Vapourware Games Workshop takes the hatchet to Age of Sigmar, fans are Big Mad (TM)

[Caim]

I don’t fundamentally disagree with you, I’m just saying that most of GW games (Blood Bowl is pretty solid and I heard that Underworld is decent too) are the wrong ones to have that expectation.

If retarded people want to come together to be retarded we can't stop them. Probably better to be a juggalo than a competitive wargamer though. Get more pussy and they probably smell better too.

“A juggalo is a fan of the hip hop group Insane Clown Posse or any other hip hop group signed to Psychopathic Records.”

Huh?

Isn't that the guy who made a diss track against the company that sold his daughter a shitty fursuit?

 

[mondblut]

I still need an opponent the next week. You don’t skin a sheep, you have to shear it.

Then you're not worthy.

 

[Akratus II]

Then you're not worthy.

How many games do you get in, in your average week?

 

[Hell Swarm]

Can Games workshop be considered a ponzi scheme? Their entire business model is getting suckers to buy in, convince a few friends to do the same and repeat over and over as they alienate older players and new suckers are roped in.

 

[Caim]

Can Games workshop be considered a ponzi scheme? Their entire business model is getting suckers to buy in, convince a few friends to do the same and repeat over and over as they alienate older players and new suckers are roped in.

You don't get paid for introducing people to Warhammer, so no.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

That's pretty much how most nerd hobbies are now. If the franchise hasn't already been killed off, then it's a ship of Theseus substitution that lacks what attracted you to it in the first place. You have no recourse, because copyright law prevents you from doing your own thing with the material and trying to do original stuff is hit and miss. Dissatisfied fans are usually not themselves creatives who are equipped with skill and means to make their own IPs to replace that which alienated them.

I'm actually happy this is happening now, all at once. These monopolies have been strangling the creative industries for decades and held the hobbies hostage to their capriciousness. It's about time that fans realize these problems and finally stop giving them money.

 

[Johannes]

What is Age of Sigmar and who's playing it? Tried to understand this shit but it's confusing

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

What is Age of Sigmar and who's playing it? Tried to understand this shit but it's confusing

Warhammer Fantasy's replacement after GW killed it from poor management. Basically Warhammer 40k except fantasy flavor. And by fantasy flavor I mean marvel esque shit where nothing makes sense because the writers can't be arsed to do proper world building.

Also terrible names. Elves are now aelves, lizardmen became seraphon, Orcs became orruks, Ogres are now Ogors and dwarfs are duardins.

 

[Andnjord]

What is Age of Sigmar and who's playing it? Tried to understand this shit but it's confusing

Some really great models but also plenty of over-designed, over the top stuff. Oh, and goddamn sigmarines.



ALSO, GW's new website makes me irrationaly frustrated whenever I try to navigate it.

 

[Johannes]

What is Age of Sigmar and who's playing it? Tried to understand this shit but it's confusing

Warhammer Fantasy's replacement after GW killed it from poor management. Basically Warhammer 40k except fantasy flavor. And by fantasy flavor I mean marvel esque shit where nothing makes sense because the writers can't be arsed to do proper world building.

Also terrible names. Elves are now aelves, lizardmen became seraphon, Orcs became orruks, Ogres are now Ogors and dwarfs are duardins.

Thanks, mostly I gathered that much. Just was stumped by the "nothing makes sense" part.

Clearly there's some connection to the old Fantasy Battle (Sigmar in the name and all), but hard to parse what exactly or what the setting is supposed to be, what are the guys fighting over.



And yeah, the playerbase - is it old grognards who switched over from WHFB, new kids, 40k players, who is this marketed to?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

What is Age of Sigmar and who's playing it? Tried to understand this shit but it's confusing

Warhammer Fantasy's replacement after GW killed it from poor management. Basically Warhammer 40k except fantasy flavor. And by fantasy flavor I mean marvel esque shit where nothing makes sense because the writers can't be arsed to do proper world building.

Also terrible names. Elves are now aelves, lizardmen became seraphon, Orcs became orruks, Ogres are now Ogors and dwarfs are duardins.

Thanks, mostly I gathered that much. Just was stumped by the "nothing makes sense" part.

Clearly there's some connection to the old Fantasy Battle (Sigmar in the name and all), but hard to parse what exactly or what the setting is supposed to be, what are the guys fighting over.



