm competing in. I actually watch an awful lot more of the RPG crafting videos than I do warhammer videos now. I'm not into RPGs in the slightest but they have a far more laid back approach to the painting & building side of the hobby. Improving does come as a by-product of just the act of painting itself, but there is no desire there for me any more. Also after two years stuck at home due to lockdowns has pushed the desire away even more- I've hurt my eye badly from being home so much and can't paint without getting terrible migraines most weeks, so I've even less desire to paint to the level I am capable of. I'm happy out just getting something finished and placed alongside the rest of its unit. I spend so much of my time 'improving' in other fields, I'm quite happy being mediocre at my hobby.

Exactly all of this. Narrative is a more personal 'adventure' that doesn't promote as much discussion, even if people do enjoy reading/looking at narrative threads. There is very little traffic to the narrative, and even the painting threads don't get a huge amount of comments (Not just here, even big facebook groups and other forums have the same issue) It takes time and effort to create narrative posts but it takes more work to read through them and leave some discussion underneath. (There's blogs I follow but I either have time to read them, or to skim through & leave a comment!) It can also only take one bad comment or bad take on a narrative thread to dissuade someone from spending the extra time and effort of creating narrative posts. There is also a good percentage of the community see anything outside of the 'official' lore as made up and not worth the time to invest in.

Thanks! I've completely lost all conception of time and couldn't place them. I could have sworn remembering trying to order them in November, but must have been December! Thanks! So does look like another month away! I doubt we will see another Ogor box this year, we had one last year and we tend to only see repeats for things like Marines & Stormcast.

Has there been no rumours on the christmas battleforces this year yet? Seems late, though perhaps I'm misremembering last year as being stuck at home since last march now and for me, time is not what it once was.

I zero interest in anything but narrative games for AoS and we don't allow any kind of meta chasing within my group. I get that people do enjoy playing with random people, but personally never understood it and don't see why after playing with someone once or twice, you'd continue to rely on GW to deliver balanced rules that let you play pick up games without some form of communication with the other party. Especially when GW have a poor record of ever managing to release complete or balanced rules. So personally I find the match play rules a waste of resources in the games development, more so since spending so much time and money developing match play rules only to keep releasing new models and books that creep in power and scale anyway. Tin foil hat maybe, but I honestly don't think GW care about match play past it being the money cow to milk to keep the suits happy. Every edition of Warhammer I've ever picked up in the past had a creed of playing for fun and talking to your opponent to solve rules or balance issues and leant towards being narrative driven. I do dislike the notion that narrative & open play are just there to be abused by players wanted to own all other players by whacking down 12 bloodthirsters and 6 nagash models. This logic is dumb, because what is then stopping the opponent doing the same +1. This is the same kind of silly logic that tournament players must get when people say that all tournament play is toxic. This is all just my own personal opinion though, I don't begrudge anyone for wanting match play or for being a player that finds match play/tournaments fun. Its just not for me.

Hilariously, I've both been ripped apart on facebook group for being a fan of both. I've been told to ****** off back to AoS groups for having stuff thats too AoS-y in my homebrew fantasy lore & models on WFB groups and been told to sod off back to old world groups for having based AoS models for dual use in my fantasy/oathmark armies. This is why I've dropped any notion of being a 'warhammer fan' and now only view myself as a wargaming fan, that just happens to like a lot of warhammer based games. It does mean I'm more careful about models I post now and where I post them, which does take a little more mental effort than there is reward, but it does avoid a lot of the unpleasantness that comes from daring to bridge the gap.

