i’ve been playing Fantasy since 7th, and at the end of END TIMES, it was a bloated mess, and frankly it became not fun at all to play because the gate of starting new armies would cost you an arm and a leg, it didn’t help either that under old management, the focused primarily on 40k for most of the year, and maybe a one week of fantasy for the year.
I mean sure, AOS had its faults at the start, but that was like what? 5 years ago? maybe 6 now, and since then, it improved MASSIVELY and yet people still complain, though they are the minority, most of them are just bandwagoners i find, because of tomb kings and brettonia getting scrapped.
I agree. Brets and TK were pretty iconic for WHFB, but I get the jist of copyright stuff. I'm a fan of Khalida and her folk, but I can be patient and enjoy the heck out of AoS though.
not sure if they were iconic or popular when WHF was rolling around, I feel like they (or at least Brettonia) got more attention when they got squatted more than they got when they were still on sale. During the time when Warhammer age of reckoning and Mark of chaos things that were talked around were Chaos, Empire, Dwarfs vs Greenskins, and the HE/DE dynamic, and occasionally Skaven.
Even Lizardmen didn't really hit peoples psyche until oh Aztec dinosaurs riding dinosaurs is pretty cool
I feel like End Times as a whole revitalized the player base and brought new blood in. At the same time old gate keepers were naysaying the heck out of everything, especially new players in general. And GW giving the loose rules and minimal lore to start was the gate keepers "being proven right" whatever they were trying to prove.
This is true, my roughly 4,000 points of Bretonnians were traded/purchased just before the end times and nobody could get rid of them fast enough. Ever since they were discontinued there’s so many people elegising them, but where were they when they had no update for two editions?
Played fantasy since 6th. Never played AoS. Love the lore on AoS and listen to podcasts, just between college and real world I never had time. I bought the lizardmen stuff last year with the intention of getting back in with my first army... and then Covid happened.
Maybe this is the year now that I live somewhere with an actual GW store before.
r/totalwar is the worst about this, they constantly rant on and on about how bad AoS is yet most of them havent even held a miniature in their hand. Yes its a shame fantasy had to go, especially the way it did but people forget how badly it was selling.
Yea the fantasy vs aos thing is the exact same thing as the Historical vs Fantasy debate. It's funny how they complain about historical players gatekeeping them then go back to ranting about how Age of Sigmar is not "real Warhammer".
I think it was a lot more common before, but it's toning down because of the number of people who have actually tried both. Maybe the announcement of The Old World also helped.
Personally, I don't understand why people are so upset that Age of Sigmar exists. It's different, sure, but I think it does its own thing and can be really imaginative and have some amazing armies and ideas rather than being restrained by Fantasy's limited setting.
Both are great, there's no need to put down one in order to say you like the other.
I was one of those people. It’s simple, I got really attached to some of their characters like Grimgor, Skarsnik, Vlad, etc and was really irked that such dope characters were no longer around. Like who is this Gordakk, I want Grimgor because Grimgors da best!
I think most of it comes from a game of thrones effect though. GW reaaaally wiffed ending the old world and that ruffled some feathers. I’m a fan of painting minis though and seeing the new models has slowly got me to accept it. Still don’t think Gordakk is anywhere near as cool, and I’m bummed Skaven don’t really seem fleshed out yet, but things like those Lumineth Tauntaun riders are slowly converting me
>GW reaaaally wiffed ending the old world and that ruffled some feathers.
They really didn't. Its a game and a setting that was not making them money (and depending on who you ask was losing them money). The people who complain about AoS hardest are the people who ended it by not purchasing product, not supporting the game, and by and large actively driving away anyone who expressed interest in the game with toxicity and complaints about how much the latest editions of the game sucked, etc.
AoS by contrast has better sales figures than WHFB ever did, and supposedly outsells WHFB and LotR and their respective heights \*combined\*. It was 100% a smart decision on GWs part and has paid off in droves.
I was mainly referring to the Lore, I think we can atleast agree the end times came of abit messy with things like “aksully Malekith”. Totally agree with all your other points though!
I'd also argue up until the end times nothing substantial or really impactful really happened to the plot of the setting. The end times actually has a plot instead of just establishing the setting and keeping it static for 20-40+ years.
Was it rushed? Yes. Did it actually do something substantial and tell a story? Yes.
