I hate that i may have been right

[Muninwing]

At the end of July, i wrote this:

“i have a guess that the Age of Sigmar will eventually become something interesting, maybe even worth playing. but i started seeing what it was, heard that there was no WHF 9th, and wrote it off.”

the other day, i looked at the AoS discussion board, and the first post i saw was titled “i am losing interest” with the next titled something like "so nobody has posted here in a week" (and to their credit, even reading it later, nobody had except in the pinned posts above) -- and it made me sad on a deep level.

see, WHF and 40k are, for me, more than just games. they are creative outlets, a reminder of good times and bad -- my wife and i started dating when i was a redshirt, and we spent a lot of time in our first year doing projects together while i worked 60+ hour weeks. it was an escape from toxic roommate situations, a bonding experience with friends, an expander of social circles, and generally a positive and beneficial influence on me, even when i may have spent too much time or too much money on one project or another.

when i’ve stopped playing, it has been out of frustration… or due to a lack of opportunity… or because life gets in the way. never due to boredom.

ever since i started exploring the larger-than-life fluff created for the two leading games GW has created, i’ve been absorbed. some better than others. some writers are better than others (and some are as good as modern bestsellers, while others are as bad as some modern bestsellers... Abnett’s Grisham to Goto’s Meyer). the idea of losing interest in a game that should be riveting and fun, and in a world that is nuanced and thorough yet with plenty of room left for expansion, it boggles my mind that someone could get bored with it.

then i remember…

End Times was rushed. Age of Sigmar killed a whole developed world. change in gameplay, change in fundamental structures, change in genre, all led toward the new game being fundamentally different in nearly every way. the rallying cry of “rank and flank forever!” faded gradually, KoW and Oldhammer ate those still kicking (my local group has a 6th ed league running with houserules to tweak certain armybooks), and GW is still embargoing the results of AoS. It might have succeeded more than the stuffed shirts had expected, but rather than admit that they had made bad policies that poisoned the original, they just set the bar really low and accepted failure. because it sells models.

today (i started writing this a bit ago) there was a frontpage article about seeing WHF8th online for sale, and wondering whether it had been taken down and put back up. ultimately, it was grasping at straws, hope beyond reason that somehow GW would “see the light” and release the WHF 9th rules we secretly think they stashed somewhere. there were rumors just before ET of the Brettonian books already having been printed, and sitting in a warehouse (though i do not think they were terribly credible, since they disappeared pretty quickly), and i know a number of Brett fans who decided to just quit the game when ET razed all they loved in the game almost as an afterthought, instead of giving them the update they were long in wait for.

GW is really bad about rumors. rumors are a tool to use, not a runaway train to shape the hopes of your community. but therein lies the real issue -- they see their product like any other, like gaskets or widgets or wrenches. there isn’t a gasket aficionados club meeting every week to use their widgets. there aren’t online message boards with the volume of stories and arguments and support for wrenches. nobody has written a novel series that i am aware of about the merits and flaws and underlying archetypes of various brands of gaskets, read by people who may have gasket brand tattoos or display cases full of their own gasket collections at home.

i would lose interest in gaskets. i already have in widgets. i like Malifaux in concept, but i rarely play because it has not succeeded in capturing my interest. had there been more to the background, more to the story, more influence locally, and more of a narrative campaign to go along with the game itself, i’d probably still be playing that week after week. in contrast, even though i took the 40k’s 5.5 era off out of annoyance at the obvious bad quality control of OP lists and bad support, i found that i will come back to it in different forms time and time again. there’s a weight to it that gaskets do not have. and how sad that WHF had that weight and that story, but AoS cut itself off from effectively utilizing any of it? it is no wonder why many communities have struggled or rebelled against AoS as an alternative to other games.

community is something that love of the game and competitive play created. it does not need to be WAAC, or fluffy, or anything but what you make it. it doesn’t need to be perfect. but to even allow it to seem that they show active scorn for veteran players is the worst business idea ever -- loyal customers are easier to rely on than courting new ones, and giving sustained options to loyal customers is far more guaranteed than getting a first-timer to invest more.

