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Moola posted:I very nearly got a regular GWs games group going with my friends, but they've gotten increasingly pissed off at how fast new books come out that they're all switching to other systems As far as capturing the essence of a fun TTG game, AT is probably one of the best all-around GW games I've played. Cool mechanics, GW plastics, fun gameplay, feels-good, (strangely) well-balanced, and compared to their other games cheap. TheDiceMustRoll posted:I've heard this but I can never get anything regarding actual facts on it. There's just not a lot of data on fantasy and a lot of weird rumours like it being outsold by the paints used to paint ultramarines which doesn't sound like a real thing. Lots of "A GW manager told me..." stuff which sounds plausible until a bunch of ex-GW managers came out and said that you basically never learn anything before the public and when you do it's like, the day before, as in "here's a new display, set it up after the shop closes" tier of foreknowledge. It depends on the time frame. I worked at GW during uni (like 2009-2013) and the information we got changed a bit. When White Dwarfs were previewing the month ahead, we usually knew the next 1-3 month's worth of releases from staff training and stuff. It'd be updated again as training was quarterly. This changed to be next to no head's up though after they removed previews from White Dwarfs - major releases only. I also remember people being interested in Fantasy - 7th was great, it wasn't turbo enough to break the bank. I remember when people would come in, interested in just starting TTGs, they'd ask how much it was to get into 40K for a 1750/2000 army, vs a 2.5K fantasy army - it was like $1,200 AUD vs 2.5K. I don't think fantasy as an IP was a dead product, but blowing the game up for AoS was a bad move. IPs usually are more valuable with age. It's also worth noting that GW has a horrendous track record of internal promotion and hiring - it doesn't surprise me that they don't make the best business decisions - it's usually bad for any business when a majority of senior spots are filled by "up-through-the-ranks" rusted on employees. Not to keep bashing GW, but in hindsight, a lot of the retail management seemed to be comfortable spinning tall yarns for their own failings, and it wouldn't surprise me that culture continues up the chain - I've heard all sorts of weird justifications - games banned in-store because people were wagering on them on the reg or because people were using print outs, or games like Dreadfleet not being allowed because it was a splash release and not a regular product. Hell, I even had a manager ban all chatter of non-tabletop related Warhammer stuff - we got asked to stop talking about Space Marine because he didn't sell it. My very first experience of going into GW was seeing a BFG intro table, asking how to play it, and being told it was too complicated and to play 40K instead. Turns out the guy just didn't know how to play BFG. I think the real truth is people will play what they see being played, with the barrier to entry being a real problem. If we want to talk about games too expensive to play - Hi, have you met War of the Ring?
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May 24, 2022 14:49
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Crackbone posted:While Kirby was a shitstain, they didn’t kill Fantasy because they couldn’t trademark the names, they killed it because it wasn’t very profitable. I recall hearing that the entirety of Warhammer sales didn’t even match a couple of the bigger factions in 40k. From a business standpoint it made sense to kill it and move to a more 40k like clone. The way they killed it off was particularly gross though. I feel like the WHFB change would have gone over way better if it wasn't nuking the setting and rebooting it with a completely different one. Instead just going with a rules change away from rank-and-file to something more resembling 40k. There would have absolutely been grognards that still complained, but I think it would have been a much easier pill to swallow. Personally I like the old world's setting better and just kind of tolerate AoS's, but I've never been a fan of super-high fantasy and the old world felt more like an alt-history with a fantasy twist.
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May 24, 2022 14:51
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I'd like to see stats on sales of 40K squad boxes now that Kill Team has made a lot of them a playable force. Sisters of Battle and Deathwatch Veterans are both Kill Teams in a box now.
