Age Of Sigmar Explained in under 26 minutes
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- čas přidán 18. 08. 2024
- If you’ve just woken up after a 10 year nap, allow me to explain Age of Sigmar for you.
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Somehow this is also the old GW paradox.
"It's so expensive! Only the 7 richest kings of Europe can afford an army!!"
"Why isn't their a new release for my army ever week!?"
Never did understand this
You mean "every week" I guess
I'll let you in on a little secret: The Average 40K player doesn't care about factions they don't play. At least, they haven't since 10th began.
The Average 40K player wants their faction to be 9th Edition deep, with dozens of Warlord traits and relics, a hundred stratagems for any niche flavorful situation, and so on. But they don't want *other* people to have that because it would be just too confusing to play against. Therefore, *their* faction should have a 200 page Codex, but everyone else's should have a 20 page codex at most.
@@dratesdragetes777 Because he described two different people and pretended they were one. No doubt there will be examples of this cross over but lets not pretend like its predominant.
I mean, I don't care about new releases, if it's so expensive, why bother in the first place?
You can go buy a Dreadnaught sized gundam for 16-20 euro, slap some 40k bits on it and be happy.
The big problem with WFB was that GW was focused on selling models, which created two problems:
1. What models do you sell to someone who has a "complete" army?
2. How mych stuff a new player needs to buy to get started.
People keep talking about models getting more expensive, but two things are often overlooked - in 4th edition, players would start with a 1000 point army, then add more units until they had a "full" 2000 point army. Beyond that, one might add more stuff up to 2500, or 3000 points, to play the occasional "big game", but when most games were 1500-2000 points, having 2500-3000 points available allowed for some variation - maybe you want to field more cavalry this time, or a bigger unit of witch elves, etcetera.
All the while - 1000 points was fairly accessible for new players to get started, and for veterans, it allowed for branching out into a second army, or dipping their toes into 40k, or speciallist games like Necromunda, later Mordheim, etc.
But then GW started pushing for bigger games. The White Dwarf batle reports went from being 1500-2000 points, to 3000 points. Right off the bat, new players entering the hobby were pressured to make a 2000 point army, and then get to 3k asap.
But that wasn't all. With the 6th edition, the points cost for units dropped sharply. Corsairs used to be 12 points + 1 for extra hand weapons +3 for optional crossbows in 4/5e, now they were 10 points, and gone was the crossbow option. Dark riders were now 18 points down from 27 (25 for the rider +2 for spear), though the option for crossbows remained at 6 points per model. And this was happening across the board, along with significantly reducing the cost of characters, and magic items they could carry. As a result, a 2000 poing army from 4th edition, might be worth a mere 1400 in 6th edition. Combined with the pressure to play bigger games, players suddenly needed twice as many models, essentially forcing them to commit to one army instead of branching out, and focusing on making better terrain, etc.
So WFB ended up with the problem of bloated armies that kept raising the entry bar to the point of becoming inaccessible to new players. And instead of revamping the game to go back to the old 3-4 regiments on the table, GW acted with the finesse of a sledgehammer, and nuked the setting to make it more like 40k. And 40k got hit as well - from playing a few squads and a vehicle, or two, to spamming tanks like they were on sale.
How to save Warhammer fantasy.
Do not stop it before the release of Total War Warhammer. That gane pretty much made a LOT of people (also me) discover Warhammer
This is honestly the most intelligent take I've heard on AoS, and honestly, GW as a whole so far.
I found the section on the game value death spiral so interesting! I work in a boardgame shop in central London that's been open for 37 years and still run by the same people, and at this point they just have this laser accurate intuition for when games are going to start tumbling. They've never predicted wrong!
Leisure Games?
@@OldenDemon Close! Leisure Games are great friends of ours, but I hail from the Orcs Nest 🙏🙏🙏
@@MrHughtube99 I love Orcs Nest, excellent array of games and titles
@@OldenDemon This whole time I've been keeping an eye out for a small dog but now I know who to look out for in the future! The Orcs Nest sends it love, though it has been many a moon since we stocked GW aha
@@MrHughtube99 Man Orcs Nest, damn legendary shop in London, I can remember going in some 20 odd years ago and seeing their truly staggering TTRPG section full of all sorts of weird and wonderful obscure or indie TTRPGs. Bought my copy of Little Fears 1st edition from there.
In 2009, South Africa, a Pigeon carried a 4gb harddrive, from one office to another, 50 miles away, in 68minutes. At the same time the computers had only transferred 4% data, because SA internet sux that bad, and thus a pigeon transfered a mere 4gb data Faster than the South African Internet could. This result, of course, caused alot of sour faces and finger pointing in high places, because they didn't like being exposed for being worthless. Today, 2024, SA have electricity for up to 6hours a day (yea, it's worse now, you can see documentaries here on YT about it).
pigeon was hauling ass jfc
Thanks!
Ok but who died?
Going to ruin the joke sorry but for Americans reading this it was actually a reference to the pool skit in The Day Today which you should watch because it's very funny, like all time best British comedy
lulz
Me. I’m the guy who played brettonians as a teenager not realising the undertaking that painting the regalia was on my undeveloped art skills and the investment that buying individual knight models was, luckily I saved money by not having to buy a new army book… ever
I bought Chaos Dwarfs. I have never had to, or been able to, buy anything for them ever again. (OK, expensive forge World stuff and stuff from Russian Alternative and then other 3D printers but no money went to GW after the initial outlay)
Thanks for the Keyforge shutout. Me and the 10 polish people that still play really appreciate it.
Keyforge represent
I still play it, though not much. I've a bunch of packs in my trunk to play with some friends. I want to have a tournament night sometime with my friends, since I doubt folks nearby are down to play some old packs
I think the wargamer spectrum should be more of a triangle than a line. For example i find myself right in between historical and casual but have never gone to a tournament
@@GodOfGunz I should have animated Tournament Terry flying around in space but I was lazy
Yeah it is comparable well enough to the Timmy/Johnny/Spike triangle mentioned before. Also as with that one: never take it too serious!
The Poorhammer guys generally apply the Timmy/Johnny/Spike trifecta directly to Warhammer and it translates quite well, as well as the Vorthos and Mel binary that Mark Rosewater added on in 2007
I think instead of "historical" you could replace that with "narrative." My reasoning being historical generally follows known events, with tons of references for heraldry, unit markings etc. Narrative is similar, in that you collect a "story based" army, even if that army is based on a story you yourself made. What makes this different from lets say casual or tournament, is that while tournament players collect and paint for power, and casual wargamers generally collect and paint for "vibes" (aka, this unit looks/sounds awesome or seems fun to use), narrative wargamers collect based on what they think fits the army or scenario the best. (aka, these reivers are a bad unit, but logically my raven guard should have some, and I can give them this squad marking etc etc).
@heraissilly That's a perfect description of exactly where I am. For me, Warhammer is at its most fun when I can think up all the stories- canon, fan made, or my personal unit fluff- that the armies and battles represent, and I'm more excited by a variety of options visually and thematically to bring that narrative to life on the table more than minmaxed efficiency or raw cool factor. My best friend and perennial opponent, on the other hand, is total Casual Christoph who just wants to collect cool looking Orks and have em krump some oomiez (No judgement, I'm just glad he enjoys himself). If anything, I'd say GW's big failing I see currently is that they've spun away from both of us toward the brutal efficiency, win-at-all-costs tournament crowd, possibly because that sector of the market buys more stuff than both of us combined in order to stay current and competitive in the meta.