I've not read a AoS book since they cancelled the eight lamentations. I've picked some of the others up since, but honestly just lost interest when the sequels were cancelled and they went with the cash grab Gotrek stories instead. I brought the gloomspite book, coven of Blood & lady of sorrows partly because they were cheap and partly in case I regretted not getting them later on. But had no inkling to even try them. I get that they likely want AoS to be their 'big gods and even bigger models' game, where as the eight lamentations was more about regular mortals in the realms. This is probably so they can continue to push big god models against the more gritty old world stuff that will be incoming, but AoS was once unimaginable in size and had room to cater to the mortals and the gods. They massively shrunk the setting in the 2nd Ed retcon and to me, that took away what was unique about the setting that wasn't just 'old world heroes on steroids'. I really hope that they bring things like Josh Reynolds back to writing for AoS in the future. I'll happily go back to buying AoS books again then.

Similar stuff happens here as well TBH. As for unpopular opinions on AoS: I prefer first edition along with Skirmish. It was an easy way to build up an army and was a far more entertaining and experimental era of wargaming. Almost every change or release the game has seen since has catered more towards making money from the flighty aspects of the community who meta chase. AoS was better as more sandbox, creative hobby game- even if it wasn't as valuable as an IP. Bringing Gotrek back was nothing but a cash grab and has actually hurt the narrative of both AoS & the old world. From the minute the Old world was announced, AoS started a countdown to it's death, even if it did cause a huge increase in people trying the game in the meantime. (GW have proved time and again they can't cope with as many games as they will be juggling soon- which all previously led to huge amounts of games being cancelled) GWs release schedule/FOMO is terrible for the community for so many reasons and people need to stop defending it. Cancelling the Eight Lamentations was a trash move on GWs part. Not telling anyone, releasing a short story for it and having the 2nd book up for preorder on amazon for up to almost a year after cancellation was just pure spiteful. GWs lack of ACTUAL communication is probably the worst in the industry. Its so bad that they pay a social media team to disguise how bad they are at communication with their customer base. Almost everything that came out in the first 2-3 years for AoS would have seen life in WFB had it continued on, even if some fans deny that some of these concepts would not fit in the old world.

I'm not a tournament player in the slightest and there are many reasons for that, but prices are in those reasons for sure. A small cheap €5 ticket doesn't seem worth it- what can a tournament provide at this cost that I can't already provide myself in my own home. An expensive €100 ticket doesn't seem worth it- Sure now they can probably afford nice terrain and there might be a spot of lunch but for a €100 I can buy or build a new bit of terrain, have lunch at home and still have some cash left over. I'm not even sure that there is a sweet spot, where a tournament would be cost effective enough to be both worth the time and money to go to and still feel like its good value. (another good reason I'd not pay to go to a tournament is things like that tournament a few years back in London where the terrain was a bunch some old unpainted packaging. I felt sorry for anyone paying for that)

Whilst this is totally true, sadly it does come with the addition of *always hobby for yourself but be prepared to (possibly) be ostracised within the the wider warhammer community for going against what they deem as normality within the hobby. I think most people will just paint for themselves- but it must be nice to be able to enjoy the social aspect of the hobby without feeling put out for not painting to the imagined standard that exists. I do think that a sizeable chunk of the community harbours these imagery standards and overly detailed models are partially to blame.