And yeah, the playerbase - is it old grognards who switched over from WHFB, new kids, 40k players, who is this marketed to?

Definitely not grogs, they hate it. Its more for newer players, I think. It does feel a lot more younger audience orientated, with the exaggerated, toy like designs and silly names.
From what I gathered, Chaos basically won the war and have control over not-Sigil (yes, they ripped off Planescape), allowing them to spread their influence and invade other realms. Most of the conflict is about the other factions trying to push them back and retake not-Sigil.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Thanks, mostly I gathered that much. Just was stumped by the "nothing makes sense" part.

Skaven dropped a moon on the planet and Sigmar went "lol, fuck you" and used magic to turn the entire universe into separate planes (think MTG). Each one is supposed to be special and unique but literally none of them have any world building done on them. The new poster boys are fantasy space marines in every possible way.

The game had an extremely poor reception because it had the worst rules in GW history and possibly any wargame ever. Your dwarves got bonuses if you had a beard. Night goblins got rerolls if you wore a hood. They even gave you bonuses if you shouted the right catch phrase as you charged. Since then it's kind of got it's shit together (as much as a GW game can) and it has some kind of player base. It's full of pozzed up garbage like every "City's of sigmar" character or important model is a nigger. So you have 4 white guys carrying niggers on their shoulders. And the new soldier kit doesn't come with enough white male heads to make an entire unit like.. well the Empire in every other incarnation of it.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, those "legacy rules" were outright idiotic and clearly aimed at children, even though most of the demographic were in the teen to young adult stage. There was even a rule where if you insult your opponent you get some sort of bonus, which is not only bad game design but bad sportsmanship.
Even the new rules aren't great; there's such a thing as double turns, where after watching your opponent move his models for about 10 minutes, there's a chance that you get to watch him move his models for another 10 minutes. It's not great.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Yeah, those "legacy rules" were outright idiotic and clearly aimed at children, even though most of the demographic were in the teen to young adult stage. There was even a rule where if you insult your opponent you get some sort of bonus, which is not only bad game design but bad sportsmanship.
Even the new rules aren't great; there's such a thing as double turns, where after watching your opponent move his models for about 10 minutes, there's a chance that you get to watch him move his models for another 10 minutes. It's not great.

You forgot the best bit.

GW released a special lord of changed called Kairos fateweaver. He has a special rule where he could force a dice roll once per game. I want to say it made any roll a 7, but it at least made it a 6. Guess which dice roll was exploitable? The start of round roll which decided who got to go first. So Tzeench armies had a guaranteed double turn any time they wanted it. Fucking stupid.

Banter between opponents isn't bad sportsmanship. It could be if done poorly but there's so many easy insults you can throw at people. Elf players are fags, orc players are retarded, Tau players.. Well they're mega fags.

 

[mondblut]

Then you're not worthy.

How many games do you get in, in your average week?

None.

 

[mondblut]

Your dwarves got bonuses if you had a beard.

LOL, what?

Dunno if awesomely stupid or stupidly awesome.

 

[Johannes]

So Tzeench armies had a guaranteed double turn any time they wanted it. Fucking stupid.

Turn order being down to random chance sounds like dumbass rules to start with, if who goes first isn't set, then it kinda makes sense to be able to manipulate it. Having it down to dumb luck sounds worse than that.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Your dwarves got bonuses if you had a beard.

LOL, what?

Dunno if awesomely stupid or stupidly awesome.

It was not awesome. And it came off the back of Warmachine taking a sizeable chunk out of GW's market. A game dedicated to clean no-bullshit rules writing because GW's rules were so awful. The hate for AoS wasn't just that it killed Fantasy. It's that it wore Fantasy's face like a jesters mask and made the game for 5 year olds.

So Tzeench armies had a guaranteed double turn any time they wanted it. Fucking stupid.

Turn order being down to random chance sounds like dumbass rules to start with, if who goes first isn't set, then it kinda makes sense to be able to manipulate it. Having it down to dumb luck sounds worse than that.

It was a dumb idea to have random turn order but being able to manipulate it doesn't make sense. For any one playing seriously Chaos had such a huge advantage it was insane. He was an auto include because most armies would struggle to weather 2 turns of punishment and no repositioning so you could double turn early in the game and almost table your opponent.. Which made it 40k.

