The after days of the AoS debacle

[Shadeseraph]

So, GW killed Warhammer fo' real a few years ago. The biggest clustefuck ever happened when a bunch of neckbeards saw the game they used to play scrapped and replaced by MTP-the wargame.

Some years have gone by and a few people still play fantasy wargames. As far as I know the most popular are:

-The Age of Sigmar reboot after the previous CEO left and the new one changed the company policy on a bunch of things.
-The warhammer knockoff made by old tourney players called The Ninth Age
-People who still play Warhammer in one of the versions, usually houseruled
-And finally a few groups who play Kings of War

In my local game store the popularity poll is something like T9A > AOS2 >>> Oldhammer, with KoW basically unseen.

What's your take?

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think the parallels to D&D 4e are pretty strong.

[TheFlatline]

I read a long non-fiction blog piece by a guy trying to get into Age of Sigmar recently. Among other things, I basically learned that you can buy nearly invincible custom Forge World creatures who have god stats for ungodly amounts of money and curb stomp. I may be wrong about this, but if I am it's mainly because the guy is bewildered by the scene in a not good way.

That being said, the podcast So Very Wrong About Games (which reminds me of this place to be honest), said that Shadespire or whatever that product line is called, is one of the best Games Workshop games they've played in a long time.

Sadly I have no prospective opponents so I am passing on it but it looked interesting in an extremely asymmetrical skrimish format with a limited amount of customizing of the sides and small, sometimes *very* small team sizes.

[Pedantic]

That being said, the podcast So Very Wrong About Games (which reminds me of this place to be honest), said that Shadespire or whatever that product line is called, is one of the best Games Workshop games they've played in a long time.

They're pretty good and I generally like what they have to say, but they're inexplicably completely wrong about Decrypto, which is the best party game of last year.

[Koumei]

They churned out a whole bunch of minigames over the last year or so, but IIRC, Shadespire is one of the "small elite party skirmish" games where they release box sets with fancy new named heroes.

I still see preview statlines for AoS releases and it still reads mostly as "If this is within X range of a thing, roll Yd6 and for every Z+ the target suffers a Mortal Wound". I think I just described every single Living Spell and also some of the bigger monsters and special characters. And terrain pieces. Also a bunch of things in 40K.

[maglag]

After the new GW leadership added points back to army building then it's become the most popular option in my area, in particular since Sigmarines did succeed in drawing a lot of spech merines fanboys. 9th age is still second but losing steam slowly over the years since at the end of the day they simply can't release as much shiny stuff as fast as GW (like the new airship steampunk dwarves).

I read a long non-fiction blog piece by a guy trying to get into Age of Sigmar recently. Among other things, I basically learned that you can buy nearly invincible custom Forge World creatures who have god stats for ungodly amounts of money and curb stomp. I may be wrong about this, but if I am it's mainly because the guy is bewildered by the scene in a not good way.

A lot of stuff from Forge World is literally pay-to-win and restricted/banned at virtually every tournament.

They churned out a whole bunch of minigames over the last year or so, but IIRC, Shadespire is one of the "small elite party skirmish" games where they release box sets with fancy new named heroes.

I still see preview statlines for AoS releases and it still reads mostly as "If this is within X range of a thing, roll Yd6 and for every Z+ the target suffers a Mortal Wound". I think I just described every single Living Spell and also some of the bigger monsters and special characters. And terrain pieces. Also a bunch of things in 40K.

The meta in both is basically "deal as much mortal wounds as possible" and seems like the devs noticed it and just started releasing even moar stuff that deals mortal wounds yeah. Any new stuff that can't deal mortal wounds just has trouble standing out and is quickly dismissed.

[Ancient History]

I'm seriously surprised Games Workshop hasn't gone ahead and pirated the M:tG model, rotating armies and options in and out of play.

Also Warhammer Adventures: Tales for Younger Readers is a thing now and I think the world has broken.

[maglag]

I'm seriously surprised Games Workshop hasn't gone ahead and pirated the M:tG model, rotating armies and options in and out of play.

GW already worked kinda like that for most of its history. A new set of core rules would come out but most armies would be stuck using their old codexes until that got a new update too. Some armies spent multiple editions whitout getting a new codex.