Edit: This is regarding 40k 10th edition. I haven't played AoS yet, though I have been very tempted lately.
One may say that also “old” 40K is already dead and the “new” 40K took its place, but at a slow pace that we don’t notice it, with Primaris slowingly took over
Old 40k even still has its own game though - it's just called "Horus Heresy" :D Complete with old-school rules. I do wonder if you can still use the 7th ed codexes for Xenos armies in HH though... :D
@Winchester1979 it would require a fair bit of work to make 7th ed codices work in HH, there's a lot of pretty fundamental changes
White Dwarf devolved into a monthly showcase of the latest 40k space marine release, every.single.month.
And they aren't even putting art on the cover anymore. I remember that happened not long before they discontinued the magazine the first time...
@@Culexus101 Hey! Are you sure you've held at least one White Dwarf in your hands over the past 10 years? There was a lot of arts on the cover, just look at the 500th issue, White Dwarf himself was drawn specifically for the cover.
And I don’t see much advertising in the magazine at all. A lot of cool lore and game materials.
@Basil_Ghothickovitch 500 was an exception. It has been models on the cover for the last 6 months before 500, and now 501 is back to models on the cover. I have every WD since they brought it back because I could never bring myself to cancel my subscription. I also have damn near every WD after about 127 thanks mostly myself starting around 212, a donation from a coworker years ago, and various charity shop finds over the years.
@@Culexus101 WD502 also have art on cover.
@@Culexus101 im looking at my stack of WD right now. the last few months before 500 were models, but im looking at 487, 488,, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493 all with art for the cover, not models. lets at least be fair with our critiques
You left out one of the biggest issue for the killing of Fantasy. GW didn't owned a fuck ton of their armies IP, this is why they renamed everything in 40k and killed Fantasy for it was full of generic fantasy stuff they couldn't own. Example: Fantasy Dark Elf King Malekith became Malerion in AoS then in the new fantasy he stayed Malerion.
In the new Old World there is no Malekith either, now there is the Dread King Malerion.
GW very unwisely took Malekith from Marvel 10 years after the creation of this character. Perhaps this was Disney's requirement now.
@@Vasily_Kotickovitch It’s very unlikely Marvel/Disney would bother directly reaching out, but GW probably chose to change the name anyway as a “just in case” measure if they ever got into films or television (as they’d been hoping to do for a while) so they wouldn’t have to worry about hyper-litigious Disney lawyers banging on the door about this Dark Elf King Malekith fellow.
He left out a lot of other factors too, like how GW at the time did Bomb releases so every faction had little "new" stuff to buy across years, or the lack of rules support meaning fantasy was a clusterfuck to actually play due to GW's "Forge the Narrative" issue. All of these were conveniently solved in AoS 2nd edition and 40k 8th edition, which is where they started to get "good" again.
There's so much more that was left out that someone can make a whole other video detailing it.
Entirely untrue. Copyright applies within the context of the thing it is made for. The Slaughterhouse lawsuit you're referencing specified that GW couldn't claim copyright on models someone else made as stand-ins for units they wrote rules for, but didn't produce any models themselves (the main point of contention was the Tyranid Drop Pod of the 5th edition codex) . It lead to the curbing of anything that didn't have a model (including a number of awesome characters). Warhammer High Elves, just as an example, were and are protected under the Warhammer Fantasy Battles IP to this day. Each box and book you buy that contains rules by GW reminds you of that.
The renaming of characters was done to boost brand-recognition, nothing else. Sigmar as a name sticks around to this day, but is a fairly generic, if somewhat old-fashioned, first name in Germany. One of our Ministers for the Economy was called Sigmar Gabriel. Malekith was probably renamed because it's weird to have such an on-the-nose real-world reference (Malekith is a kind-of satanic figure Nordic myths) in a setting that wasn't already exactly known for subtlety.
Malekith was renamed because they couldn't figure out exactly who owned the copyright on that name (Marvel having released their Dark-Elf King Malekith roughly in the same time as GW, I think the difference was a mere few days apart) and they didn't want to slug it out with Marvel. And it's the Chapterhouse Lawsuit, not Slaughterhouse. Elves, Dwarves, and other such things weren't touched, but GW tried to claim trademark on "Space Marines" during that time and even tried to claim they created the concept from wholecloth. One reference to Starship Trooper later the Judge told them they neither invented nor popularized the concept and just because they put a fat "C" next to the name didn't actually mean they owned the copyright to it.
Chapterhouse ultimately was found guilty of using GW's own imagery (as in photos, logos and stuff, which were copyrightable and trademarkable) in their promotional pictures, which was why they didn't win the lawsuit. The judge found both of them to be wildly misrepresenting the law and told them both to pay their own legal fees. This was enough to sink Chapterhouse as they didn't have much funds to begin with, but it's also why we no longer have an Imperial Guard Codex, only an Astra Militarum one.
As for the renaming in AoS, it's in part due to this and in part due to them wanting to distance themselves from the LotR license, which at the time (due to lack of promotion and sales) people suspected they wanted to drop. Then the Hobbits happened.
The primary reason you gave, that once you own the models then you don't need to buy again, holds true for pretty much every miniature wargame out there, though.
It's also not a bad thing. People need to be able to finish their army or team of miniatures to be able to play the game they are based on. Buying miniatures for a game you can't play because you are constantly bombarded with new miniatures and rules is nothing short of a scam. Tabletop wargaming is a time intensive hobby and people actually want that time investment rewarded, they also want to play the damn games and not just constantly painting and glueing plastic together like a 3rd world sweat shop worker.
I recall the problem with 8th edition Warhammer Fantasy was they introduced horde sized units and emphasized the use of big armies. The average game size went from 2,000 pts to 3,000 pts meaning you had to buy more models for all your existing units. This wasn't so bad for regular players but for new players looking to get into the game, it made collecting an army far more expensive, especially when GW sold plastic kits based not on how much plastic was in them but how good they were in game. For example, 10 Empire state troopers would cost 17 euros at the time whilst 10 Empire Greatswords cost 42 euros and 50 cents. To me, nothing seemed to further alienate potential new players for the game than increasing the price tag significantly
I think there are two big fantasy tabletop wargames that people mentally gloss over when thinking about the downward sales history of Warhammer Fantasy: The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game and Warmachine/Hordes. The former was made by Games Workshop itself, the latter by Privateer Press.
LOTR almost sold more than Warhammer 40k at points, while there's a fairly plausible timeline where Privateer Press overtook Games Workshop. (But of course, GW started to really improve itself leading up to Age of Sigmar 2nd edition and the run up to launching 40k 8th edition, while PP made some very, very bad decisions about what directions to go.)
LOTR took up all the visual design language mental headspace of realistic low-fantasy models. Warmachine had big success with much more competitive focused rules and balancing, which GW started to really lean in with 40k 8th edition, and it shouldn't be a surprise that the Imperial Knights have a big resemblance to the warjack models. GW could make a hard plastic version of this model while PP could only do it in metal or resin.