not everything needs weight. i mentioned that Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” lacks gravitas for me -- it’s a great story of revenge and plotting, and it has its own significance and place in the western canon, but in the end it’s a fun fluff piece by a superior writer, who just so happens to write fun adventure stories instead of weighty atmospheric masterpieces. I cheered when i first read it, and i remember the mental picture i had from outside the Morcerf estate of Fernand’s pistol-report, the intrigue of the voices at the coliseum before you learn of Edmond’s full reinvention of himself, the full ghastly realization of the Marquise’s horrible nature... but it taught me no lesson i didn’t already know. that one in particular suffers from some structural issues -- having been written on-call and released chapter-by-chapter in a periodical instead of treated as one complete draft. earlier, i asserted that AoS had not been given the time to grow in weight and mass, but that it hadn’t was a critical flaw of their upper management, and a sign that they were releasing an incomplete product. now, we have a product months later without any added weight, but over-the-top attempts at storytelling that hasn’t managed to add significance or interest to the game at all. heavy-handed usage of old character ideas without actual development does not develop the new generation of heroes for this new era of time.

we see three months in passing, and we see no better fluff, no rational cosmic definition, no overarcing plan, and it still smacks of hollowness. and people are getting bored. i know that some people were instantly against the idea of AoS, and that others loved to see WHF be something (even something new) so flocked to the game even in new form. reports of play trailing off have become the norm, even if a few groups have been revitalized -- but GW is stoically silent. almost as if they have no idea what to do now that their panicked plan b has stalled out, and without an actual unified idea of how to move the product forward while putting as little of their resources as can be managed. just as the Stormcast seem neat at first -- Knight-Einherjar, Sentient Steel Golem veterans of a past age, militant angels in chivalric finery, how could someone make that boring? but they have no downside, no flaw… they have no personality past being nameless soldiers in empty suits of armor. instead of being parallels of storied SM dreadnoughts awakened from slumber, they are blank rank-and-file necrons for all their personality is dictated by atmosphere instead of detail.

don’t get me wrong… as much as i feel that the animosity that GW fostered was (a) completely predictable (b) completely avoidable and (c) utterly their own fault, i know that sometimes ideas just don’t work as planned, regardless of how thorough the work before the release. but if a good product and a cohesive plan can still fail, what about such an obviously halfhearted one?

it could have been ok.

i would have eaten my words -- and been glad to do so -- had they turned it around. whether they responded by adopting Azyrcomp (which, IMO, is the best-written part of any rules applied to AoS... and it's not even written by GW) as an official metric, by releasing fluff-based components with quality writing that fleshed out the vast blank spots with at very least a general concept. we've never been treated to a Cathay book, but we know it exists... and we know of Hrud and Interex and Ghoul Stars and the insides of lower levels of a hive city without actually reading about them in detail. one "this is the new planes atlas" announcement and i'd have been optimistic that AoS and its new world were not going to just get boring.

It had no weight at release. it is fun, i'll admit -- i mildly enjoyed the few games i've played. but it has no staying power without real support. and "support" does not mean just reinforcing the two sides of the board game starter.

let's give it another three months and see what happens. will it have added enough significance and gravity to withstand the post-winter lull? to weather the shift as spring reminds us that there is an outside, and some of us get distracted by other hobbies or other people? will it be able to sustain a summer campaign... or a lack of one, should GW choose not to give the support a new game needs to establish itself?

just in case the rumor of today -- the "specialist games department" announcement -- has any truth to it... maybe AoS could be beefed up in nature by support from other types and styles of play? maybe AoS could become a specialist game, and some alternate rules that support troop blocks could be promotes? maybe the reverse -- a sort of "AoS apoc" game could come out that uses rank-and file?

at this point, nobody knows what GW is going to do. from the looks of it, even them.

[Muninwing]

at this point, nobody knows what GW is going to do. from the looks of it, even them.

primarily, i am dissatisfied with the fluff. the game can be "not for me" and i'm fine with that. skirmish high-fantasy can be adapted to, or given up... but the death of a quality world and its replacement with such a trite excuse for a setting is offensive to me on many levels.

it could have been okay.

there are plenty of directions they could have chosen.