Also Warhammer Adventures: Tales for Younger Readers is a thing now and I think the world has broken.

It was already broken since Ward turned necrons into a bunch of clown robots that aren't a threat to anyone so it makes perfect sense even a trio of kids are enough to curbstomp a tomb world.

[Thaluikhain]

The technical quality of the new models is impressive.

And, I sorta respect the idea of AoS. WHFB the setting wasn't doing great, and for years they'd promised big exciting changes and never delivered. So they put their money where their mouth is and made massive changes, the new setting being almost completely different.

IMHO, the new setting is rubbish and I don't like the game, nor the decision to kill off every human race bar the Reich. So lose points there.

GW already worked kinda like that for most of its history. A new set of core rules would come out but most armies would be stuck using their old codexes until that got a new update too. Some armies spent multiple editions whitout getting a new codex.

You could still play (most) armies with the old one though, so technically not unplayable. Your army might be uncompetitive and always lose though.

[maglag]

The technical quality of the new models is impressive.

And, I sorta respect the idea of AoS. WHFB the setting wasn't doing great, and for years they'd promised big exciting changes and never delivered. So they put their money where their mouth is and made massive changes, the new setting being almost completely different.

IMHO, the new setting is rubbish and I don't like the game, nor the decision to kill off every human race bar the Reich. So lose points there.

Players: "We want the plot to go somewhere! ANYWHERE!"
GW: "Really?"
Players: "YES!"
GW: "Ok. Kayos wins for realz and the universe is remade." trollface.jpeg
Players:"... FFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-"

GW already worked kinda like that for most of its history. A new set of core rules would come out but most armies would be stuck using their old codexes until that got a new update too. Some armies spent multiple editions whitout getting a new codex.

You could still play (most) armies with the old one though, so technically not unplayable. Your army might be uncompetitive and always lose though.

Heh, 30K doesn't even need to switch editions for your codex to become uncompetintive, the powercreep is so rampart that the legions released first will have a pretty hard time doing anything to the most recent ones (remember the first book came out all the way back in 2012). In particular Lemon Russ and Magnus, the most recent primarchs just shit all over the other primarchs released before. But you don't even need the new shiny primarchs because even the new nameless generic commanders will be able to take down the old primarchs!

Meanwhile with the new edition of 40K they spiced things up in that first everybody got an "Index" smaller codex at the same time, then they started releasing more detailed codexes for each faction one by one as usual, but if your shiny new codex lacked any unit/wargear option that the basix Index allowed for, then you can still use the old Index option.

[Shadeseraph]

I guess there is a lot of truth to that old proverb - be careful what you wish for.

Personally, I actually like "muh J.R.R. Tolkien based fantasy", so my main problem with AoS is that while the sculpts are of very high quality, they just don't do it for me. I was hoping they'd get back to making a few normal fantasy sculpts for some time, but after the release of fantasy Dark Eldar Sea Elves, it was fairly clear that I won't be playing AoS anytime soon, even if the rules were miles better than they are.

Incidentally, the ME SBG reboot is making as much splash as one would expect. Which is a pity, as I quite like the look of those rohan riders.

[Koumei]

I dunno, I'm way more likely to buy some Sea Elves or Snake Elves than half the old factions of FB. To field a whole army? Fuck no, but I wasn't going to do that anyway. But Sea Elves basically make for pretty good aquatic humanoids (even particularly human/elf looking Sahuagin really) for D&D, and have a bunch of creatures that you can straight-up use as monsters like the Dragon Turtle. Snake Elves have added Succubi (if you have feathered wings to substitute, you now also have Avariel, Harpies, Erinyes and several types of Celestial for that matter), a Medusa, various Yuan-ti and with some extra arms, a Marilith.

So they're pretty good at servicing other games, which is probably the best you can ask for seeing as they're fuck-awful at making rules for their own games.