Yeah, it really is this fascinating topic to look at. Warhammer+ has back issues of White Dwarf issues going back to like 2003 or a bit earlier, but NOT the WD issues from when it went weekly. I'd really love to see how the magazine tried to sell The End Times and the launch of Age of Sigmar in it.
Also, it is kind of heartbreaking and so interesting to read online discussions from The End Times and see reactions to it, what people thought the future of Warhammer Fantasy would be. It's like reading diary logs about the apocalypse from one of the Fallout games, these people were mostly blindsided.
I love this humor. I wish I could be that funny - but unfortunately - I am from Germany.
Literally the funniest joke a German will ever type
😂😂😂
I'm sure you're efficiently funny though.
@@elfmastercool4734 so efficiently, ve get ze joke in our heads and zen don't even have to smile.
hey, not everyone can be. and despite our bad comedians on stage, some people can do it. i am not a comedian, but i would say I am at times that funny. alas, i no longer live there xD
I picked Chaos Dwarves, yeah, not the best pick back in the day.... Awesome hats though.
they are coming in aos 4. hashut has been name dropped
There are many rumors about the appearance of a new army in Warhammer Age of Sigmar soon. We can even say the name of the army has been announced: THE HAMMERS OF HASHUT.
A squad of human slave cultists of Hashut were also released for the Warcry.
Don't listen to the others aos is crap, chaos dwarves are in Old World and the game is fantastic.
@@cidahl7005 aos isn't crap. we are getting chaos dwarfs too
A Direct quote from the new AoS rule book, under the descriptions for the members of the chaos pantheon, "IN THE DEEPER DARKNESS RING THE HAMMERS OF HASHUT"
'Temporarily out of stock'
It’s funny, after being very unhappy with the end times I walked away from warhammer, my Britonnians sitting on the self, me gallantly guarding them from my wife selling them at a garage sale when I am not looking.
Now I am getting back into Old World, trying to get my Brettonians back into shape. And everything I want to buy is out of stock from GW. I’ve spent $500 this month mostly on old models on eBay because GW is always out of stock.
How to save Warhammer fantasy.
Do not stop it before the release of Total War Warhammer. That gane pretty much made a LOT of people (also me) discover Warhammer
Even though I saw your face when we collabed, I still think of you as a small doggie
This “human” is AI generated. Do not believe what you see.
Yeah, I kinda missed his dog ai images. But I do find his appearance neat.
He's spitting image of my mate kev diggity 🤣🤣🤣
If you like Warhammer, you always have a lot of things you would buy, no matter how many updates your army has.
I fall into that trap, "Hmm, nothing i need to buy for my army..... Guess i'll start a new one"
But these people are, and will always be, a minority.
How to save Warhammer fantasy.
Do not stop it before the release of Total War Warhammer. That gane pretty much made a LOT of people (also me) discover Warhammer
I just wanted to say that since the dissapearance of the AI dog, and the arrival of a talking head, your charisma and humour comes across much more! Really good video, your note about Stormcast being the 'engine' of AoS is really on point, cant wait for the next one!
22:49 I still think that Warhammer Fantasy may have been 'saved' - or at least rescued from that particular moment - if Games Workshop had waited another year.
Barely a year after the End Times, Total War: Warhammer and Vermintide 1 would be released to critical acclaim; with many young people being introduced to the Fantasy setting, only to find Age of Sigmar in its stead.
Btw, great video. I enjoyed it very much.
This. So much this.
It also needed to step away from the design choices that ruined 8th edition (massive blobs of troops and countering superspells).
I think there's a reason why The Old World is largely a combination of 6th Edition and Warhammer Ancient Battles.
I got into warhammer through those games, like many other people, and id rather hang myself than buy, paint and play a Skaven army in WHFB. Age of Shitmar already had a steep barrier to entry with how low points games are wildly unbalanced, at least now they made Spearhead as an easy way to learn the basics, try out the game and start collecting an army.
(🤔) Agreed.....and Age of Sigmar really does kinda Fv*king *_Suck:_* (mostly) amazing Models notwithstanding.
Eh, at that time GW policy with licensing their IP for games was "sell it to anything that moves" so I doubt they were expecting such a huge succes.
Also a HUGE problem of WFB was the cost of entry, boxes had less and less models, and points were lower. A lot of people would eye the game, run the math of how much an army would cost and turn back or simply go into second hand and recasts.
The cost of entry also affected WFB players, as Olden demon has said, once players had a full army they might buy a few special version of their minis and maybe a couple units to change their lists with the edition of for variety's sake, but getting more armies was the exception. ( Also just look at Primaris, GW saw how people were buying less marines because everyone had their armies and second hand market and now Primaris are the big hot thing)
With AoS GW wanted a game people could play almost right out of the box with minimal problems at a cheap, people have 2-3 armies that play and thanks to starter boxes and Xmas deals getting a new one is always a temptation
The hardest pill to swallow as a Historical Henry is that you're vastly outnumbered by Casual Christoph, and the things you like will never be widely played or supported.
"Yes, you measure the range after you declare targets, it represents the uncertainty of war."
"I'm going to go play something else, this is confusing "
Casual Christoph isn't interested in a simulationist game. He wants something abstract and digestible that can be set-up and played within the same hour he decided to play.
Premeasuring is superior lmao, as someone who played warhammer fantasy it was always just an annoying "haha gotcha, you wasted an entire turn doing nothing because your notion of 18" was wrong" and its just obnoxiously bad.
I think you're 100% right. But I also think that good (truly outstanding) game design allows a casual gamer to engage in small amount of time and Henry to go deep if they want to .
In 2014 I was working for a now defunct E-store for gaming stuff (The War Store if you were wondering) and we had the GW reps swing by. They painted a grim picture for WFB as it was being out sold by tools and paints so in reality GW had nothing to lose in blowing up the Old World.
I hope you weren't one of the "bad guys" who worked there :(
@@abatter define bad guys?
@@Yithmaster if memory serves correct, there were some ex-cons employed by The War Store who stole a ton of product.
@abatter oh well no not an ex con and technically I worked for the sub company know as e-figures
@@Yithmaster Cool. Neal sounded like a great guy and it broke my heart to hear he tried to help folks and they took advantage of him.
"I know subscriptions are a vanity metric-but I'm a vain man. And if I don't get one of those CZcams plaques... someone's gonna pay." 🤣🤣🤣
Misses the success of Total War after the Old World was blown up.
biggest shooting yourself in the foot GW ever did. It wasn't until after total war 3 was old that the old world was released. So many potential new players missed in that 10 year period.
A video game audience isn’t the same as one for an expensive, niche, time-consuming hobby. Especially for a product range that had to be, fairly recently, completely rebooted because it failed
@@logiebear911 And yes, clearly the property had value, because as soon as they "killed" it it became super popular in another medium. That's a failure of GW's strategy, and a failure of those who analyze its failure to account for the potential that the setting clearly had.
How to save Warhammer fantasy.
Do not stop it before the release of Total War Warhammer.
You so frequently out do yourself in showing that this is one of the best GW channels on CZcams! Kudos!
I like the video, but your timeline for a High Elf superfan could be easily put on to pretty much any 40k army that's not Space Marines as well, just look at armies like Eldar, Imperial Guard or Orks. They've gone whole editions with no new minis.