 

[Caim]

Yeah, those "legacy rules" were outright idiotic and clearly aimed at children, even though most of the demographic were in the teen to young adult stage. There was even a rule where if you insult your opponent you get some sort of bonus, which is not only bad game design but bad sportsmanship.
Even the new rules aren't great; there's such a thing as double turns, where after watching your opponent move his models for about 10 minutes, there's a chance that you get to watch him move his models for another 10 minutes. It's not great.

You forgot the best bit.

GW released a special lord of changed called Kairos fateweaver. He has a special rule where he could force a dice roll once per game. I want to say it made any roll a 7, but it at least made it a 6. Guess which dice roll was exploitable? The start of round roll which decided who got to go first. So Tzeench armies had a guaranteed double turn any time they wanted it. Fucking stupid.

Banter between opponents isn't bad sportsmanship. It could be if done poorly but there's so many easy insults you can throw at people. Elf players are fags, orc players are retarded, Tau players.. Well they're mega fags.

Early on you could just use whatever models you wanted together because lol fuck balance. So you could pick Kairos Fateweaver alongside a Skaven Screaming Bell.

The Screaming Bell back then had a rule where you rolled 2d6 have something happen ranging from useful to wacky to more harmful to your army than your opponent. If you rolled a 13 on your 2d6 (normally impossible) you automatically win the game. Use this in combination with Kairos' ability and you'd win turn 1.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Early on you could just use whatever models you wanted together because lol fuck balance. So you could pick Kairos Fateweaver alongside a Skaven Screaming Bell.

You had like 4 factions if I recall and a proper points system didn't exist.

I thought Fateweaver was a later release but I don't know. I'm not a warhammer fag so I haven't followed the game seriously since puberty started. AoS was such a cluster fuck it got laughed at all over the grog community

 

[Caim]

Early on you could just use whatever models you wanted together because lol fuck balance. So you could pick Kairos Fateweaver alongside a Skaven Screaming Bell.

You had like 4 factions if I recall and a proper points system didn't exist.

I thought Fateweaver was a later release but I don't know. I'm not a warhammer fag so I haven't followed the game seriously since puberty started. AoS was such a cluster fuck it got laughed at all over the grog community

Kairos debuted in 2008 in both Fantasy and 40k (7th and the last book in 4th edition respectively), so it's up in the air whether this a "later" release.

But yes, it was an absolute dumpster fire and I pretty much dropped all of Warhammer for a few years afterwards.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

What is Age of Sigmar and who's playing it? Tried to understand this shit but it's confusing

Warhammer Fantasy's replacement after GW killed it from poor management. Basically Warhammer 40k except fantasy flavor. And by fantasy flavor I mean marvel esque shit where nothing makes sense because the writers can't be arsed to do proper world building.

Also terrible names. Elves are now aelves, lizardmen became seraphon, Orcs became orruks, Ogres are now Ogors and dwarfs are duardins.

Thanks, mostly I gathered that much. Just was stumped by the "nothing makes sense" part.

Clearly there's some connection to the old Fantasy Battle (Sigmar in the name and all), but hard to parse what exactly or what the setting is supposed to be, what are the guys fighting over.



And yeah, the playerbase - is it old grognards who switched over from WHFB, new kids, 40k players, who is this marketed to?

If you're having trouble understanding the setting, here's an intro article explaining it: https://ageofminiatures.com/aos-lore/

Warhammer Fantasy is currently separated into two continuities: Age of Sigmar and The Old World. Age of Sigmar is a sequel/reboot of The Old World.

The Old World is the setting of the Total War: Warhammer trilogy. It is an Earth-like planet (down to the rough shape of the continents) inhabited by fantasy races and fantasy counterpart cultures. They fight each other for dominance because it's a wargame. Total War: Warhammer is a more or less faithful encapsulation of the setting, albeit heavily streamlined because the 4X format doesn't lend itself to exposition or prose storytelling.

Age of Sigmar takes place in the aftermath of an apocalypse that literally exploded the Old World. Several new planes of existence sprung into being, each being platonic ideals of different metaphysical concepts from the magic system. There's a plane of death, a plane of woods, a plane of light, etc. Using various portals and conjunctions, the armies inhabiting these planes lead skirmishes against each other. These "Mortal Realms" can get pretty surreal: e.g. there's a city built on the back of a giant worm.

One of the benefits of Age of Sigmar is that isn't limited by the geographic constraints of The Old World. For example, you don't have to spend many turns conquering the intervening territories before having a battle between lizardmen and vampire counts.