[souran]

I dunno, I'm way more likely to buy some Sea Elves or Snake Elves than half the old factions of FB. To field a whole army? Fuck no, but I wasn't going to do that anyway. But Sea Elves basically make for pretty good aquatic humanoids (even particularly human/elf looking Sahuagin really) for D&D, and have a bunch of creatures that you can straight-up use as monsters like the Dragon Turtle. Snake Elves have added Succubi (if you have feathered wings to substitute, you now also have Avariel, Harpies, Erinyes and several types of Celestial for that matter), a Medusa, various Yuan-ti and with some extra arms, a Marilith.

So they're pretty good at servicing other games, which is probably the best you can ask for seeing as they're fuck-awful at making rules for their own games.

The problem with this is that you can't really use GW miniatures for D&D or other rpgs, because GW stuff is out of scale with all the other major miniatures companies. This is on purpose. If you use a chessex mat or other mat with 1" squares a lot of GW miniatures will overhang the square.

Honestly, the bigger issue than changing the setting was changing the nature of the game. Classic Warhammer at least tried to be about moving units that fought in formation and had a resolution that was about winning the engagement and breaking your foes. The new game is just about inflicting mortal wounds in a game that is little more than a reskinned 40k.

I started with herohammer and played a fair amount of 6th edition as well. I also had armies for 40k during the same period. Some of this is clearly nostalgia but Warhammer fantasy battle wasn't just 40k with magic instead of laser swords. The resolution of attacking was identical, but they had actually changed enough that the games felt like a different style of fighting.

My wife would kill me if I got back into minis war gaming, but I do feel like not having a fantasy battles game where the fighting is remotely like ancient or medieval conflict is sad for the industry.

[maglag]

Honestly, the bigger issue than changing the setting was changing the nature of the game. Classic Warhammer at least tried to be about moving units that fought in formation and had a resolution that was about winning the engagement and breaking your foes. The new game is just about inflicting mortal wounds in a game that is little more than a reskinned 40k.

I started with herohammer and played a fair amount of 6th edition as well. I also had armies for 40k during the same period. Some of this is clearly nostalgia but Warhammer fantasy battle wasn't just 40k with magic instead of laser swords. The resolution of attacking was identical, but they had actually changed enough that the games felt like a different style of fighting.

That's funny because 40k was the one that started as reskinned warhammer fantasy, not the other way around. And 40K still loots stuff from WH fantasy, like Nurgle's "disgustingly resilient" started with AoS then was copy-pasted directly to 40K.

My wife would kill me if I got back into minis war gaming, but I do feel like not having a fantasy battles game where the fighting is remotely like ancient or medieval conflict is sad for the industry.

I'm pretty sure that ancient/medieval conflict in the real world didn't have wizards riding in dragons and heavy cannonballs bouncing off knights armor just because they prayed and giant rats riding giant hamster wheels that shot lighting.

And you know, before WH fantasy most mini war gaming was pretty simulationist of the real world to the point the most popular thing to do was just setting up ancient battles. It was kinda revolutionary when GW came out and said "hey let's add dragons and everything gets a points value so both sides can build their army however they want and (hopefully) end up having a fair fight". And most people just loved that. Most simulationist fans were converted.

Then you need to take in account computers happened and evolved so nowadays the people who really want to see giant blocks of humies with pointy sticks stabbing each other can just buy Total War for the price of a few minis and not need to bother building and painting.

Heck Total Warhammer was a big success and everything.

So minis wargaming has to do something to stay relevant. They need to provide something you can't just get in a computer, and that means more and more exotic stuff like sea elves riding sea monsters and steampunk dwarves on airships and whatnot. Hundreds of humies stabbing each other with basic pointy sticks is a dime a dozen nowadays on the computer, too few people now would bother assembling and painting the minis to replicate it on a table.

Since we're ranting, WHERE THE HELL IS MY GUNDAM WAR GAME BANDAI?

[souran]

Honestly, the bigger issue than changing the setting was changing the nature of the game. Classic Warhammer at least tried to be about moving units that fought in formation and had a resolution that was about winning the engagement and breaking your foes. The new game is just about inflicting mortal wounds in a game that is little more than a reskinned 40k.

I started with herohammer and played a fair amount of 6th edition as well. I also had armies for 40k during the same period. Some of this is clearly nostalgia but Warhammer fantasy battle wasn't just 40k with magic instead of laser swords. The resolution of attacking was identical, but they had actually changed enough that the games felt like a different style of fighting.