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May 24, 2022 15:26
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Blowing up the Old World was fine - honestly, there probably wasn't any "good" way to end WFB aside from literally ending it. I think the big issue was that it wasn't well telegraphed by GW, and they could have definitely have done a huge leadup to it while still informing players that the game was winding down. As we all know though, GW has never been good with communication. Hell, they could have pulled some goofy TV trope and had the whole thing end as just one of many threads Tzeentch was pulling, or have time loop back in on itself and the Old World starting all over. That said, it wasn't really blowing up the game that people were really pissed about - it was the dumbass rules in AoS v1 that made it appear that GW was giving a big "gently caress you" to people who were porting over their WFB armies. Cease to Hope posted:The problem with WHFB was never really that you can't trademark landsknechts, it's that you needed to buy and assemble and paint and store and set up 50 of them to back up the actually interesting parts of your army. Rank and flank with 28mm minis was always going to be a limited niche. IMO, WFB should have been transitioned into Warmaster - it's the perfect scale for army-sized games and allows you to go nuts with rank and flank while still keeping it manageable on the tabletop.
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May 24, 2022 15:31
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blowing up the Old World was one of the most entertaining things that's ever happened
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May 24, 2022 15:45
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It feels like the lesson is that there were a lot of different ways they could have gone fixing WHFB/launching AOS, and all of them would have been better than what they did.
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May 24, 2022 15:46
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If the AOSv1 rules hadn't been a dumpster fire the switchover would probably have been a lot better regarded. AOS 2 and 3 are both really good games. AOSv1 was developed at the tail end of the Kirby era where GW was convinced that people just liked the models and the rules were a afterthought. AOSv1 took this to farcical levels where the rules were so minimal it was a stretch to call it a "game".
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May 24, 2022 16:20
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Red Herring posted:If we want to talk about games too expensive to play - Hi, have you met War of the Ring? War of the Ring seems to have quietly disappeared, but I don't bother following the rules for Lord of the Rings anymore. I have the pocket rulebook from Mines of Moria which has stats for basically every model I could want to field in it plus the old Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return of the Kings books in case I want to play some specific scenarios. In general you're right though: the Middle-earth stuff can get insanely expensive. It's kind of crazy that half the figures from the Fellowship starter box go for $45USD despite being 20 year old single-pose plastics.
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May 24, 2022 16:28
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I honestly consider myself lucky as I slept over whole Aosv1 (was playing 40k back then and was kinda bummed about number of nazis I was encountering online back then so I moved away from gw games). My adventure started at the start of 2ed with me buying malign portent book at the lgs sale. I honestly could not understand complains online as it was cool book - only later I've learned about the whole launch shitshow
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May 24, 2022 16:29
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The only things I remember from AoSv1 was that Vampire Counts had a model that required you to talk to it to give it a +1 bonus (yes, seriously), that there was a 2 model combo that won you the game instantly (Skaven's Doombell and the Weaver of Fate to change your Doombell's die roll to 13), that the only counter to that combo was to run your own Weaver of Fate (which meant that to counter that, you would just run 2 Weavers of Fate, and so on and so on), that the person who goes first was the first person to stop placing minis, that if you ran just a single building you would win by default because there was no way to destroy buildings and they counted as units, and that there was no PL or points costs on anything, it was strictly a "Bring what you want to play" game with no means of balance.
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May 24, 2022 17:09
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Red Herring posted:I don't think fantasy as an IP was a dead product, but blowing the game up for AoS was a bad move. IPs usually are more valuable with age. It's gotten quite a boost from having successful forays into the video gaming market. berzerkmonkey posted:IMO, WFB should have been transitioned into Warmaster - it's the perfect scale for army-sized games and allows you to go nuts with rank and flank while still keeping it manageable on the tabletop. The Old World will probably be fine if it ends up being a "serious hobby" game like the Horus Heresy is going to be. Floppychop posted:I feel like the WHFB change would have gone over way better if it wasn't nuking the setting and rebooting it with a completely different one. Instead just going with a rules change away from rank-and-file to something more resembling 40k. I got into Fantasy after they necked it - I've been reading the Gotrek and Felix novels, played like 140 hours of Vermintide II, some total war, it really does feel like a better setting overall than AoS, which is usually just "the same lore, but worse(tm)".
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May 24, 2022 17:42
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Randalor posted:The only things I remember from AoSv1 was that Vampire Counts had a model that required you to talk to it to give it a +1 bonus (yes, seriously) Other lowlights included bonuses for pretending to ride an imaginary horse, more bonuses for insulting your opponent in a way that made them react, forcing eye contact with them, or raising a "goblet" and saying "For the lady!", and instantly losing the game if you knelt for any reason.