I have found it's rare to find a player that only has one army or sticks to one system, and even going back to high elves, my mate back in the day who had a High Elf army spent a good portion of the late 90s getting the stuff so he could run a cavalry only list this was after already having more than 2k of stuff to field.
indeed, lets look at eldar's release schedule xD
Extremely true. It’s bizarre that there’s a double standard running through the entire video, and the ultimate point is “well fantasy space marines sell well so every other faction gets a pass”. Like… what? No? If the other factions weren’t selling well they’d discontinue them, but that’s not what happened.
True, and being an Eldar fan I kind of like the fact that a 2nd edition army will likely be valid until the end of time lol. (If not optimal).
But 40k does have Space Marines (and a couple of other more frequently updated things) - so it counteracts that, allowing these more static armies to exist - and now AOS has Stormcast. So I don't think it's a double standard as this is mentioned at the end of the video, maybe just not explained super clearly.
Also, I do think the lack of army updates across the board in 40k is a problem too, so it's also worthy of criticism.
Isn't that the point though? There wasn't a Space Marines to subsidize the rest of the factions. With Age of Sigmar they added storm cast that fill the role.
@@pie4dessert And now they've started cannibalizing their own range within AoS to ensure that people are always buying new stuff. Doesn't seem like Stormcast were that important at keeping the entire game alive at all. Just the stuff that allows them to say 'we be growthing, stockholders'.
Incident with a pigeon? I was living out in the wilderness with no internet then so i think i missed this... Love the video btw
The Day to today...
🙃
Something almost nobody talks about with Fantasy is how byzantian and complex the rules were, I often got in long rules disagreements there werent easily accessible erratas for
Very true. The rules were often way too complex because they had been revised over and over when it would have been more sensible to just rip some of them out and replace them with a different system rather than plaster over the cracks of a flawed foundation.
Like Weapon Skill.
Just knowing what to roll to hit as a new player was like being back in math class.
If your model has X WS and the opposing model has Y WS, that means that since the difference between the two values is more than A but less than B, with A and B being derived from X - aaaaand I'm sure we can all agree that's already way too much pointless faff to reach the one number that actually matters: Which results on the die is a success so you know how many of them you get to bring over to the next step. (Which was almost the same thing again but calculated differently, so new players sometimes got them mixed up, adding to that completely unnecessary complexity when playing.)
It's not that surprising that they replaced it with just a flat value in AoS. Way less stops to double check rules every time my dudes crash into your dudes.
As an amusing side note, the most hilariously obtuse rule I've ever seen in a GW book was an old warhammer 40K rule about tanks going hull down, essentially the vehicle equivalence of gaining a "cover bonus" for being behind terrain. The rules text clearly explained how that affected the interaction between the shooter and the vehicle in question, but they forgot one rather important detail:
The text didn't mention *when the rule actually applied*.
So the only explanation in that book for when a vehicle could claim the hull down bonus was a top-down image of a tank near a piece of terrain, with part of the tank covered in a shaded area that extended from said terrain and a line of text stating "this vehicle is hull down". The image was obviously meant to be a visual aid to elaborate on the explanation that, unfortunately, wasn't actually there.
In hindsight, it was most likely a misprint and I'm sure they fixed it with an errata and later reprintings probably incuded the full text, but it still caused quite a few discussions around the FLGS tables at the time.
To paraphrase some guy in a series..
“The point is that you are under a misconception that we are a gaming company. We are not. What we are, really, is a miniature company. And the lore is not our most valuable asset. That would be our miniatures”.
Which is why the GW business model is the way it is.. They have to tread a very fine line between generating income and not alienating their players.
Now I’d say the lore plays a bigger role (the books are good etc) but they do change that in order to sell more minutes.
Mentioning magic is funny as I also stopped playing that as I saw it just becoming a blackhole for my money - much more than Warhammer.
The Fantasy setting went from a unique thing to the testing ground for 40k rules.
The witch elf thumb got my click. ;-)
Also, one benefit to starting from scratch with AOS is that they established early on that the narrative can and will advance. This means that AOS (hopefully) won't be caught in the status quo purgatory the 40k and Fantasy settings are/were. This is compounded by the fact that with 8 whole realms, there is room to have something disastrous or miraculous occur in one of the realms and not have to worry about the cascading effects of this as much because there are still 7 other realms. This pleases an unmentioned minor archetype, Narrative Nicholas, who is giddy with the chance to update his 15-page lore document on his custom subfaction on how they are reacting to this change in the narrative every time it occurs.
This is of course, countered by the lack of fluff lore that Old Fantasy was rife with, but I can see AOS being filled out eventually as the editions roll on and the different realms are focused on.
Narrative is such BS though...it's a setting, not a story. Tell your own stories!
Patient Pete wasn't mentioned either. He only enjoys incredibly specific things about the game/lore/setting and won't spend a dime until those things are for a sale. Sometimes those things are more abstract than a book or model. Sometimes it is a single awful, terrible, rule that Patient Pete is waiting to be abolished before he invests any interest.
*Cough* double turn *Cough*
4 editions in and there's nothing.
@@tonlito22 8 editions in, and there's nothing.
As I see it, a company driven narrative only hampers player made lore as heroes, factions and units dies, gets destroyed or dramatically changes often for the simple reason to make way for new models.
A fixed setting allows for more player freedom to expand your own story through battles and homebrew, new models can still be made but they aren't bound to a single event like it is with a active narrative.
This was an exceptionally well thought out video, and I just wanted to say I appreciate ditching the AI doggo art so much! Thank you
"Without cannibalising each other's playerbase"
While on the whole this is fairly true, Games Workshop's own shortcomings kind of forced this to still happen to two subsets of players: Beasts of Chaos and Bonesplittaz. Because of GW's backwards-headed inter-department competition policies, they felt it more prudent to be able to keep track of which department was getting more sales for these kits than to maintain goodwill with their playerbase. If that lack of integrity prevails in a situation where two poorly-selling factions are regarded, they most certainly will do the same when it comes to real cash cow factions, which only portents even worse.
I feel point 2 is a bit disingenuous. Not only can you apply that to almost any army in any game system, 40k included, but not a lot of people buy a whole army in one year, owning every character, unit, and monster in its year of release. Most people spread out their army building over years due to cost and time to paint.
Second, not a lot of people only buy one army. By the time our High Elf player has finally finished his army, he will have most likely gotten into the lore and models of another faction like Chaos or Dark Elves. Warhammer is just that addicting. It’s plastic crack for a reason.
And finally, people will upgrade their old models. As someone who started in 2nd edition 40K, you’d better believe I got all the new 3rd edition Space Marines when they came out, despite already owning Tactical, Assault, Devastator, and Death Company Marines. No one in our hobby is ever content with what they have.
The main point that should be taken away is that Warhammer Fantasy battles was not selling in the retail space. I ran a FLGS for decades before I retired in '22. Fantasy Battles had been our least selling GW product for years. From 2004 till 2015 it was a downhill slide. In all honesty Lord of the Rings killed Fantasy Battle more than anything. You have limited space in retail and Lord of the Rings sold like hot cakes, so it ate up most of the Fantasy Battle area. The thing I like about this video is that it was the local Warhammer historical players that were the main Warhammer Fantasy battle players. And historical war-game players spend the least amount in retail, they are the hardest to please, and the most gatekeeping of all the hobby space. These are just observations of peoples behavior over decades as customers.