That's funny because 40k was the one that started as reskinned warhammer fantasy, not the other way around. And 40K still loots stuff from WH fantasy, like Nurgle's "disgustingly resilient" started with AoS then was copy-pasted directly to 40K.

The two games have always moved concepts between each other, but the style of each of the games was previously different. Now they are reskinned clones. Also, Nurgle's deal has been "extra tough" going back to the "lost and the damned" in 1989.

I'm pretty sure that ancient/medieval conflict in the real world didn't have wizards riding in dragons and heavy cannonballs bouncing off knights armor just because they prayed and giant rats riding giant hamster wheels that shot lighting.

And you know, before WH fantasy most mini war gaming was pretty simulationist of the real world to the point the most popular thing to do was just setting up ancient battles. It was kinda revolutionary when GW came out and said "hey let's add dragons and everything gets a points value so both sides can build their army however they want and (hopefully) end up having a fair fight". And most people just loved that. Most simulationist fans were converted.

This is all bullshit. You create the wargame to mimic the style of combat you want and then you add the wierd shit, not the other way round. Warhammer was a fantasy battles game that added dragons and shit to a rank and files ancient-medieval wargame. Converting it into a skirmish game was dumb. If I did get back to minis wargamming there is no way I would buy into both AOS and 40K (like I did previously) because the games no longer play differently enough for me to make the investment.

Secondly, your history is all fucked up too. People started adding dragons and shit to minis wargames before D&D This then grew into roleplaying. GWs big innovation was to package the game and the minis together. Even more than that they owned a lock the British market for D&D (they were the local re publisher) and they turned that into owning the market for rpgs/minis. They lucked out into doing that in an era when American wargames were still all about trying to get sold to US army command and general staff college in Leavenworth and were all about card counters and hex maps.

Then you need to take in account computers happened and evolved so nowadays the people who really want to see giant blocks of humies with pointy sticks stabbing each other can just buy Total War for the price of a few minis and not need to bother building and painting.

Heck Total Warhammer was a big success and everything.

So minis wargaming has to do something to stay relevant. They need to provide something you can't just get in a computer, and that means more and more exotic stuff like sea elves riding sea monsters and steampunk dwarves on airships and whatnot. Hundreds of humies stabbing each other with basic pointy sticks is a dime a dozen nowadays on the computer, too few people now would bother assembling and painting the minis to replicate it on a table.

Since we're ranting, WHERE THE HELL IS MY GUNDAM WAR GAME BANDAI?

This is also all bullshit. Certaintly wargames need to develop and advance just like RPGs. However, the "computers mean the end of physical wargames" is as obviously false as the argument that "computers mean the end of pen and paper RPGS"

People like to interact with real people. My dad is part of a wargaming group that meets twice a month, all the members are empty nesters with enough money that cost of even an expensive wargame is not a thing that matters to them. They could iron hearts IV through steam, but they want to see each other face to face. Computers didn't kill roleplaying and they won't kill wargaming either.

Now that said, the problem with warhammer fantasy is that the meta had gotten to where it was to expensive to buy into the game and try and complete. Only people with 10+ year old collections had the minis for the 40+ strong units that people were fielding. That was stupid. In their greed to make sure everybody was still buying plastic mans they had made it so that "horde" units were mandatory.

Warhammer fantasy did need an update. I personally think that the rules update the game needed was something that would have made it a little closer to Kings of War where you don't track individual casualties but instead count hits till you break the other unit. This means that what is important is the frontage that represents a unit and not having the exact number of minis to be 1 for 1 with the units effective hit points.

All that said, lets remember that warhammer was not rebooted because of the rules OR because the game was "stale" it was rebooted because GW could own their designs for 40K space marines and their space elf eldar aesthetic, but you can't "own" the concept of a guy with pointy ears and a sword in byzantine armor. So they needed to make a whole new group of IP that they could outright own.

[Thaluikhain]

If I did get back to minis wargamming there is no way I would buy into both AOS and 40K (like I did previously) because the games no longer play differently enough for me to make the investment.

Eh, you could just get demons, don't even have to put them on different bases anymore.