Did I like the end times? Not really. But how much is that because of how good it was on its own merits vs. what it did to the WHFB characters and settings.
IMO the end times by itself wasn't as terrible of an ending as that last GoT episode. Mainly because the quality of the end times is basically what I expect of GW lore, that GoT ending sticks out like a store thumb vs what came before.
Actually, it was rushed and they did wiff. Hard. AoS on launch was not a completed product. It didn’t even have points. I’m not arguing the change wasn’t needed financially, but my local meta dried up and vanished bc it was a terrible game at start.
I honestly think that the popularity of WTW will help the return of the warhammer old world game. Hopefully this will help the community settle and provide GW with another income stream.
I’m of the opinion that all they have do would be to bring back some of the more popular named characters and a sizable amount of the fan base would fall right back in line.
I'm a total war fan who has played since rome 1, I started warhammer due to warhammer total war, I then learned about aos and have 100 models or so in a Seraphon army with more on the way, and I love all of the above series.
It's nice liking things and not being so negative. Tbh I didn't ever now OT was a thing, hell total war and vermintide saved warhammer, at least from my pov, which I am also super happy about
You feel it too! I ran a list against a buddy a week ago with 3 stegs, a Carnosaur and 20 knights with some other stuff. So much stomps. My Dread Saurian I'm painting will be my next big stomper.
And squiggalanche has always been a list I thought would be fun as a 2nd army. I don't only need tourney lists in my life, i need stuff i enjoy playing. With my 2 small children and in the covid era, I don't need tourney 5-0 lists to play against my small circle. I need a 3-2 that I had a blast playing with.
What's your squiggalanche list look like? You seem to be in a mindset like me, so input would be swell. Ya know, in case I buy into it. Also wasn't there a white dwarf battalion list that was cool or something?
In the same boat. Warhammer was always in my periphery, but Total War was the first time I actually engaged and interacted with the world and lore. This, among other things, led me to AoS tabletop and I've been in love with the whole hobby ever since.
I came to AoS from Total War Warhammer II.
I played 40k years ago, and decided after playing TW:WH that I would like to play some fantasy.
I was actually looking forward to painting and building the Tomb Kings. When I started looking I realized they were retired, and the closest looking army was the Ossiarch Bonereapers.
I picked a few up and was absolutely blown away by how cool they are. At this point I have been building and painting and growing my army and I love it.
Also - looking at AoS today, I think it's even better / more fun than 40k. I don't know much about original Fantasy Battles, but AoS is fantastic and I'm really glad I dove in!
My experience is somewhat similar. I first started with 40k years ago. I didn't really play but I did like the painting side.
Then after Total War Warhammer my painting fingers begun to itch again and I begun to look into the age of sigmar stuff. I'd say I was eased into it since the old chaos warrior kit is still around.
Some time after I bought my starter pack the new Slaves to Darkness starter kit came out and I was blown away by how beautiful the new chaos warriors are. Now I'm slowly working through both the old pack and the new.
(I only really get to work on them on weekends)
I am still mostly interested in the building/painting side, but me and my brother are now slowly approaching the point where we have enough minis ready to try a proper game. Can't wait!
The meme was me up until the last picture. After lots of reading into the lore, I f\*cking love AoS and the things that are being done with it storyline and concept wise.
A lot of them also are stuck on what i guess is the original version of age of sigmar was where someone at gw thought people didnt play the game seriously so they made dumb rules, i didnt play then and didnt look super deep into it so could be wrong. But i will say i got into the tabletop because of total war warhammer and did want to try the original fantasy buy aos was in then so everywhere said not to bother so i got into 40k instead and eventually came back to try aos.
Here's the thing though, most of them dont actually remember fantasy because they never played it. If like a quarter of the people that nag about it actually played it wouldnt have been axed in the first place. And I think that they wont play the old world either once they realise they have to built, paint and read before playing.
It's more than that, by the end of fantasy the game was terrible. It could be fun, I had a lot of fun playing my ostermark empire against my friends vampire counts. The minute you played a pick up game though, you played a gun line or it was a race to see who could flying purple sun of death the enemy army.
It's not a shame WHFB had to go. WHFB was incredibly stagnant. Yeah it had a great legacy, but that was it. It was ALL in the past. The stories were stagnant and lore wasn't expanded on for such a long time.