The difference is 40k sold.
@@mogwaiman6048 Oh trust me, I know 40K massively outsold Fantasy. However, Fantasy was set up to fail, especially in 8th edition. When the rules and meta say "You need a horde of 40 elite troops", that unit is easily going to run you between $100-160. For one unit. For 40 near identical models you need to paint. Never mind once you get into actual horde armies like Skaven or Goblins.
They could have scaled down to AoS style battles without blowing up the existing world. Gutting the entire IP reeks of them being traumatized by the Chapterhouse Studio lawsuit, and them not being able to copyright the term "Space Marine". So they decided all the stuff they plagiarized from other IPs needed to go, and to reinvent the wheel with a bunch of "we have elves/dwarfs at home" factions.
@@Pojko you didn't need to create horde lists to play whfb though. We know the IP struggled well before 8th edition. People chose other games as well outside of 40k. I think the new Aelf and Duardin factions are more creative than their generic counterparts.
@@mogwaiman6048 The IP didn't 'struggle', it just wasn't able to paper over the massive losses happening after LotR dropped off and couldn't support GW's corporate drive for growth. It wasn't losing a ton of money, it just wasn't making enough to justify its continued existence.
8:35 the new unit you show when saying new units, was an alternate build for the Shadow Warriors you mentioned earlier.
I contend with the idea that it's good to have stormcast in every starter box like they do with space marines, hell, I even contend with the idea that it's good with space marines. Whilst you sell the idea that it was about replacing the old stormcast with a new look, that part is sort of true, but people were more split about the new design than you give it credit for. The fly in the ointment though is that the Dominion box set did not sell well, at all. A big issue was because it was stormcast again, and kruleboyz just didn't have the appeal of warhammer orcs. The big issue as well is it's unsustainable, you need to constantly cull the range otherwise it ends up absurdly bloated where stormcast have triple the amount of units of other factions, and that's even after a culling. Having a different set of armies in every box helps sell the range of different factions, and nowadays with spearhead and combat patrol boxes, there's always an easy way in if you don't like the two factions in the starter set.
The problem with what you've said is that Dominion _did_ sell. It sold _very_ well according to GW's own financial reports. The problem with Dominion was that it was hilariously overproduced, probably as a reaction to the mess that was the Indomitus launch.
@@joshwenn989 A lot of dominion sets did sell but not to consumers, they went to hobby stores where they died on the shelf before going down to 50% markdowns. The fact that you could still pick up Dominion for cheap by the end of the edition wasn't just because of overproduction, it was because no one wanted them. Your argument doesn't make any sense, if GW said that it sold well then it wouldn't have been overproduced, you're claiming two different arguments as one. Either it did sell well, or it didn't because it was overproduced, it can't be both because if the latter is true the former isn't. GW would never in a million years claim it sold well if it didn't hit its sale targets. Also "overproduced" is just another way of saying supply exceeded demand.
I don't begrudge GW for bringing in Age of Sigmar, but I do absolutely begrudge the way they did it. They could have retired the Old World, simply moved it out of production, but they chose to destroy it entirely. I don't think I'll ever stop feeling a little spike of anger at that every time Age of Sigmar is mentioned.
There's no way you just skimmed over those apocalyptic trash end times books. People hated the end of warhammer because the people that actually cared were insulted by some of the worst writing that series ever had.
He skimmed over a lot more than just that. The fact that "Forge the Narrative" never got a mention nor how early AoS dwarves got a bonus for the *player* getting shitfaced in real life would make Casual Christoph look kind of dickish.
GW at the time of Warhammer's death I think was more short sighted than modern GW, they just wanted to sink money into Space Marines as that's what was selling the most, and they weren't investing in diversifying with things like Necromunda, Epic, Mordheim, Adeptus Titanicus. I think a big thing that killed WHFB is the lack of range churn, they were holding on to everything which was great on the one hand, but meant you needed 15 square metres of shelf space to carry the whole range, a lot of which was old. They did need to do a bit of a slate-wiping to clear that old range and start a fresh one, but they didn't need to kill the entire world and swap to a completely different game.
Yeah, instead of fully nuking the setting, GW could rethink Warhammer fantasy, basically to need less models without sacrificing "realism" numbers, the main problem is that people got an army to tournament legal size, with a few extra units for variety and stopped buying. While interested people ran the mental math of how much it would cost and ran away, or look into second hand or recasting.
GW short sightness and idiotic CEO at the time made 1st ed AOS horrible, even tho it had some decent ideas (stormcast as a starter faction, the realms to make space for homebrew, narrative and make anyone fight anyone else) that made AoS sell a lot better (and the high fantasy miniatures where a lot harder to find alternatives for
@@ismael9914 If GW did that, it would have torn apart the WarFan community into pieces, no different to when AoS was made; the difference being that GW would have a lot of baggage to deal with instead of the clean slate they had with AoS. No, objectively speaking, GW could either double down on WHFB or replace it. This video even showed how much money they invested into the game and setting; 30 years of books, games, novels, and models.
At best, GW could have had AoS as an alternate universe where WHFB did not survive, but keep WHFB in stasis for a few years to figure out what to do with it.
@@stephenjenkins7971 All these ideas of "alternate timelines" are very childish. Let's make the Horus Heresy last forever, and 40k will be in an alternate reality. Anyone will say that this is absurd.
They tried that in the 2000s with games like Battlefleet Gothic, the Space Hulk reruns, Inquisitor and, well, Necromunda and it nearly sunk the company. Necromunda wasn't heard from at all until suddenly GW revived it in the 2010s, to quite a lot of surprised faces.
@@Donnerbalken28 Those games are hardly what almost sunk GW in the 2000s, those were the days of the LOTR boom and subsequent LOTR bubble bursting after the hype from the last movie died down.
Great stuff mate, enjoyed this a lot!
The only thing I don't like about this channels is the slow frequency of uploads!
If things continue at this rate I will just produce a single live action feature film length video a year
@@OldenDemon ;(
“Wow look at that large robot! Radical!” 🤣
In 1991…no one died
holy shit I only just got the reference...
@@cloudycolacorp what's the ref? I think I might too young...
@@baudsp pool keeper bit from brass eye
@@cloudycolacorp The Day Today, but same people, yeah.
@@robertwareham8466 I get those two totally mixed up because I watch them both at the same time when I rewatch them lol
I was thinking oh no he's turning into the pool manager from The Day Today and then you dropped the pigeon reference
As an Eldar player, all those years with resculps instead of new units sound kind of awesome actually.
Medieval fantasy miniatures simply look better neatly ranked on their squared bases. Great video, nicely paced, no annoying padding.