Alternatively, certain marines and sigmarine models look fairly interchangeable, was going to make an army of them. Got distracted by the necromunda Orlock gangers (those are quiet nice) and genestealer cult upgrades, though. And then got distracted from them by GW's new version of LotR.

[maglag]

Honestly, the bigger issue than changing the setting was changing the nature of the game. Classic Warhammer at least tried to be about moving units that fought in formation and had a resolution that was about winning the engagement and breaking your foes. The new game is just about inflicting mortal wounds in a game that is little more than a reskinned 40k.

I started with herohammer and played a fair amount of 6th edition as well. I also had armies for 40k during the same period. Some of this is clearly nostalgia but Warhammer fantasy battle wasn't just 40k with magic instead of laser swords. The resolution of attacking was identical, but they had actually changed enough that the games felt like a different style of fighting.

That's funny because 40k was the one that started as reskinned warhammer fantasy, not the other way around. And 40K still loots stuff from WH fantasy, like Nurgle's "disgustingly resilient" started with AoS then was copy-pasted directly to 40K.

The two games have always moved concepts between each other, but the style of each of the games was previously different. Now they are reskinned clones. Also, Nurgle's deal has been "extra tough" going back to the "lost and the damned" in 1989.

I was talking about the specific ability with that name which was 100% copy-paste'd between games, not the general Nurgle concept.

I'm pretty sure that ancient/medieval conflict in the real world didn't have wizards riding in dragons and heavy cannonballs bouncing off knights armor just because they prayed and giant rats riding giant hamster wheels that shot lighting.

And you know, before WH fantasy most mini war gaming was pretty simulationist of the real world to the point the most popular thing to do was just setting up ancient battles. It was kinda revolutionary when GW came out and said "hey let's add dragons and everything gets a points value so both sides can build their army however they want and (hopefully) end up having a fair fight". And most people just loved that. Most simulationist fans were converted.

This is all bullshit. You create the wargame to mimic the style of combat you want and then you add the wierd shit, not the other way round. Warhammer was a fantasy battles game that added dragons and shit to a rank and files ancient-medieval wargame. Converting it into a skirmish game was dumb. If I did get back to minis wargamming there is no way I would buy into both AOS and 40K (like I did previously) because the games no longer play differently enough for me to make the investment.

Secondly, your history is all fucked up too. People started adding dragons and shit to minis wargames before D&D This then grew into roleplaying. GWs big innovation was to package the game and the minis together. Even more than that they owned a lock the British market for D&D (they were the local re publisher) and they turned that into owning the market for rpgs/minis. They lucked out into doing that in an era when American wargames were still all about trying to get sold to US army command and general staff college in Leavenworth and were all about card counters and hex maps.

It doesn't matter who does it first in their basement just for their personal group, it matters who does it in an official and public way that's readily available to the general public. You may call it bullshit, but nobody ever became famous/rich by keeping their stuff in private.

Then you need to take in account computers happened and evolved so nowadays the people who really want to see giant blocks of humies with pointy sticks stabbing each other can just buy Total War for the price of a few minis and not need to bother building and painting.

Heck Total Warhammer was a big success and everything.

So minis wargaming has to do something to stay relevant. They need to provide something you can't just get in a computer, and that means more and more exotic stuff like sea elves riding sea monsters and steampunk dwarves on airships and whatnot. Hundreds of humies stabbing each other with basic pointy sticks is a dime a dozen nowadays on the computer, too few people now would bother assembling and painting the minis to replicate it on a table.

Since we're ranting, WHERE THE HELL IS MY GUNDAM WAR GAME BANDAI?

This is also all bullshit. Certaintly wargames need to develop and advance just like RPGs. However, the "computers mean the end of physical wargames" is as obviously false as the argument that "computers mean the end of pen and paper RPGS"

People like to interact with real people. My dad is part of a wargaming group that meets twice a month, all the members are empty nesters with enough money that cost of even an expensive wargame is not a thing that matters to them. They could iron hearts IV through steam, but they want to see each other face to face. Computers didn't kill roleplaying and they won't kill wargaming either.