I've gone mad for older models or alternatives and really only buy GW stuff now for the more unique items that you just can't get anywhere else. I've fallen in love with painting stuff from northstar & Victrix. GW models are great fun to build but don't suit painting large armies for me any more. I've been spending an obscene amount on older GW models and they are a breeze to paint up compare the their modern counterparts. (And often I pay less for the old metal sculpts than I have for the new plastics ones that are part of a current range!) I really noticed it when I was painting my undead army for a WFB Albion project. I could knock a batch of Warlord games skeletons out in a weekend. Took me over a week to do the same amount amount of models for a nighthaunt chainrasp unit, and their colour scheme uses a lot less colours! All their chains go up inside their ghost sheet. They are hard to get too when assembled and you can't really paint them in sub-assemblies as then you end up with that ghastly gap going down their head/back. The details are often very fragile (like the little keys) and a lot of the models have a ton of details that they just don't need in the first place- like the vines and flowers they have all over their bases (or over the models themselves, like in case of the not current but last set of GW skeletons & knights) The new Slaanesh models look lovely, but there is no way I'm painting them for a Slaanesh mortal army. I'm actually planning on using more victrix historical kits for most of my chaos mortal units, with some parts from things like frostgrave and oathmark kits to jazz them up a bit. Not only will be faster, it will look unique on the table top and has saved me a ton of money by only using one or two of the new models as the champions. It doesn't help that I'm the main painter for my group- I do all the terrain and a good deal of all the models as well (I do tend to paint some loaner armies for things that I'd love to paint but can't really justify collecting fully for myself!). And as I'm currently building us a HUGE necromunda table, which is taking a lot of my time, and I'm suffering with an eye injury (due in part to almost two years in lockdown and not helped by having gotten older) I've had to admit to needing any shortcut I can take on mass army painting for AoS/WFB/Oathmark. I dread to think how overly designed new old world minis will be. It worked for a time with AoS as originally they were not pushing it as a mass battle game (in my opinion anyway) in the same way that it is now or that WFB is know for. Its easier to afford more time for a skirmish mini when you only have 8 to paint, but less so when you need 20-40 models to run a unit. (As a side note- I'm aware that its entirely possible to ignore details that you want to or just drybrush stuff to get it done fast. But some of us find that harder to do- if its there we feel it needs to be painted. If you want to know what its like for those that do feel things need to be painted to feel complete- paint yourself a super detailed model up, but ignore everything but the most basic areas and then post it online- the amount of people that will call out the 'unfinished' parts can be be a battle in and of itself. GW have condition a lot of its audience to feel like they need to paint like the box and it can be very difficult to push past that in this hobby.)

I stopped using the forum as much as I once did before. I found myself getting drawn into some of the more negative conversations, as I've not been keen on how AoS has been sold in the past two years and also happy to have continued to play an earlier edition which stirs up less than pleasant opinions at times, so stepped back as I'd rather enjoy the good bits of the hobby and not add to the negativity as I was finding myself doing. But having decided to dip back in and take a look at what people are doing with third edition and find out if I'd mellowed on it, but in just a couple of visits here I've already seen the thread where someone is advocating bullying people for being socially inept and now this gem of a thread. 🤦‍♂️

Thats a nice bit of art, though it still has that hazy/fog look about it they seem to do so often now. I'd love to see them do some more stuff like this (not cluttered) but go for some really sharp and detailed art styles. This looks like it could be really interesting as a show and I'd love to watch it but I still have zero interest in paying for W+ or subscription services. Would rather just buy the episodes to keep. Seems unlikely they will do that anytime soon though.

🤦‍♂️ This is horrible. Fun at the expense of others. What a wonderful community.

That sounds about right to be honest. I left the UK in 2015, after tax & NI was taken off I was left around about £12,500pa and I was on higher than minimum wage at the time. Even with the adjustments at £17k now, I would had dropped my job instantly- which was gruelling and didn't come with any of the perks of working for a hobby company, and I'd not at all sniffed at getting 20k for the privileged. I still think the wage is awful, but I can honestly see how they get away with it. There are more than enough people in the UK that have spent a good portion of their life being told they can do anything they want to as long as they work hard enough- only to find that they will be massively underpaid for trying to do so, especially when you work for big corporations. We have seen a mass exodus of staff from the studio team in the past few years, but not to defend GW- but it can't all be bad. I know one person that has worked for them since the 90s and is still very happily working for them. I suspect he is paid decent enough for what he does. If current staff are not allowed to talk about it we will only ever have a bunch of twitter horror stories to go on. I think GW does a lot of stuff worthy of criticising, but £20k wages isn't the worst thing by far, even if it is pretty naff.

I wonder if part of it is not wanting to risk the dream that 'you too could be part of the badly paid work force, if you just paint hard enough and love the company even harder'. £20k is still well above what an awful lot of people earn in the UK though, especially when doing something you love. I'm not without sympathy, but the difference between that and actual minimum wage staff who are doing hard graft full time for £12k is shocking. Both are dreadful wages for sure, but that is how corporations get away with it- there will always be someone worse off that will do the job for less than we'd expect.