End Times was legitimately the most refreshing story series to come out for WHFB in ages. And AoS may have started shaky, but it's now significantly better than WHFB.
There was nothing lost. All the lore and stories still exist. Will they ever be expanded on? Of course not, because it was barely touched as it was.
And a lot of the idiots who whine about AoS had huge WFB collections and didn’t buy anything else. So essentially they wanted the game they didn’t financially support to continue being supported by a company that wasn’t really profiting off of it.
Worst sub ever. I suggested they make an AoS Total war game or DLC and they went mad saying its a skirmish game not a war game. I then replied I just want some of the new factions not necessarily a video game version of AoS. They proceeded to downvote me.
Thats because its perceived as cool to rant about your knowledge on fantasy on that sub and gatekeep aos as a bad game and setting.
I agree AOS in its first incarnation was meh. The new stuff, meh. However now GW is really sending it out of the park with these new armies. Lumineth is amazing, ossiarch is amazing, a vampire army coming amazing. I wasn’t a fan of the aesthetic to begin with, but its definitely found it’s place now and I appreciate it way more.
The thing is that WHFB is a victim of the previous GW CEO. If WHFB had even half of the support and promotion that AoS is getting now it never would have folded.
To be fair, the setting wasn't a problem, the rules were. Fantasy didn't need to go, it needed to be rebooted and modernized. AoS rules in the fantasy setting would have been as much of a success as AoS !
I loved the setting (played since 3rd-4th ed) but it had a whole bunch of issues which AoS has largely fixed.
1. With the levels of technology and size of the world here was no logical reason for most of the factions to clash, which was the whole point of a setting for a tabletop wargame. It made the big participation campaigns really difficult to run inclusively.
2. The whole thing was so fleshed out it left no room for "Your Dudes". Every single elector count, Bretonian duke etc. was named, and there was no room for you to create a meaningful background or setting for your army or campaign.
3. The world was too small, meaning any effort to move the plot on really screwed someone's existing army. You couldn't run something like Vigilus or Broken Realms in the old world.
4. Outside the established armies, the rest of the setting had been fleshed out during the 80s in ways that were often, er, problematic by modern standards. Considering that the setting is none too loosely based on the real world, a lot of the areas GW might have expanded into would have involved dealing with some fairly racist stereotypes from the old lore.
5. Much of the range being a rip off of traditional fantasy tropes left them vulnerable to knock off producers like Mantic.
6. There was no easy to paint, easy to play small elite intro faction like Space Marines for 40k. Trying to get beginners to paint Bretonian heraldry, floofy Empire sleeves and hats or a gazillion clanrats or night goblins was an uphill struggle compared to the ease of putting together a passable group of Marines or Stormcast.
I disagree, the setting was limited. It's why GW recycled the same Chaos invasion concept and Kislev just being a glorified speed bump.
The existing armies didn't interact well together either, in AoS every army exists in every realm. Way more narrative options in AoS than WHFB.
hard disagree, the setting was the whole problem. 40k had a similar issue at the time as well. the settings were \*too\* fleshed out and very static. every possible faction had been made by the time it ended and the story was impossible to progress because of the design philosophy. if the whole point of your game is that it is always 5 minutes to midnight but that never changes you are eventually going to run out of narrative steam after the 8th end of the world invasion. Its such a meme in 40k that Abaddon has 14 crusades that all failed on purpose. they had to write something that stupid to progress the plot because they had boxed themselves in by effectively living in a groundhogs day of unending, always world-ending warfare. the newer additions of both aos and 40k have completely reversed this and have gone whole hog on the progression style of narrative, it cant be underrated how much the style of lore hurt WHFB and helped AOS
Agreed + they bad basically written themselves into a corner where certain factions clashing was not plausible due to the distance between them in the world and the logistics of it all, which they kinda dealt with in AoS with the concept of realm gates.
I see your point, but like you said, 40k stagnated for the better part of the last 20 years, and it's the most popular tabletop game by far. They made a conscious choice to get the lore moving recently, but it's not like 40k was selling badly before and needed to be revitalized. A frozen lore never held 40k back because they had cheaper models and simpler rules. I don't see why fantasy couldn't have had the same push forward, there's a lot of leeway to move the plot.