I never said anything about killing, just "staying relevant". Your old dad and his old friends may still value direct humie interaction over electronics, but the new kids are all glued to their smartphones and computers and even when close to their flesh friends they won't drop said smartphones and barely look at each other's faces while they keep texting whatever. Even in my work group that everybody's over 20 at least it's common that "let's play something together" means "everybody pulls their own electronic device and they play the same online game".

People have limited time, and if they're now spending more time with electronics, it means less time for everything else. So yes mini wargaming and face-to-face roleplaying may technically still be alive but it's also diminishing and even it they never fully die out, they're little more than a niche hobby compared to playing the latest big moba game.

Now that said, the problem with warhammer fantasy is that the meta had gotten to where it was to expensive to buy into the game and try and complete. Only people with 10+ year old collections had the minis for the 40+ strong units that people were fielding. That was stupid. In their greed to make sure everybody was still buying plastic mans they had made it so that "horde" units were mandatory.

Warhammer fantasy did need an update. I personally think that the rules update the game needed was something that would have made it a little closer to Kings of War where you don't track individual casualties but instead count hits till you break the other unit. This means that what is important is the frontage that represents a unit and not having the exact number of minis to be 1 for 1 with the units effective hit points.

That's still needing to buy and paint a lot of the same mini for each unit.

All that said, lets remember that warhammer was not rebooted because of the rules OR because the game was "stale" it was rebooted because GW could own their designs for 40K space marines and their space elf eldar aesthetic, but you can't "own" the concept of a guy with pointy ears and a sword in byzantine armor. So they needed to make a whole new group of IP that they could outright own.

That's another reason, but not the only one. The game was stale and the rules were too bloated and GW could get more copyrights.

[souran]

I was talking about the specific ability with that name which was 100% copy-paste'd between games, not the general Nurgle concept.

I get what you meant. What I meant is that for the 24 years I have followed GW they have often used special rules (and especially rules for Chaos) with the same name, often with exactly the same text or function. The two games have always influenced each other, but they also were distinct in feel.

It doesn't matter who does it first in their basement just for their personal group, it matters who does it in an official and public way that's readily available to the general public. You may call it bullshit, but nobody ever became famous/rich by keeping their stuff in private.

What are you talking about? There are freaking documentaries that describe how D&D (which is older than warhammer by over a decade) grew out of rules where people added fucking dragons to wargames. This is fact. There are older fantasy wargames than warhammer. This doesn't change the fact that by 1990 GW was the biggest name in minatures wargaming. It doesn't undermine how they did something special with their wargame.

I never said anything about killing, just "staying relevant". Your old dad and his old friends may still value direct humie interaction over electronics, but the new kids are all glued to their smartphones and computers and even when close to their flesh friends they won't drop said smartphones and barely look at each other's faces while they keep texting whatever. Even in my work group that everybody's over 20 at least it's common that "let's play something together" means "everybody pulls their own electronic device and they play the same online game".

Again, we have heard this since the computer first came out. Then 3e D&D sold gangbusters. 5e is growing the playerbase. My 5 year old daughter loves her tablet but also loves seeing people face to face. I have friends who have teenage kids who it turns out also like seeing their friends and interacting with them in flesh. All our local schools do game nights. The death of physical interaction, board games, rpgs, and wargames has been what was "inevitable" for as long as the personal computer and yet it doesn't come to pass...

People have limited time, and if they're now spending more time with electronics, it means less time for everything else. So yes mini wargaming and face-to-face roleplaying may technically still be alive but it's also diminishing and even it they never fully die out, they're little more than a niche hobby compared to playing the latest big moba game.

Ok, yes there are fewer warhammer players than their are LoL players. So fucking what. Warhammer doesn't compete with LoL. Certaintly people have finite dollars and time, but they also can do more than one thing. Wargaming was already a prestige hobby, hell GW has ALWAYS claimed that miniatures wargaming was not for the poors and that it was game was for people with considerable disposable income. None of these things means you should change the nature of the game to be a poor reskin of 40k.

That's still needing to buy and paint a lot of the same mini for each unit.

And in order to keep up with how 40k has progressed you eventually have to paint an entire company of space marines with bolters. Also, if frontage is all that maters you can dioramas and other things to fill out the middle and make the units more visually appealing. Again, see how Kings of war unit blocks look.