Generally concise and well explained, however, I've heard the "Fantasy Battle is a closed system so the lack of new options is what killed it" point a few times now and I really can't agree or see the logic to it. The Empire, for one, was repeatedly stated as having massive variations in its people and forces such that a Nuln army book, a Stir army book and an Averland army book could easily be as varied as a separate book for different Space Marine chapters, which was clearly an acceptable choice. Storm of Chaos showed how it could be done quite easily with the alternate Empire list in that. Also, Demons, for one, are exactly as open or closed a list in 40k as they are in the Old World, or for that matter Age of Sigmar, and yet they seem to have an acceptable level of support in those other systems. For that matter, GW have at various points clearly stated that Space Marines have rigid organizations and lack any sort of new tech, and they've also repeatedly retconned that to allow new elements and units in, while the Old World's viewpoint, Empire, are supposed to be in a state of constant invention, even moreso, for Fantasy Battle they've instead retconned the Old World being in the same universe as 40k and so able to have new tech fall through to it so we had Chaos Champions hefting Shuriken pistols to turn it into a closed world when it wasn't before. Honestly, having spent a long time playing Fantasy Battle alongside historical Henry 40k players, there's really not that much variation in how many units you do or don't have to buy as a long term player, if you choose, in either system.
My main theory at the moment is far more along the lines that GW have, for whatever reason, never quite got their arms around an introductory version of Fantasy Battle. Border Princes and Warhammer Skirmish, even Battle Masters could all have gotten over that point where a player confronts the fact that to engage with one half of the store in any way shape or form means buying and painting a hundred models while the other allows you some level of engagement with five. GW is a funnel business, its very much focused on new players, and Fantasy Battle is a brick wall to new players. Even for long term committed players, you could have sold that High Elf player a different force over the time you mentioned, very few people are so hardcore committed to a single force as to be utterly unwilling to branch out, if not for the fact that considering even a secondary force in Fantasy Battle was an exhausting prospect for most people. One of the best things for Age of Sigmar is the fact that Warhammer Underworlds gets you some way towards playing it, in AoS first edition actually all the way towards playing it. 40k has variations that let you play with 5, 50 or 500 minis, Fantasy Battle has the option for 0 or 500, no other state. Its so irritating because Battle Masters, dumb as it maybe was, showed, as the book slightly to your left of your left earlobe has shown, that its totally possible to disconnect numbers of troops from numbers of minis, that you can play big rank and flank games with as many or as few minis as you like, so long as the unit sizes remain. I'm not sure if it was lack of vision or just being more willing to shoot the game through the head than admit you could play it with zero minis if you really wanted, but either way, that's what I think made it unsalvageable.
Not entirely correct. The main difference - and thus the advantage of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar - over the Old World and the Horus Heresy is that it is an open sandbox infinite universe settings for adding YOUR DUDES. Inventing unique colour scemes, crazy conversions and write your own homemade hombrew lore,
In 40k you can create your own Space Marine Chapter, Tyranid Hive Fleet, Necron Tomb, and so on - and all this will be natural and organic in the endless Galaxy of Madness. GW may even see your creation and include it in the official canon.
This is also how the Mortal Realms were created: you can create your own unique Stormhost of stone, lava, vampiric, Bretonnian Stormcasts - and it will all be legal. It is also very good to give your army the fleor of one of the Eigth Winds of Magic, such as Egyptian-style Sun Worshiping Vampires.
In both cases, the community will applaud you for coming up with such cool idea and work.
But if you dare paint the Nuln State Troops in purple or the Emperor's Children Legion in green because you like those colors better... you'll find a wall of blank misunderstanding at best.
And this is partly fair: you won’t paint the British colonial soldiers blue instead of red in a historical wargame, will you? Or a tiger tank in pink, right?
I also remember very well how in the 8th Edition FB community reacted negatively to the new added units such as Demigryph Knights, Elven Flying Boats, Stonehorn, Tundertusk and so on.
The complaint was that it ruins the solid historical setting and turns it into a childish fantasy.
In other words community hates two things the most: the current state and changes.
@@Basil_GhothickovitchI disagree. I have a WHFB undead army which is an entire undead circus with a mumakil as an undead performing elephant for its Vargeist, a dancing bear for its Dire wolves and a whole unit of Shakespearean skeletons. My Empire are a mix of Pistoliers dismounted and staging a ragged defense with improvised weapons after being caught on a scouting mission and the sisters of Sigmar who came to rescue them. My High Elves are all glam rockers and my Ogres either lava or frost infused. The Old World is full of empty spaces that absolutely allow homebrew lore, it has un-investigated Dwarven holds that could hold any secret you picture, sea elves and undead pirates. You can proxy Cathy for Dark Elves or Tileans for Empire. You can do all those things in Fantasy Battle if you have the imagination to do so, GW bought out alternative lists, many times based off of fan creations, throughout the history of Fantasy Battle from the all Gnoblar list to the alternative Hill Goblins. Maybe you can't paint Nuln State Troops purple, but you can't pain Ultramarines yellow and have them still be Ultramarines, but you can paint the Empire troops of a cannon obsessed border prince purple quite happily. I don't really see the difference.
@@Basil_Ghothickovitch I don't think its entirely fair to take one chunk of a community and paint the whole with that same brush. I've seen plenty of reactions from the 40k community over the idea that there could, for example, be female space marines, that makes any reaction to the WHFB new units pale. The WHFB community I knew of embraced things like the new Storm of Chaos lists or the Throne of Tamurkhan whole heartedly. The toad dragon and landship remain additions spoken of with great love whenever I hear them engaged with.
@@RuleofCarnage Ultramarines can be painted yellow and they will still be Ultramarines if it is sand camouflage for a desert planet.
Hey Man, your content and background music is awesome!
Also the through out explanation and lessons about consumer markets are really interesting and helpful I guess.
Cheers and kudos!
I subbed for more content and of course, to support you and no way out of fear you would one day make somebody pay if you don’t get a CZcams badge.
Anyway,
Cheers and greetings from Germany
Not sure if the logic behind how the "High elf superfan" had years of "nothing new to buy" really works. That is, you could make the same argument for Eldar players in 40k. Most of their sculpts are still 20+ years old. Space marine players are kind of the only ones that really get new releases on a regular basis.
GW took so much time to put out new kits for the imperial guard and orks that i started to look elsewhere.
Then i stopped buying from GW at all because i'm not playing anymore and found out small studios care more about their customers.
I'm not sure how WHF could have been saved, maybe the Video games others have mentioned would have saved it, but still, I think the high model count, rank and flank, 90% of new releases for your faction being books and resculpts, and the "none of our faction names are trademarkable" problems
I suppose the other option would be to only lightly damage the WHF setting, rather than kill it off entirely, killl of the game rather than the setting, no more rank and flank
All this being said, much as I think parts of the AOS setting are super cool, I'm never going to be a fan of the sigmarines, they are boring, not that I'll really touch anything GW with a bargepole these days, I turned around one day and found that a squad of 5 wraithguard cost £40, no thanks
It's funny that Warhammer fantasy started as a way to use your dnd minis in wargaming, I'd think something more skirmishy or at least in the 40k/AOS format would be better for that purpose, I suppose rank and flank historical wargaming was more in fashion in the late 70s
thats the neat thing, you dont need to be a fan of Sigmarines to enjoy AOS just like you dont need to be a fan of space marines to enjoy 40k!
If this were done, then the “Square Base Suprematists” would still be in hysterics. Also, the Kings of Lore really did not like new knowledge, any that needed to be learned.
I would argue with the most GW products ive seen in the Bargin Bin are AoS products like dominion.
Great video, though the idea that the succession of the End Time followed by Age of Sigmar as a grand plan seemed like to me an overestimation of the acumen of the honchos at GW. But I agree that GW seemed to have done a good job with AoS since its release.