1. bad trope used well

as much as i hate the “it was all a dream” trope, had the End Times been revealed at the end to be a prophetic dream that Teclis had while searching for the secrets of true magic, prompting him to remove himself and others from the timestream, and changing the course of the Old World away from that terrible end, that would have (a) opened up AoS to be about what happens to these great heroes in a new world outside of the material plane, (b) explored the power vacuum and its effects if all the most important SCs from WHF disappeared (and others rose to take their place), (c) changed the focus and effect on the core game. it could even have been that the rise of Nagash was a prophecy that foretold the oncoming storm, and that the next large campaign was the “good guys” allying to create new conquest into unexplored lands (Cathay, Ind, and Araby were all ripe for the picking). or a smaller skirmish-based game focusing on the high-fantasy questing of small groups of heroes or villains searching for older-world artifacts to find the locations of the mansions that prosessed Nagash’s rib, eye, heart, fingernail, etc.

along the way you could ally with vampires. or something.

2. multiverse
if not that… what about the revelation of Sigmar at the end, floating in chaos, that there are countless other planes in which Chaos is fighting to corrupt and overcome… and he leaves one destroyed world to find a new one similar to his own to take the fight to. reinvent the political structures, recombine the various groups, rename a few, and create a new rich backdrop full of political and social depth, and show that Chaos has been running rampant until Sigmar showed up with his army of fallen heroes of legend… but they could not stay in the world unless they gave up their power and encased themselves in metal bodies that would eventually be unrepairable…

heroic sacrifice, not unassailable god-golems.

imagine THOSE showing up in a slightly modified reality from the WHF universe, maybe like the old RPG, maybe like an “ultimate” version (a la marvel) to do much of what the old world did. in the town square of Nuln, a pinioned and hammer-wielding regiment of armored angels descends on pillars of fire and declares the city under martial law… Karl Franz may believe in the sanctity of SIgmar, but may not agree with Sigmar’s supposed creations turning his provinces into ground zero for a war not guaranteed to happen. now, there’s interesting tensions and dynamics. and if you want to put lizardmen into spaceship-pyramids, do it right then -- as a response to what is not of the natural order, they activate ancient god-engines left for them by their creators, and they fight their world’s invasion by ANY external source, be they angel-equivalents, or daemons, or breeding experiments of Skaven or Druchii. have them be the preservers of the planet’s status quo, the Wood Elves the protectors of its undespoiled wildness, and the Skaven be an analogy for urban decay and pollution instead of the pointlessness of stepping into Nurgle’s territory.

now we have tension, changing alliances, and a furthering of the plot. perhaps with the anti-lizardmen and the god-golems as players, Archaeon’s victory is not guaranteed without Nagash’s enlistment on the side of corrosion… unless the Seraphon (with their terrible, confusing, rule-of-cool nonsense name, given the angelic motifs of the Stormcast) can manage to be pointed at chaos without slaughtering their potential allies… unless the High Elves or their Wood Elf cousins can be swayed to fight alongside their Dark Elf cousins.

3. adding on to either one...
in a couple years, fast-forward to a new campaign that does a similar revelatory experience with Archaeon’s dreams, showing him understanding the underpinnings of the true struggle and finding a loophole. have every year be the equivalent of five in-game years, or ten, and regularly release changes to SCs as some of them get old and die and others rise.

4. the Terminator path
or what about revisiting an earlier time in WHF history -- Sigmar loops back in time like the end of Necroscope (or something as good with a better-written ending) and brings his army back to an earlier age -- disrupting the alliance between Elves and Man, affecting all the history and changing it for dramatically different results. then… fast forward 100 years, and see what happens.

because...
all the potential they incorporated into the “there are realms…” idea has been wasted. all of the “epic heroes reborn quest for the hammer of their god!” storyline falls flat when you have no reason to care about their successes. all the focus to establish the Stormcast has instead taken focus away from the rest of the game -- like, we literally have no idea even where the non-Storm/Khorne forces are, how Chaos has so many footsoldiers, or what they are fighting for. there's not a single indicator that the society left over is worth saving, that there are people to save, or that any of the other factions exist in more form than in roving warbands in a postapocalyptic fight to the death. and as much as the lizardmen in their flying pyramids from space have now descended, even they are reliant on mediocre storytelling and a lack of new depth. plus, it keeps them isolated and unintegrated within the greater fabric of the world, adding no complexity nor weight to what could have been a turning point that revealed more of the blank background.