That's another reason, but not the only one. The game was stale and the rules were too bloated and GW could get more copyrights.

It's the primary one. The "staleness" was in large part due to changes that made exceptionally large units a core part of the game. This made it impossible for new players to get involved and limited the number of useful units.

This could be fully eliminated with a frontage based unit sizing.

However, the games faults were NOT the primary driver of the overhaul. IP ownership is. Lets remember that GW is a company that is good at making minatures and extremely bad at making rules. They are active in their disdain of people who think "game" first and don't approach it as a "collectible" figurine hobby first. They don't promote roleplaying or wargamming as hobbies in general. They promote "GW" as the hobby. While obviously any company is trying to make money, their desire to make sure that they can sue anybody who makes a miniature that somebody might want to use with one of their games that they make is just asinine. It just like when Wizards decided that they were getting screwed by the OGL and then proceed to send the whole industry into recession with 4E.

[OgreBattle]

I got into kill team cause you don’t need many models and the new kits are great for conversions

With AoS shadespire seems kinda similar but they don’t have many new models of fantasy warriors in realistic ish armor. Sigmarines fee too blizzard to me and there’s only one new high elf armored dude. Like if a faction of 1500’s samurai came out I’d buy a box.

[Thaluikhain]

However, the games faults were NOT the primary driver of the overhaul. IP ownership is.

Out of interest, do you know why they also came up with new made up names for everything, instead of the old names they'd made up beforehand and were already part of the lore?

[maglag]

Out of interest, do you know why they also came up with new made up names for everything, instead of the old names they'd made up beforehand and were already part of the lore?

Because they didn't make up the old names, those were all stuff from old mythologies/languages they looted.

[Thaluikhain]

Out of interest, do you know why they also came up with new made up names for everything, instead of the old names they'd made up beforehand and were already part of the lore?

Because they didn't make up the old names, those were all stuff from old mythologies/languages they looted.

Surely druchii was made up by GW, likewise I think asur and dawi.

EDIT: I mean, sure, a lot of names were borrowed from elsewhere, or else are bad jokes, but even the stuff they made up themselves they seem to have dropped.

[souran]

I got into kill team cause you don’t need many models and the new kits are great for conversions

With AoS shadespire seems kinda similar but they don’t have many new models of fantasy warriors in realistic ish armor. Sigmarines fee too blizzard to me and there’s only one new high elf armored dude. Like if a faction of 1500’s samurai came out I’d buy a box.

Kill team is a fun idea, and in a lot of ways goes closer back to 40ks roots than where the current game is.

That said, the issue with warhammer (both 40k and AOS/Fantasy) is not the total number of models in an army, although most people favor quality armies over quantity armies because of price and painting time, but how models equate and interact with the game.

Warmaster / Epic allow players to fight battles have have a much greater sense of scale (basically being at the scale a regimental scale for warmaster and with each side controlling a brigade combat team in epic). However, the total number of minis or "stands" for each game is about 20-30.

As their collection of minis expands most people want to be able to use more. This is why each edition sees point costs drift down for basic soldier of each faction.

[souran]

However, the games faults were NOT the primary driver of the overhaul. IP ownership is.

Out of interest, do you know why they also came up with new made up names for everything, instead of the old names they'd made up beforehand and were already part of the lore?

As others have said, after GW lost their court case they decided that they wanted to make sure that they "owned" their IP in full. This meant changing the names of dwarves and elves to new shit. I would say that they dumped some of their own internal fake names (dwari and whatnot) so that there could be no question as to the idea that the IP was compeltely new.

However, what GW still doesn't seem to understand is that they cannot own the concept of "short guy in historical armor"

Just because you toss all the Norse/Scot imagery from your dwarves and replace it with a bunch of dwarves in greek armor STILL doesn't mean that you will be able to sue Ral Partha or whoever if they ALSO make a line of greek armored dwarves. You cannot own the concept of "short dude" and you cannot own the concept of "hoplite armor" so they are still screwed.

However, what can you expect from a company that own stock literature says its in the "artistic figurine" business and not the games business.