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May 24, 2022 18:07
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:It's gotten quite a boost from having successful forays into the video gaming market. Total War Warhammer is what got me into tabeltops in the first place. For me AoS has enough of the old stuff with some neat new factions that I'm willing to play it even if the settings aren't the same. Although I am eagerly awaiting the old world to release.
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May 24, 2022 18:08
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How's The Old World going to avoid the generic copyright problem?
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May 24, 2022 18:29
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War and Pieces posted:How's The Old World going to avoid the generic copyright problem? It wasn't necessarily an issue before - that's an online nerd hypothesis. TheDiceMustRoll posted:I got into Fantasy after they necked it - I've been reading the Gotrek and Felix novels, played like 140 hours of Vermintide II, some total war, it really does feel like a better setting overall than AoS, which is usually just "the same lore, but worse(tm)". Well, it had like 35 years of worldbuilding to fall back on. They've done a good job building AoS too, but the game has only been around for seven years. Second edition, where GW finally got its footing, came into being in 2018, and IMO, was pretty drat solid, lore-wise. Again, there's nothing wrong with people liking either/or/both. Personally, I think there is plenty of room for the Old World and AoS to coexist.
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May 24, 2022 18:44
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People keep saying the weird names are for copyright but its far more likely they're for search engine optimization. Say what you will about 'aelves' or 'orruks' but when you google those terms you get nothing but GW product.
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May 24, 2022 19:35
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berzerkmonkey posted:It wasn't necessarily an issue before - that's an online nerd hypothesis. 50% of old hammer lore came from rpg supplements - Soulbound does make a lot of effort to fill in the blanks but it is still relatively new.
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May 24, 2022 20:02
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Loxbourne posted:Do you have the original source for this? Dreadfleet was such a weird one-off that I've always felt there must be more to it. Yeah, I've always wondered about Dreadfleet too. What a weird-rear end release. Improbable Lobster fucked around with this message at 21:30 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 24, 2022 20:26
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Lucinice posted:Total War Warhammer is what got me into tabeltops in the first place. For me AoS has enough of the old stuff with some neat new factions that I'm willing to play it even if the settings aren't the same. Although I am eagerly awaiting the old world to release. Fun fact: GW nuked the Old World setting shortly after the announcement of TW:WHFB! Which led to a fair bit of anxiety at the video game developer, as I recall 
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May 24, 2022 20:31
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Improbable Lobster posted:Yeah, I've always wondered about Dreadflwet too Dweadflweet UwU
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May 24, 2022 20:35
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Covermeinsunshine posted:50% of old hammer lore came from rpg supplements - Soulbound does make a lot of effort to fill in the blanks but it is still relatively new. I was referring more to the old army books and novels, but yeah, the RPG stuff from FF was bonkers good.
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May 24, 2022 20:38
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:ive heard this but I can never get anything regarding actual facts on it. There's just not a lot of data on fantasy and a lot of weird rumors like it being outsold by the paints used to paint ultramarines which doesn't sound like a real thing. Lots of "A GW manager told me..." stuff which sounds plausible until a bunch of ex-GW managers came out and said that you basically never learn anything before the public and when you do it's like, the day before, as in "here's a new display, set it up after the shop closes" tier of foreknowledge. At least one game designer from the time has talked about why fantasy got a total reboot: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/ quote:So, when I joined the studio, on day one when I went in, they were like, right you’ve signed your confidentiality contract but before you go into the studio, you have to sign this additional piece of paperwork for a project with a code name – I probably can’t even say what the codename was – and you need to understand that this is more secret than the incredibly binding secrecy we already have you under.
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May 24, 2022 20:49
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ah yes cool stories where major factions are solely motivated by writer fiat
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May 24, 2022 21:39
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good writing was never on the table for warhammer licensed fiction anyway
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May 24, 2022 21:41
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Cease to Hope posted:good writing was never on the table for warhammer licensed fiction anyway Gotrek and Felix is great. It's Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser without including random hosed up nonsense in the later stories.