The fact that 'new' GW is praised and people are thinking that their dealings with IP laws are justified, yet it was 'new' GW that went after a very small company for having a name too similar to 'warhammer'. Not the same name, just 'Similar'. That tells me all I need to know about these changes. The fact that GW built their games and universes on the backs of other IPs, pop culture, historic tales & fables and community input doesn't seem to even register with them any more. I love the hobby. Its peaceful, relaxing, and its my one interaction with people that doesn't come with some ounce of responsibility attached to it, and I know there plenty of others like me in the same boat. I will continue to buy warhammer models that I like the look of and I will continue to enjoy playing in the warhammer sandbox. But I don't give a damn about the company. There is no humanity or soul left in there. I'm as indifferent to them now as I would be amazon or sony or any other huge company that could up and vanish one day. I will go out of my to support other wargaming companies, but not GW. To me, its coincidental that they supply hobby products, they are a volume shifter. They exist to sell as much stock as they can, rinse and repeat. They could sell any other type of product and nothing would change with them. I suspect they will pick and choose when to act on these new 'guidelines'. Someone reading every page from their most recent book on youtube disguised as a 'review' that has 100k subscribers is going to continue to do so, as long as they continue to agree that new hype product is BEST NEW PRODUCT BUY BUY BUY. I don't see the same leniency being given to a 300 sub hobbyist that happens to put up some points in the army list for a battle report, or someone doing painting videos that uses the warhammer logo on the thumbnail, or if they criticise any of the freebies they send out. I would say that time will tell, but we've already seem multiple instances of them being heavy handed, so I already expect the worst to come from this. If I'm wrong, then it remains as it is now and its all good but if I'm right, I'm not going to be disappointed as I expected it. I'm just glad that they are about 20 years too late to crack down on this completely. For now I'm happy to remember them as the company that once published rule articles like 'B'ufi the Vampire Slayer' and not get too caught up in their quest to make warhammer an all encompassing range of products with heavily guarded IP.

There is also the huge amount of people that follow the 40k lore and video games but wouldn't know a miniature if they saw one. I work with several people that have read more of the Horus Heresy than I have but have never heard of Age of Sigmar and only have the vaguest idea of warhammer stores or warhammer fantasy as a game.

'Russian alternative' is just a store/company. They have a webpage. Nothing unrepeatable about the company at all!

If you like original big hats over the newer style forgeworld did, get them from the Russian Alternative. Insanely cheap and really, really good service. Models are insanely crisp and detailed. I put off buying them for a long time as I'm not a fan of resin, but so glad I got them now. They can be slow to arrive since covid trashed the post, but their service is amazing and they will make sure you get them. Took them from april to Dec to get me my order last year, but they were fantastic about it.

I've just brought the long oop wood elf army box and a huge, huge amount of chaos dwarves. Whilst I can understand the need for GW to remove rules for items they no longer sell (Due to the copyright issues of the past) and the need to refresh model lines every few years, I will never understand the communities reaction to is as being one of 'Oh no can't use those models any more'. If someone was to say that older models can't be used any more in game (Simple due to the commercial decisions made by GW), they would receive a lifetime ban from my groups club for sure. Here, the term 'squatted' just means to get destroyed by someone fielding their squat army in games of Epic 40k.

