RuneBrush

Really difficult questions! I thoroughly enjoy most stories written by Chris Wraight, his portrayal of White Scars and Space Wolves has been fantastic in both 30k & 40k eras. ABD & Graham McNeal sits up there too without a doubt, although that feels like a disservice to the many other amazing authors I've read and enjoyed. AoS wise, pretty much anything by Josh Reynolds. I've enjoyed the newer Gotrek stories, Callis & Toll and the Eight Lamentions. If I had to put my money on one book, I'd say The Undying King though. Technically it's Age of Myth, but still in the mortal realms 😉

This is part of the reason why I created this thread. I'm genuinely curious how we seem to have ended up at 2000 points being perceived as the "normal" or only size of an army when very clearly from this thread, lots of people actually really enjoy games at smaller sizes. Smaller sized games generally means a quicker game, less models needed and requires different tactics and generalship to win. What I also find curious is that when it launched AoS actually had no points and GW added them because players pushed for them and created their own points systems, so I don't think that 2000 is something GW actually stuck down as the standard (albeit they are now because that's where the pointer has settled) and in fact the first pointed game they ran at WHW was 1000 points. Is this necessarily a bad thing though? Should a handful of armies stay at the top of the competitive scene because they're popular? I've been in the hobby for a long time now and seen the rise and fall of many armies due to changes in the rules and associated army books, I can 100% say that it's not unprecedented to see an army go from smashing face to the middle/bottom of the pack. Yes there is a load of backlash, but it lasts a few weeks until people spot the latest fomo army and grab that.

Was just reading through the thread on the recently announced GW price increase and had a bit of a random thought. With the overall cost of an army increasing when purchased from scratch, why as gamers do we seem to constantly end up with the scenario that 2000 points is the defacto size to play games at? Specifically thinking of organised events more than anything, but as a wider line of thinking when writing lists etc. Is now a good time to rethink this almost self-imposed point level and try to encourage slightly smaller games to be played. It would not only lower the monetary cost, but also speed games up (less to move and think about), plus it would certainly shake the "meta" up - you'd not see a 4 mega-gargant army for example.

Sadly it's not just the US that is in this situation. I think many parts of the world have been simply surviving as best they can, but the past few years peoples finances have become more and more tight.

Ouch! The company I work at (UK based) has had a container of goods from China go from $2500 to $18000, but your supplier certainly has it a worse. In short - we don't know. GW has a massive amount of overhead involved in the creation of each product, with multiple teams of individuals involved at each stage, plus places like WHW to run. We also don't know the actual manufacturing cost (other than the costs people pluck out the air). The UK also has the highest business rates in within Europe - so models actually cost GW to store. In reality, I suspect the true answer is something between A and B. The real question is at what point does hobbyists wages hit a point where they can't afford luxuries such as miniatures or game systems. Don't understand what you mean by the price rise on metals? There aren't many metal miniatures in GW's range any more (think they're mostly in LotR).

+++ MOD HAT +++ Please note there is a thread regarding the price rises so please avoid discussing them in the rumour thread folks 😉

As an addition to this, in GW's recent 6-montly financial report they did highlight transportation/logistics having increased by a pretty significant amount too. All things considering I feel the increase could well have been worse.

We've managed to keep this thread pretty on track so far, but I fear discussions on chess may derail it 😉

Just going to point out that GW never show anything that isn't due out in the next 3 months. We also have Adepticon at the end of March when I highly suspect we'll have another preview. Just because we've not seen something doesn't necessarily mean we won't see it 😉 I do understand the frustration at no sign of any battletomes (as many of you know, I have quite a number of Nighthaunt!)

+++ MOD HAT +++ Nudge back onto topic please. A lot of posts trying to justify why one view is correct over another. AoS is a hobby and we're all entitled to our own opinions - sometimes we just need to agree to disagree on some things.

1. Prices increasing with each new release. In truth, the prices have gone up less than my grocery shop, so not really noticed it much. I'd still prefer battleline units to be less detailed and packed in 20's though 😁 2. Rules bloated. It sometimes takes more than 4 ooks / releases to have all of the rules together. Although there may be some circumstances where you may need that many books, that's not normal. You normally can get away with your battletome and the generals handbook - in truth with careful use of warscroll cards along with online resources or a photocopier, you can really cut down the amount of stuff you have to card around. 3. Power level increasing with new releases, leaving older armies behind. This happens pretty much in every single game (including computer). I don't think AoS is particularly horrific for it and often it seems to comes because of the cool factor - e.g. wouldn't it be cool to have an army entirely of dragons? It certainly isn't a game of escalation as I've seen in the past. 4. GW basically neglecting certain factions, wich just don't get anything new and up to date. There are some factions that are in need of an update, I'll give you that. I feel AoS grew too quickly and we now have a number of armies that are far smaller than they deserve. However AoS is only 6/7 years old - I can remember waiting longer than that for an update to a Codex. We're seeing a lot of small updates being released in White Dwarf which is pretty cool and helping breath life into some factions. 5. Models being locked behind paywalls, or big box sets, for a long period of time. Some models are, but the time between the box set and individual release seems to have reduced and now looking at ~6 months. That said, I still want to be able to buy a Khorgorath on it's own... 6. FAQ debacle. That one seems to have passed me by? 7. Massive FOMO It's called marketing and it's employed by almost every company out there... Sorry, I've just reread my post and realised that comes across as very flippant. Most companies that sell non-essential products will use fomo tactics to sell products - I'm certainly guilty of buying into them on GW's part, with "free" items when you buy direct etc. Broadly speaking you need to think with your wallet rather than heart. Why do you accept this mess? Looking for individual opinions here. I think our definition of mess must differ somewhat. I've been in the hobby for the past 30 years and can honestly say I've never seen it quite as healthy or popular as it currently is. Yes, there's plenty of scope to improve, but as a game system, AoS isn't in a bad place.