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May 24, 2022 22:12
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Gotrek and Felix is great. It's Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser without including random hosed up nonsense in the later stories. Gotrek and Felix stopped being good when they replaced William King with Nathan Long.
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May 24, 2022 22:46
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Is he the Kevin J. Anderson of Warhammer fiction?
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May 24, 2022 22:48
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chin up everything sucks posted:Gotrek and Felix stopped being good when they replaced William King with Nathan Long. So that's 7 novels worth reading. I mean becoming "bad" novels isn't such a terrible thing, F+GM shits the bed harder. Anarcho-Commissar posted:Is he the Kevin J. Anderson of Warhammer fiction? Is he the idiot who wrote all the dune prequel novels that 'improved' on the originals by adding rape scenes to everyone's backstories TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 23:06 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 24, 2022 22:50
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Yes, although I mostly hate him for lovely Star Wars novels.
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May 24, 2022 22:57
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Nathan Long is the one who went "Remember that Little Girl that G&F save from her Chaos Warrior mother back in one of the early stories? Well now she's an adult, and Felix (who is now nearly 40) is going to find be her Romantic Interest."
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May 25, 2022 00:12
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chin up everything sucks posted:Gotrek and Felix stopped being good when they replaced William King with Nathan Long. I have a whole shelf of the original novels so was psyched when I heard they were finally doing another sequel. I remember reading the first chapter in White Dwarf or in a bookstore or something (maybe they toyed with online previews at that time?), but it was so bad I couldn't finish even that. I was like 15 at the time, so hardly discerning, but that was the moment I pretty much walked away from Warhammer fiction forever. I've gone back to reread the Inquisition War a couple of times since then, but that's it. It was good though because I moved on to much better books, like Gene Wolfe, and my appreciation and respect for Tolkien has only grown.
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May 25, 2022 00:15
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William King has some other non-warhammer hack'n'slash stuff that is pretty good.
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May 25, 2022 01:04
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Throughout warhammer fantasy 8th edition the company did a ton of dumb things but one of the dumbest, from my perspective, was the way they'd go whole hog on a new army book for one army, release a bunch of models for it, and then ignore that army for literally years afterward. My beloved Tomb Kings were the first army book released for 8th, I figured that'd mean significant support for the army, but not really, and they literally deleted the Tomb Kings during the End Times. I think there were armies that never got a full 8th edition release? There had been armies that hadn't gotten a book in 7th and waited through most of the 8th edition period to get one, for sure. I think that all had to do with a self-fulfilling, reinforcing cycle of low sales and low budgets. Making mold masters for plastic injection molded figures is (or at least, was at the time) extremely expensive, and also they had limited factory capacity, so they wanted to do "a release" with an army book and several refreshed or new units and models, manufacture a bunch of them, and then stow away the molds and dedicate limited development budget to the next release. Supporting over a dozen factions is impossible if you do your business that way, but GW refused to change how it did its business, particularly under Kirby. They also (habitually, across all their properties) refused to balance games or reign in power creep, so new armies would often be far stronger than old ones (but not always, a few were infamously favorites of particular designers and always OP). The habit of ignoring a faction for years constantly alienated their own customer base. Once you've been burned by spending a ton of money and time assembling and painting an army for a faction, and then over the next five (or ten!) years other factions get updates, power creep makes yours difficult or impossible to win with, not only are you likely to abandon the game, you're going to warn others to avoid it. Age of Sigmar wasn't only a way of getting to write new stories, it was an opportunity to kill off some factions, reduce the total number of minis needed for each faction (fewer models on the table means fewer unit types for example), and generally scale down the development cost. But what it emphatically wasn't, was reconciliation with a burned customer base. End Times was divisive but at least it seemed to promise a renewed interest by the company in supporting the customers. Instead, "you can use your old models, mostly, kinda" was the only bone thrown to them. Would your chosen faction actually get renewed support? Ehh, probably not. Would the rules get revamped for balance? LOL AOS v1 was absurdly bad in that respect, it actively, aggressively abandoned all pretense of balance. Was it at least a fun game to play? NO, just shove all your models into the middle of the table. I'm convinced a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy that made a radical departure from the previous rulesets could have been possible, especially if it reduced total model counts while still retaining some semblance of formation/maneuver combat. The company could have changed its release schedule to put out one new set of models for each of its factions often enough to maintain interest, it could have invested in playtesting and game balance, and it could have advanced the plot of its setting in a way that didn't make some percentage of its players feel like they got short shrift.