Regarding the number of factions of 40k at the end of the video, I think that it's alleviated by how many are space-marine adjacent
This is one of the best explanations of the history of age of sigmar I think I’ve ever listened to. Fantastic lesson.
IT would have been better if they didn't change the old world lore to seek a "Modern Audience"
I also wonder how the decline of LOTR played into this because it was basically the second main game system for most of the 00s and i guess as it started to wind down a bit it put more pressure on WHFB to be more successful, which it couldn't ever really live up to in terms of mass appeal.
This. When my 12-year-old brain lost interest in the LOTR game (because nobody ever played it with me) what did i pick up? Those weird looking aztec-dinosaur thingies? No, i bought myself a Space Marine Battle Squad with 5 Marines for 17,50€. And here i am, 16 years later, still being invested in this world. Partly because Warhammer has a tone that nothing else out there really matches, but also because it was the only space my abusive parents *didn't* invade.
In some ways 40k had it's own mini end times in the gathering storm and the changes from 7th edition to 8th, it's just that the new sits alongside the old until the old is phased out. you can interpret the Ynnari as an attempt to consolidate eldar into a single faction, but given that list of factions you showed at the end probably had them under the 'minor factions', that plan (if it was one) failed.
Sadly the whole Ynnari thing is basically a dropped GW plotline that sort of goes nowhere in the end. It definitely felt like it was an attempt by someone to merge all the Eldar factions (Dark Eldar, Craftworld Eldar and Harlequins) into one faction and thus they could produce a Codex: Aeldari and cover all three in one book. Which is interesting because we've had Chaos Space Marines go the *other* way, where the four Chaos God Specific marines have been split off into their own armies with their own model ranges and a generic 'mix and match' sort of left behind.
I wouldn't be surprised if, come 11th edition, the Ynnari are stuffed into legends and then 12th has them fully shelved with some lore retcon/written out of the lore by being wiped out or something.
@@luketfer Very likely. Knowing GW, they can put anything into the Legend trash can, and they are also not obligated to support the Legend rules indefinitely.
(I expect even the worst: in the next edition, everything that is now in the Horus Heresy, such as Contemptors, Leviathan Dreadnoughts, will not even receive legend rules).
I suggested to my GW store manager, that to save the Warhammer fantasy game, all they needed to do was release the new edition based around the commanders and subfaction idea, basically what they did eith Formations in 40k, you take an Empire White wolf commander, and all your knights of the white wolf get a bonus, but you are limited in your army choice, no handgunners or cannons for example. . Its a really simple idea, much the same as taking Belial in 40k and only being able to take Terminators, dreadnoughts and landraiders in your army. . It could have given people like myself, that had played since the 80s, a reason to buy new models, as personally I love the idea of themed armies, and a simple page in a rulebook would have made them appealing to a lot more players. . .one army book, could suddenly represent a dozen possible armies in some cases, I actually ran a pure Reiksguard knights, with Kurt Helborg, supported by lots of outriders and pistoliers for the last year of Fantasy, it was great fun beibg able to put a pure cavalry army on the table.
Great context. Still made about how GW handled the transition to Sigmar. Will likely still be complaining about that to the staff of my nursing home in 30 years.
The whole ‘they don’t have anything new to sell you’ hits literally every game they have eventually. The only reason that it didn’t hit 40K as hard is because they made Primaris as an excuse to sell the entire space marine range to people all over again with a new lick of paint.
6th also absolutely sold well. It just didn’t sell 40K numbers, which literally no one else ever has.
I feel like there’s a lot of the usual mythology and double standards in this video - I do think AoS was more appealing to the middle ground, but I also think it ignores the converse arguments a lot too.
It helps that the older Space Marines sculpts were a bit meh, the new sculpts are aesthetically nicer. If you can make something palpably better each time it's a bonus. That timeline of High Elf releases just showed a declining quality.
I don't think the Primaris range was just an excuse to sell the range again, it seemed that technology just caught up with them and they could produce better-quality miniatures at a better scale. Which unlike the previous glow-ups didn't really hide that well amongst the older models.
@@markgrehan3726 The truescale Horus Heresy marines and upscaled Chaos Space marines are proof this isn't true.
There was one year when Xwing sold better than 40k, and one year when Privateer Press sold more (If Warmachine & Hordes were counted as a single game) than 40k.
6th edition sold nowhere even close to 40k during any point of its life, by like 3x.
"We've run out of things to make" is a failure of imagination. Fantasy had an entire setting yet to flesh out but it was just ignored. A similar thing happens in 40k when you have hundreds of elements mentioned in the fluff but never given an incarnation on the table top. Rather than expand on, say, Tau auxiliaries or any of the dozens of xenos species or factions out in the setting, GW would rather crap out it's biannual space marine lieutenant refresh
This might be your best video yet. Explained everything so well.
This is an excellent analysis of AOS and GW. Engaging and entertaining. Well done!
I had your closing thought the other day. My realization is how few classic kits are running around out there for the big three factions in my area. These are Marines, Guard, and Orks. My little plastic army man brain goes, "Well if they were gunna Sigmar me 11th edition is likely the time to do it. Soon my tac squads, rhinos and devs will be gone and there won't be anything to remember."
And here I tought it was gonna be lore
Same , Kinda disappointed
Actually a very nice view on the whole thing. I never burned my army (kept it in a box) but do enjoy the Old World. Never did got into AoS but like that you explained how things went there. Keep up the good work!
I didn't realise that they had already Primaris'd the Stormcast Eternals...
And yet the not-so-nice helmets, obviously the weakest part of the design, remain the same.
we love a Keeping Up Appearances ref XD
spearhead got me spending all my money again. I like the options and saw a lot of validity in your words.
About model rotation: My 40K Eldar army still contains the metal howling banshees with samurai swords (3rd ed maybe). They are the best howling banshees. Fight me.
This is partly why people run more than one army, because not all the armies are getting updated often enough to just keep adding more to them, it would also get a bit too bloated if that happened anyway.
Probably a sales tactic. Since they have and still do the same with all their lines.
I'm basically full casual. I get most of my stuff off facebook marketplace. Also, I dont care if it's a GW product
Games workshop got embarrassed that their Warhammer Fantasy IP wasn't quite dead despite their best efforts.
Thanks for explaining that. As someone who collected warhammer in the early 2000s and then left the hobby, I have been bemused at all this age of sigmar stuff.
I wasnt around to see old fantasy , since I started getting into the hobby around 2022. Although AOS in all the stores around me take up around the same space as 40k did, I wonder if fantasy only took up like 25% of what 40k would. What I also find pretty cool about AOS is how it has evolved to the point that its visually distinct from what Fantasy used to be. Its also interesting to think about the philosophy of the two models in the game. AOS being dominated by several elite like units, with middle ground armies at 2k being like 20-40ish battleline units with some elite guys sprinkled in. While Fantasy you may have 1 or 2 big guys on big mounts, but you still own an army of guys.
I prefer the old world to something like AOS, just because im a sucker for simplicity. I dont mean in the rules, but rather just how the models and the aesthetic of the game feels. AOS kinda runs into the issue of looking like every fantasy tabletop game known to man, with some really cool models but stuff like the artwork really blends into looking like everything else. Fantasy just has some standard fantasy guys and it is 100% confident that its enough to win people over without feeling bland. Its tricky to describe.