I can't really answer on the sales of Dominion for anything other than myself/my group didn't buy a single item from the new release. I was set to buy two sets (one for my personal collection and to split with my misses (stormcast) and a loaner army (orcs) for the more casual members of my group) but didn't get anything in the end. The reasons being are: Sick of the FOMO sales tactics. There is no reason to have a 2 week pre-order window and then rile everyone up to rush in and buy it at 10am on the first Saturday morning. There is no reason to release a set that is to set up a three year edition and call it a launch edition, just to push more sales just in case they release it all separately at obscene prices a month later like with the 40k set. FLGS taking pre-orders on the pre-orders. I saw several (stores I would use before brexit anyway) takings lists of names of people that they were going to allow to pre-order on the day or putting up posts almost two weeks before pre-orders start saying all copies accounted for already. I do understand the need for them to take care of their physically local customers first, but doesn't mean I have to think this system is acceptable. Their archaic store/sales system. There is no reason to be doing pre-orders this way on an item they've already had made and boxed up, they could just sell it. 10am Saturday morning releases are baffling when its their busiest time but also when head office/IT/support are all away. The Queue system is a band aid on the real problem- they can't handle the traffic they've created, the Queue system is a punishment on the customers time rather than them bothering to fix it. Three year edition cycle. There is no way that the majority of players are playing so many games of AoS that it becomes stale, boring and broken and needs refreshing to make it interesting. There are over 20 battletomes, and even if you ignore the 100s of thematic styled lists you could make, that still equates to hundreds of games to play against all the other armies. Even if your group only collect a handful of the armies and ignoring narrative gaming, there is still the potential to play a lot of varied games. We are still playing 1st Ed and there are still match ups with armies we currently own that have not been fit in to the schedule yet (Ignore the last years issues ofc). Sick of the zero day rules FAQs and updates as well. I understand these are better than the alternative- Eg. bretonnian and skaven armybooks in 8th Ed WFB. But there must be some middle ground that GW could find. Complete radio silence over Cursed City and then releasing a tiny selection of the models for the cost of the whole game. Disgusting. (I expected this to have followed suit, only surprisingly here we are and they are still selling copies) Community attitudes of 'if you don't like it, leave the hobby'. I've seen this posted to people no less than 5 times alone this week and it hurts the hobby way more than someone shouting their complaints online does. Either let people get it off their chest or ignore it. It might be empty shouting into the void and GW won't listen, but if there is a chance they do listen (which some people keep claiming they do now) then it must be better for any issue to be raised with them. Emailing is a good idea, but there is nothing wrong with people hearing about issues on social media as that does tend to spur more action from companies. I have to assume some copies were not sold to those that 'didn't like it and left the hobby'. The 'You're doing it wrong' crowd or the 'It has to be official/support the game you claim to love' crowds. I saw someone brand new get booed out the hobby for making a seraphon monster out of a dino toy by someone claiming it was disgusting and an insult to other players to not use models. By a person who next posted a shot of his entirely 3d Printed and unpainted Seraphon army.🙄 Its no bother if you do feel that you only want to use current models/official products, but stop policing other peoples hobby. 'You won't be able to use that in a GW store/Tournament' is pretty much a catchphrase at this point, just being chanted at anyone and everyone. New edition model and rules replacement always make this worse for a time. Some people must be sick of working hard on a project only to be told they can't use it anymore. People are price/value conscious in so many other areas of life but are not allowed to be so in a hobby? (I always like being called cheap when I'm seen using Victrix models for WFB/AoS armies, yet I've spent far more on a single Empire army made from Victrix stuff than several of the 'pure' AoS armies I have. Not finishing the Eight Lamentations/No more J.Reynolds books/Cities of Sigmar stuff. I'm still pretty hacked off over this. I loved that first book and had no interest in a Gotrek rehash (I love the original WFB books mind) which came out in its place. This was a while ago now but its still left a bad taste in my mouth and has affected all my purchases since. Think I've only brought one other AoS book since this happened. So no interest in the new book, even though I'd love to read more Orc based stuff. So no dominion book for me. The fact I can probably pick it up in a months time for half the price. People are buying up so much stock