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May 25, 2022 02:29
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I remember reading some articles shortly after WHFB was nuked and AoS debuted, where the authors were shocked that GW just basically ceded the entire "mass battles with ranked armies" style of playing to other companies. Especially as AoS debuted as a small skirmish game after the popular wave of smaller skirmish-level games (Infinity, Warmahordes, Malifaux, etc. etc.) had already crested. There's a reason the Mantic thread's title is "Why does everyone suddenly want to play our mass battle fantasy game?"
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May 25, 2022 04:24
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chin up everything sucks posted:Gotrek and Felix stopped being good when they replaced William King with Nathan Long. Now they replaced him with Hinks and it's decent again. I mean only good Gotrek novel is Skavenslayer anyway
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May 25, 2022 06:44
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I remember reading some articles shortly after WHFB was nuked and AoS debuted, where the authors were shocked that GW just basically ceded the entire "mass battles with ranked armies" style of playing to other companies. Especially as AoS debuted as a small skirmish game after the popular wave of smaller skirmish-level games (Infinity, Warmahordes, Malifaux, etc. etc.) had already crested. What's funny for me is that I got into Mantic through Kings of War at that time but maybe play it once a year at this point and play Deadzone, their sci-fi skirmish game, all the loving time.
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May 25, 2022 07:34
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:So that's 7 novels worth reading. I mean becoming "bad" novels isn't such a terrible thing, F+GM shits the bed harder. Wait, what's wrong with Fafhrd and Grey Mouser? I loved those stories, and I thought they were universally agreed to be classics.
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May 25, 2022 10:54
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The early stuff is good, but I think it's generally agreed that post-80s they get kind of gross and edgy and not so ideal.
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May 25, 2022 10:59
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Sydney Bottocks posted:Fun fact: GW nuked the Old World setting shortly after the announcement of TW:WHFB! Which led to a fair bit of anxiety at the video game developer, as I recall When TW:WH first came out the launcher had a banner that said something along the lines of "You've played the game, now get the miniatures!" with a picture of the Karl Franz miniature. When you clicked the banner you got a 404 on the GW website. I do think the AOS changeover was good, but it was extremely Old GW to kill WFB just as a extremely huge video game was released which could have revived interest in WFB.
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May 25, 2022 12:02
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Genghis Cohen posted:Wait, what's wrong with Fafhrd and Grey Mouser? I loved those stories, and I thought they were universally agreed to be classics.  This was basically the turning point where the books turned into garbage for me, later on in the series the mouser gets sucked into an underworld and wastes many many pages watching lesbian BDSM which doesn't contribute to the plot. Lesbians and BDSM are fine, but I don't trust anything written by a person who explains to you someone is hot because they look like a preteen(but dont worry, not a preteen. they just. you know. look that way. which is why they're hot.). I'm not far enough in the G/F series to the point where he hooks up with Kat, but so far there's nothing on this level. Kat being 20 and felix being 38 is cringe but I think I'd be more annoyed at the fact that Felix has very simple character flaws that are consistent in the first six books I've read: The qualities that make him initially sexy (a well-read, educated, dashing adventurer with a sarcastic quip always in mind) make him a really annoying boyfriend, since both Ulrika and the peasant girl in Skavenslayer start off enthralled by him and then find him tiresome and arrogant. Not that different from Indiana Jones but you never really see his relationships fall apart on screen whereas Felix has been increasingly characterized as kind of an aimlessly educated person since he doesnt really have any skills but he sure can quote a ton of different poems and plays and murder people pretty well. Sort of like Indiana Jones if he wasn't even an architect or had any skills beyond shooting people but he sure could quote Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow out of nowhere TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 12:34 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 12:28
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