The name changes are the result of trademark disputes. GW cannot trademark fantasy races and thus sue competition out of existence, so they made up these names so they could trademark it. This happened after they tried to sue an innocent housewife for publishing her book Spots the Space Marine and lost in court despite having overwhelming financial advantage, because I guess the judge had basic human decency or something.

One key difference between AoS and TOW is that AoS divides armies a lot further. E.g. rather than Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings being used as grab-bags of undead, AoS has distinct army lists for ghosts, zombies, skeletons, ghouls, etc.

One Page Rules Age of Fantasy rules are based on the Age of Sigmar army structure for the most part, with some armies based on those created by other companies that don't have an analogue in AoS. The Age of Fantasy fluff, which is largely perfunctory anyway, is loosely styled after The Old World in the sense that the armies mostly live on a single Earth-like planet, known as Tyria, rather than multiple distinct planes. There are however "voidgates" leading to other planes, and a few of the armies are native to these planes.

 

[Hell Swarm]

The name changes are the result of trademark disputes. GW cannot trademark fantasy races and thus sue competition out of existence, so they made up these names so they could trademark it. This happened after they tried to sue an innocent housewife for publishing her book Spots the Space Marine and lost in court despite having overwhelming financial advantage, because I guess the judge had basic human decency or something.

You forgot the Chapter house stuff. Which was what really set GW off on renaming things.

One Page Rules Age of Fantasy rules are based on the Age of Sigmar army structure for the most part, with some armies based on those created by other companies that don't have an analogue in AoS. The Age of Fantasy fluff, which is largely perfunctory anyway, is loosely styled after The Old World in the sense that the armies mostly live on a single Earth-like planet, known as Tyria, rather than multiple distinct planes. There are however "voidgates" leading to other planes, and a few of the armies are native to these planes.

AoF doesn't have army structures. Unless you're doing competitive it's basically mix and match any way you please. Plus the company is run by a furry from 4chan. So you know the fluff is mostly his fetishs being inserted into warhammer. Fursona skaven who are totally the good guys in this world.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

AoF doesn't have army structures.

Age of Fantasy does have army lists: https://wiki.onepagerules.com/index.php/Category:Age_of_Fantasy_Factions

Fursona skaven who are totally the good guys in this world.

https://wiki.onepagerules.com/index.php/Ratmen
I’m reading the Ratmen background and I’m not seeing any of the stuff you mention.

 

[Hell Swarm]

AoF doesn't have army structures.

Age of Fantasy does have army lists: https://wiki.onepagerules.com/index.php/Category:Age_of_Fantasy_Factions

Fursona skaven who are totally the good guys in this world.

https://wiki.onepagerules.com/index.php/Ratmen
I’m reading the Ratmen background and I’m not seeing any of the stuff you mention.

I play AoF. The army builder doesn't restrict what units you can take, including cross faction. If you want to play Rats, Humans, Orcs and Elves all in one list that's completely valid outside of competitive play. The factions aren't locked from each other.

The Ratmen began to prosper thanks to their diligent work and the region’s rich natural resources, and soon their society grew prosperous. Within their massive cities, they organized themselves into many guilds, each specialized in providing different benefits for their society, and their cities were ruled by commissions made of the heads of the city’s key guilds. Yet, as Tyria continued to recover from the Havoc Wars, the Ratmen’s lands fell under increasing pressure from their various neighbours, who sought to reclaim it and forced the Ratmen to endure constant sieges and warfare in order to defend their home.

The opening of the Great Rift was the fatal blow to their former society. The rift tore through a number of their cities, destroying their walls, while the forces of Havoc began to rally. Panic began to spread and soon, and the various Guilds began to fight amongst themselves.

Just as the forces of Havoc approached their lands and all hope was lost, a miracle happened. A godly figure of a female rat appeared in the sky, and struck down their enemies’ army. The remaining Rats renounced their quarrels and reunited to fight in the name of their mysterious new Goddess, creating a cult in her name that now occupies every corner of their society. Her disciples whisper in the ears of the guild masters, and while many see her as a saviour, others view her as a threat to their still delicate positions.

Rats having culture like this is furry shit slipping in. If you look at the art style both Rats and Jackals lean heavily into fursonas. But OPR lore means sweet fuck all because it's just 40k 3rd edition without the bloat. No one plays "OPR" like they do warhamer. They play Warhammer with OPR rules.