So… what now? now that plenty of places have dropped off their support, that the numbers are in to GW HQ (even if not to us), that other games are sniping their players, and that the planned releases are coming to less and less fanfare, what’s the plan? i hope that they keep the game alive for those who bought in… but what about the rest of the world? what about the people who licensed their product, only to find that their loyal fanbase has trailed away from a world that has ended? what about the armies gathering dust across the world, in cases or displays, with owners who can’t sell them for what they are worth and don’t want to light them on fire? what about those potential customers who would dust off their models and buy more if they only were given something to do with them that matched with the reasons they bought them in the first place?

HQ has some ‘splainin to do. but instead, they’ll try to move the goalposts to their “we’re just a model company” and evade any sort of rational response to losing their market share with clever attempts to dodge the real issue..

[Auticus]

I'm a part of two facebook groups that have a lot of traffic.

Forums are for the most part in my experience a hive for discussing tournament level tactics and strategies and list building. None of those things are really supported by AoS, so it does not surprise me that the forums are all dead except for people continuing to slam AoS.

The most telling question that the release of AoS has had is how important / predominant the tournament/competitive community is in regards to a miniature wargame.

From an FLGS standpoint it seems that 9 out of 10 FLGS report that it tanked and that most competitive players play the lion's share of their games at FLGS, so that is not surprising to me either that it would tank out of FLGS environments.

But are those people the vast majority of all involved in tabletop wargaming? That is the big question.

The narrative / backdrop is always subjective. I'm warming up to it. I have read all four of the major novels, the two audio books, and getting through the archaon collection of short stories. They are slowly introducing the rest of the races back into the backdrop. The stormcast are showing them how to fight again where they were just hiding from chaos before.

AoS could be something very good, beyond GW prices of course, but while its not a competitive styled game that tournaments can be run from it will continue to hold its malaise and division over a community that is equally as divided and from the past 20 years of my own experience, always has been divided.

I'm heavily involved in Frostgrave right now and picking up Saga and Dragon Rampant as well, but my primary fantasy campaigns that I run every year are still warhammer, and Age of Sigmar will be up there with me until something better comes along (and I will continue to support Azyr Comp and keep it updated with every release)

Kings of War for me is simply not better... it actually brought back all of the things I hated about 6th/7th edition.

For someone primarily interested in tournaments and competitive play, AoS will never be that game and I can surely understand why all of the people that played before have left around where I am, because my area is very much dominated by competitive tournament play.

However, if competitive tournament play is not a primary driver, I find that AoS can be acceptable. I lament that it is not fully what I want out of a game, and yes there are a bunch of ways it could have been better, but I have still for the most part enjoyed my time with it.

[Muninwing]

However, if competitive tournament play is not a primary driver, I find that AoS can be acceptable. I lament that it is not fully what I want out of a game, and yes there are a bunch of ways it could have been better, but I have still for the most part enjoyed my time with it.

i'm going to admit that i haven't played in a WHF tournament since the dawn of 7th. it was fun, before terrorbombs really knocked the excitement for the game out of me. and 8th reigned at my local club for a while... then died hard and fast. something about it just turned a lot of people off. in the lull between 8th's passing and the introduction of 40k 6th, we had a small-game renaissance -- Malifaux got the most play, dystopian wars and FoW picked up speed, and we even had a few homebrews and indie games show up.

for me, it's the fluff that shows how well or poorly they have invested in the game. and it's been coming, but slowly... and sadly, a fair portion of it is just not quality writing. not that it all needs to be, or that some of what's come out of the new tau books isn't as bad... it's just that a newer product (even for an established brand or manufacturer) cannot afford to be incomplete or seem so. there's far less wiggle room.