on the bases of FOMO there has been very little (Cursed City being one and limited edition HH novels another) that does actually gain a ridiculous amount of increased cost, that I can't pick it up in trade groups once the guilt buyers all looking to shift it. GW stopping being so customer focused. I've had some really crumby dealings with them over the last year (three years if I was to include the ridiculous year long, 50+ email chain between me, them and hachette to get them to cancel my subscription for repeatedly sending out the wrong issues/no issues of the 40k books). We had so many orders withheld because of their stock control problems and instead of reaching out to tell us so, they've left us to chase them multiple times. Covid/Brexit excuses only go so far when some of the issue was things like taking several weeks to refund the limited edition 40k book I brought and only found out they over sold it and never bothered to tell me (giving them weeks of allowance for delivery before chasing it due to accepting their was delays) The old world announcement took some focus off AoS for sure. I'm sure there isn't many, but some people are holding out to see what the old world game brings. I've seen some of the folks on the WFB forums that like AoS hold off as they can continue to play WFB and see no reason to get AoS 3rd Ed if the old world does appear next year. And finally, the most important one. The negativity I'm bringing in myself. Its definitely got worse since covid for me- I've been stuck at home since last March with the most stressful work load I've ever had on top of that and talking about the hobby is been one of the only escapes from how swamped I've been, but as the issues have mounted up with GW the more I'm posting negative comments. I think a clean break with GW games doesn't mean I have to stop playing warhammer- I just need to stop following their releases and only go and look to buy stuff as and when I want something new. By not buying this set, the next hype release won't be as much of an interest to me and the game will start to fizzle off. I think this list/post here is a prime example of this. I took a look over my old posts from Warseer last night and I think my biggest gripe in all my years there was that GW never sent an order of books out and I had to chase it but they had new copies out to me within the week. Most of my posts there was ten years of saying 'fantastic, I love that paint job/conversion' or similar. The painting boards here don't get anywhere near the traffic that the this part of the forum does and being desperate to chat to people about the hobby, I've gravitated towards it to get conversations in. Even in facebook groups, complaints threads get the most traffic with very few hobby threads stirring up enough conversation to keep the posts on feeds. I honestly think that GW likes the negativity as it keeps people focused on the them/their games and pushes threads on feeds a lot more than nice looking models do now. (Yes, I'm wearing my tin foil hat) I'd very much like to go back to saying 'Fantastic' on as many hobby posts as I can than getting annoyed at commercial side of the hobby that has changed for the worst but will never go back to how it used to be now. If that means buying up 2nd hand minis for WFB, buying alternatives like oathmark, Victrix and warlord games, and only buying those AoS minis that come out now that I can retro fit into 1st Ed or can use in other projects, well all the better for me. I now no longer have any interest in defending my stance to those that claim I'm not 'supporting the game I claim to love' by not meta/edition chasing. 🤷‍♂️ (This one isn't really part of the list, but as a Skaven player I couldn't leave a list as being '12' items! 😁) We are only a small group of players that play at my house (covid permitting) but between us that is several hundred €s that we won't be sinking into this edition. We'd have done what we did during 2nd- buy anything we like the look off but stick with 1st Ed rules. With 2nd Ed we spent a lot on new models & battletomes just because we liked them. But we discussed it and are happy buying alternatives or 2nd hand models and ignoring GW releases for the foreseeable future.

Its very likely that is exactly going to be what it is- pay the sub to be allowed to pay for a model. Its likely to be seen as a reward system that might convince people not to pirate the shows. I'm still hesitant with the whole thing- I'd love to be completely wrong, but I see this as a move to move 'free' hobby content off things sites like youtube and paywall it. I much prefer hobby content that's made for fun over the 'I do this full time from the support of my patrons' content and expect this to affect both massively in the long run.

I hope that they put out some way of grabbing the individual shows someone may want to watch. I've zero interest in a subscriber or streaming based option. I'd happily buy a Bluray or digital Download of Eisenhorn or if they made a Gotrek & Felix adaptation. The problem will be is that anything other than a digital release will probably be months before we see a release, as its likely they will want to push W+, meaning anything is going to be spoiled pretty quickly and long before people can buy it on its own.