+++ MOD HAT +++ Come on folks - you've been asked to bring this back onto topic - happy to issue a few warning points to those who aren't paying attention...

Has to be the models and background lore for me. I know that if Ogors or Chaos Dwarves get released and I like the aesthetic, it'll be very hard to resist doing a path to glory force or army. What I do know though is I need to reduce my existing pile of plastic if something new were to come along because I feel like I could open up a GW store with the amount of stuff I have...

Great fun! We successfully cleared out the denizens and all gained a level 😊 Setup wise, I put the board sections on a desk that sits in front of a window - I then put a web camera on a stand on a box over the boards. Bit precarious and had to counterweight it with a bottle of water. Was about 3 ft above the boards and then used Zoom on PC for that and my iPad next to the box to actually stream/watch the others

Probably worth mentioning that the team writing the rules now aren't the same people who wrote the rules 6 years ago and certainly now includes a number of people who do and have played games on the competitive scene. The books are written 2 to 3 years in advance, so there's a certain amount of crystal balling needed to try and make sure that they don't dominate the competitive scene. I'm also going to be controversial and say that there are more games played in a non-competitive setting than ones played in one - the difference is that friendly games played with a mate don't have the visibility that a gaming club or 100 person tournament has.

There's lots of ways it could be implemented in truth, but with varying levels of complexity. The way it worked in WHFB was that you had limits on the percentage of points you could spend on something (e.g. no more than 25% elite troops) and then each individual unit had a hard limitation (e.g. 0 ~ 2). It wasn't perfect, but generally prevented one super unit being spammed. AoS has a much easier system that doesn't actually require maths, the downside is that it makes it a lot more difficult to prevent people creating an army that consists entirely of one unit - even more so in that some generals open up certain units as becoming battleline. Limiting a warscroll to being no more than 50% of your army would actually be the easiest counter (we've already got that for a single unit in some circumstances), but it would break some armies from being viable.

Bring back maximum unit limits is my answer. Appreciate it's not a popular one, but certain units just shouldn't be seen multiple times in one army. Even 40k's very crude rule of 3 (where you can only take a unit 3 times) tempers the min-max mentality that we see more and more frequently in wargaming.

I did complete mine! And now have a mountain of grey plastic I'm not quite sure what I'm doing with 🤣 Have started the 40k version too as clearly I'm a glutton for punishment... I'm sure we'll see an AoS one towards the end of Imperium. Gut feeling says it'll be Stormcast again and logic says Kruleboyz as they've tended to follow the "current" game box set when they land.

Fashionably late to the party! Happy New Year folks - here's to a 2022 filled with hobby goodness.

That doesn't seem to be the case based on comments on various Social Media platforms. I actually think the controversy and people who did get the game, painting it and saying what a fun game it is, has actually made it more attractive. Time will tell in fairness! And I've scheduled in a zoom based game of this on the 2nd! Woohoo!

Quite often plastics manufacturers get the raw material granule form because it takes less energy to melt 😊 - rather boringly I almost worked at a company that made plastic products when I left school.

I also think it suffered because Kruleboyz are radically different to the Brian Nelson Orruk/Orc/Ork design. Within my local group, the aesthetic is quite marmite

My guess is that it's the Vampire for Aeronautica. The highlights on the exhaust are too chunky for it to be a 28mm model (unless it's on something like a jet pack) and we're missing a transport from the AI line of Eldar planes.

Just thought of a new unpopular opinion - I really don't like meta lists like the one from WarCom because it doesn't show the sub-factional varieties. Ogor as an example can be Gutbuster or Beastclaw 😉 That said, I do think they quite accurately highlight the half a dozen battletomes that are really struggling (yeah, two of mine)

I think the scale issue varies from model to model - I've a blood reaver that seems massive in comparison to an old Chaos Warrior for example, but other models the difference is barely noticeable and certainly models released in the 3 to 5 years prior to End Times had grown a bit 😊