[Kaptain Badrukk]

Wow. You're coming at this from SUCH a different perspective to the gang in and around Sydney, the ones who spend time in the three GWs I frequent anyway.
They like Stormcast, because (when you read the novels) they're human and relatable. No spoilers, but my favourite is the one who just wants his immortality over with so he can join his wife in the afterlife. They feel fear, and doubt, they make mistakes, they fail, and as the novels roll on it's becoming increasingly obvious that Sigmar has been less than 100% honest with them about the side effects of becoming Stormcast. Particularly the costs.....
Also Manfred (who is in one of the stories) is extremely enjoyable.
I spent most of my childhood in the Oldworld, but where I am at least, it was dying. A concerted push from my local store's manager got the playerbase up to 1/4 or 1/5 (ish) of the store's regulars. That same effort around AOS now means they are ALL multi-system! And I've played more games of AOS since release than I had Deadhammer in the previous year as a result.
Yes, it's reliant on both players sharing a mutual understanding of "fun", and yes we've had to re-learn our tactics from the ground up, but it's been worth these minor asides for what has proven to be a much more fun pick-up game than any edition of WFB I've played (it must be noted that I'm a relative noob, having started as recently as 1992).
On a tactics sidebar, I personally find there's a LOT more tactical depth to AOS than people who've played a handful of games trying to play like WFB give it credit for.
Also if you read those threads you mentioned, while they did indeed start with a negative comment, they are also populated with responses from people who are enjoying the new.

[Lexington]

we see three months in passing, and we see no better fluff, no rational cosmic definition, no overarcing plan, and it still smacks of hollowness. and people are getting bored.

This is AoS' biggest problem, from my perspective - it's a world that was just so, so clearly drawn up by committee for the purpose of serving particular business goals. It's got all the personality of an office park.

[Kaptain Badrukk]

Dude.
Give it time.
The old world was nothing but a shallow parody of every fantasy trope of its age 3 books in. Hell, most of it was cribbed of Moorcock.
Yes, it's intentionally open, like the planar settings of DnD.
It's so there's room to be creative.
Look at the 40k universe, 99% of the galaxy is unexplored or undetailed beyond a 1 line blurb.
The bits that are have 30 years of development tying the into a setting.
Imagine what 30 years of setting development in the Mortal Realms, sowhere which actually changes, has as potential.
30 years vs 5 (ish) months of world. Of course it seems underdeveloped.

[Ray Rivers]

It's got all the personality of an office park.

But unlike the vast majority of companies, GW has the capability to commit to a long term vision for it's products and I expect that they will maintain a continuous stream of new fluff and miniatures.

It's greatest obstacle in the short term is allowing all the Oldhammer diehards to just fade away and make room for new folks who can enjoy the AoS world without having folks constantly *****in and complaining.

[Cutter]

But unlike the vast majority of companies, GW has the capability to commit to a long term vision for it's products and I expect that they will maintain a continuous stream of new fluff and miniatures.

It's greatest obstacle in the short term is allowing all the Oldhammer diehards to just fade away and make room for new folks who can enjoy the AoS world without having folks constantly *****in and complaining.

True.

One thing about hanging out in BoLS I never could stomach; all the damn Warhammer diehards...

[Mr Mystery]

But unlike the vast majority of companies, GW has the capability to commit to a long term vision for it's products and I expect that they will maintain a continuous stream of new fluff and miniatures.

It's greatest obstacle in the short term is allowing all the Oldhammer diehards to just fade away and make room for new folks who can enjoy the AoS world without having folks constantly *****in and complaining.

Yup.

And as Badrukk said, it's still very, very new.

Me, I'm reading everything they release for it, and already the Realms are being given better shape and form. Aqshy remains a bit dull, but Nagash's pad is very cool indeed, and Ghur is colossal.

The game itself isn't Warhammer, and whether you embrace that or not the only option is to move on from it. It's in the past. Sneering at AoS isn't going to suddenly make it Warhammer.

It's far more Scenario based. If people aren't getting the various Battletomes and background books then they're missing out on a vital component. Each Realm has it's own special rules to reflect it's nature. Each scenario then adds additional special rules, adding the challenge of the game.

And claims that there are not tactics are bunkum. Whilst flank and rear charges no longer count for very much, they've been replaced with how you deploy and support each unit. Some are relatively straight forward (I'll stick a Bloodpriest here to buff this area etc). Others a bit trickier to pull off and precise measurement when deploying and moving the units (using 2" or longer reach units to support a shieldwall, safe from reprisals, allowing you to maximise your damage without having to worry too much about Battleshock). And that's barely scratching the surface. As above, every scenario has additional rules and restrictions to worry about, which will require some thought, and therefore tactics, on how to exploit or mitigate.