Writing this comment, and spending some time with the product has made me realize though that I am easily won over by pretty pictures and cool box colors (that teal on the boxes looks amazing). I bought both starter boxes when they came out kinda because of this so I hope to God I continue to like the new Old World over AOS or else im gonna look real stupid.
Rank and Flank as a term is new, rank and file being the historically correct phrasing. Did it start with AoS or Kings of War? As a Historical Henry, I wonder about it.
Small Army rules, put out rules for small armies say 500 pts and 1K points with Commanders less than major hero generals, that way you can have three or four armies that you can lone out to other players and new players, also new players don't get overwhelmed with trying to build a 2K pt army first go.
that's how you could have saved WHFB
Nice video! However one key thing you seem to have missed is that many players collected more than one army or played more than one GW game. So the “didn’t have anything to buy” wasn’t really true for most people.
People really don't understand how less frequent new models from GW were back in the days of metal minis. Most armies got new units once every few years. The good stuff was in horribly expensive Forge World resin. Some things got unit stats but no actual model - you had to kitbash it yourself (yes, they expected you to kitbash stuff for yourself, which I actually recommend to people, its quite liberating).
There was no planning to release schedules, you'd see three Space Marines with different guns one month, and the next it would be squats in power armor. In other words, they acted like a small group of people just making whatever cool stuff they wanted to make and worried about retail afterwards.
That said, I think this video paints Historical Henry in a bad light. Sure, he was finished his High Elf army and didn't have anything more to buy for years, but HH would generally be buying and painting new armies as he went along. It was just that it takes a certain kind of mindset to paint ranked up units of 30 spearmen versus a loose unit of Space Marine tactical squaddies. 40k was much quicker gratification than WHFBs could provide.
I dont see the release schedule as a problem. If a player only lasts two years-ish, releasing resculpts every two years seems like the way to go. The existing guy that has been a superfan for 11 years is the exception based on the data.
This is the first of your videos I've seen. I really enjoy your style and the way information is presented. This space is starved for well-researched content. Keep up the good work.
My new favourite channel!
Maker's Mark. A lower mid shelf bourbon so good it doesn't need to plaster "wheated bourbon" all over the label to let you know it's special, the wax dipping does it already. Excellent video, I just didn't find anything worth pointing out in your beautiful presentation other than my joy at your pull at a great bourbon.
I support your vanity. Subscription gladly given.
I’m new to your channel and love the style
From a business perspective, it is completely logical. 40k's biggest advantage over Fantasy is that it is set in a vast universe rather than on a single planet, so they can constantly add new stuff and remove old ones. The setting itself is never finished; it is more flexible and adaptable to new market demand.
casual kristoff watching age of sigmar come out : that looks like a nice kitbash for my drukhari🗿
Listening to that High Elf release schedule makes me jealous as hell as a craftworld Eldar player.
I do wonder if 40k would benefit from standardising at least in so far as having "Imperium" and "Chaos" as umbrella factions. Things get weird with Xenos as while you could have Eldar and Nids everyone else is hard to argue would make sense on the same force. I think having the option to have say space marines, sisters and guardsmen all in one force isn't a bad thing though - there's a lot of room for flavor and a broader feeling world.
We had that in 8th edition. I think it was too difficult to balance, so they moved away from it. Shame, it's very appropriate feeling.
The point in the video is kinda misleading since AoS does have specific factions, that's not something that needs to change. They dropped the idea of grand alliances being a buffet of options in 2nd edition and introduced a sort of alliance matrix that gradually got more restrictive over 3rd and is now totally gone in 4th. The issue with melding factions is it too easily allows the strength of one to cover the weaknesses of another to the point that you can't balance them as individual factions without penalizing people who just play them as individual factions.
you were funny and chill, subbed and liked :D
I would maybe like GW a lot more better if they actually stocked their online store properly and didnt have horrible predatory practices.
Their online store is truly a joke. Even when not considering stock the entire website looks like it was built by a 16 year old a decade ago.
>Spend a fraction of 40ks budget on new products and advertising for Fantasy
>Complain that a single box of marines outperforms Fantasy
?
22:35
I get that you're focused on the miniature gaming stuff but I think it was pretty wild to only chalk up the return of the old world setting strictly to Age of Sigmar. I think the interest was in part if no overly driven by the massive success of the Total War: Warhammer game trilogy which completely smoked the other Warhammer video games in terms of sales, popularity and staying power and and kind of became a gaming institution in its own right, instead of the just the confluence of a legendary game franchise with a more obscure high fantasy IP.
@@michaelsilver253 possibly unintentional on my part. I should have mentioned Total War. Also I should have mentioned the general nostalgia based release roadmap that GW is working their way through
@@OldenDemon And I think GW's timing was awful, Total War: Warhammer is *the* Warhammer video game. As it launched into huge popularity, guess what GW, you phased out factions/models that people would've wanted to buy due to TWW's success. And now, they bring Old World... but Total Warhammer series is coming to an end. Warhammer 40k got more popular due to Dawn of War, Fantasy needed a game like that and we got it... when they also shelved the game. And now yeah Age of Sigmar is selling but also, it sits on a weird spot. You also didn't mention Vermintide. Nowadays they are two of the best known Warhammer games, including 40k ones. Again, GW couldn't capitilize on it, there are no new Vermintide games to be made and only now we got "Skaventide" box. Fall of WFB is %100 due to GW's lack of foresight.
An incredibly rich setting was murdered because it didn't sell enough plastic, then replaced by lowest common denominator slop AoS. The Old World is sadly anything but, so Warhammer Fantasy stays dead. Fortunately, those of us who love the old setting still have decades of books and games to enjoy, and it will never die in my heart.
Lowest common denominator?
Warhammer fantasy has objectively more unique factions
After years of internet, finally a cold take. Subbed.
absolutely was not expecting a The Day Today reference, nice one!
i sympathised with the dark elf man.
In fairness, the greatest value I got out of WFB was actually the army books for the lore. Had a load of high elves though...
The reason why skaven are not available in old world is the same why Beastmen are no longer around in Age of Sigmar. Apparently, according to some insiders gw allocates budget based on sales, which ofc makes sense. HOWEVER, if the same kit is available for multiple systems, gw does not know who to give credit to.
Not only that, but having the same army in multiple systems also decreases sales overall. (see chaos daemons, horus heresy units in 40k, the various kill team units in 40k etc).
So now gw is really trying to separate the armies/units completely, with a little overlap as possible.
Just as it ended it there was Total war and Vermintide set in that world.
I never played the war game but liked the setting after it was killed off, I like the system and armies from AOS but hate the setting. I think they could have reset but kept the setting a bit more like the old world.
How I never came across your channel before ? Your video was amazing
About the Wh40k question at the end of the video, I feel it is already happen and a lot of people are talking about it. The bigger the franchise goes, more complicated will be pleasing everyone, but at the same time, no factions get anything to pick up with whatever "do whatever strategy you want because you have a unit for that" Space Marine you have to play agains, BUT.
Kill Team is finding a new grow since it allows people to just collect more factions and sub factions without having to aim for a 2000 points army, and if you are more of a painter, you can have the best looking minis of each faction for much much less. Plus, if you collect them, boom, you can play with any new faction you may want and try how a full game should be with them-ish