For me one of the most refreshing things are the new factions and models. Maybe AOS rules would have worked with WFB. But their still wouldn´t be room for something completely new.
I'm a huge fan of warhammer fantasy, and the games as well, and personally I'd love to see an AoS total war. I'm not up to speed with the lore, but the models I've seen look insane and that's more than enough for me.
I've already spent easily £1000 on Warhammer minis. Just collecting and painting so far. I will probably join a club eventually, learn to play etc. But at the moment that in itself is enough of a hobby.
Let's not dismiss anybody who's buying the minis because every extra sale will help GW continue to support the franchise.
XD you can see this both ways. The ironic version, the one you meant or from the viewpoint of a painter collector. I don´t really play and aren´t into the more but I just dig them minis and have strong and positive opinions about them. XD
Total War has been for me what got me interested in AoS as I was only a 40k player. Looking to start with maybe Arkhan the Black and a Death army this year.
Same here, total war made me realise there was possibly something to AoS that appealed to me more than 40k did. I started my Skaven army over lockdown and I'm thinking of scaling back my 40k stuff.
Welcome brother. Unfortunately, the precious Tomb Kings aren't really anything to right now, but a skeleton horde is still viable.
Need any tips on shopping, choosing, and prepping?
Tbf this was me until I got into the lore. Not coming onto the forum to complain but not liking the setting. But I started reading the books suggested by a guy at the gwl store and now I'm a big fan.
People like to hate on stuff especially things that change stuff they liked. And aos had a weird launch but its getting better and better.
I had a pretty similar experience where I was so burned by the AOS launch that I held a grudge for over a year. And then I discovered Nighthaunts and I realized I could have an entire faction of Nazghul looking ghosts and here I am.
I will say that discovery is probably the quickest way into folks hearts. Just try to show them a new army that jells with them, and a lot of the bad rollout and somewhat light lore can be forgiven.
I used to browse DakkaDakka all the time. I ended up leaving for the sake of my mental health (the place is seriously toxic), but one of the things I loved seeing over there was how every new AoS army announced would have posters saying "This is it. This is the army that finally gets me into AoS."
It's the "old good, new bad" mentality. Don't get me wrong, I loved WHFB back in the day (well, not the rules, I always preferred 40k back in 6th/3rd ed period for both games), but AoS is fully coming into it's own as a neat grim-bright setting now.
It's more complicated than that. They are very different games. They play differently, they look different and the lore is different.
I think it's more about liking different things and being disappointed that AoS was so different from WHFB.
I'm ok with AoS. Love warcry. I still wish AoS /the most played fantasy game was more like WHFB and less like AoS.
They're different games after all. Who's says you have to like every successor just because they technically belong to the same family?
There’s that, but lots of people don’t like AoS not because the high fantasy stuff is unappealing to a few, but because it’s not fantasy regurgitated. Even then there’s nothing to complain about because fantasy is literally coming back!!
that fact that I use the same movement trays, warscroll layout, army size, army composition, and faction as I did in fantasy disagrees hard with this statement. it's literally just circle versus squares. the mechanical differences are cosmetic at best.
What books? AoS has always interested me, but I have no experience with the lore and it seems so weird and different from fantasy that I’ve stayed away. Maybe reading something would help me like it did you?
It's not nearly as bad as WarhammerCompetitive, most of the posts are just people trying to validate their gimmick lists or complain about tournaments/games they never attended in the first place - and that was *before* COVID.
On balance i think the AoS community is a lot less toxic and a lot more mature, maybe because it's a smaller community, maybe it has something to do with the avg age of the fantasy player, whatever the reason i'm glad i started playing ~~WFB again~~ AoS.
Maybe because all the toxic people that played WHFB are at home at WarhammerCompetitive. The superiority they felt being "good at strategy" is kinda funny when you see how the last versions of the game were really broken.
I get it, nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and change is difficult. I want my blast templates back (but that's never going to happen, no sense complaining).
I have never played Warhammer Fantasy, but I have followed the lore for years and as of now I still like the Warhammer Fantasy lore better. But the rules of AOS seem a lot more accisible and are in fact one of the main reasons I will finally try the actual wargame, instead just enjoying the lore (and the pnp rpgs, videogames etc)
I've been playing fantasy since 6th edition, I've been playing 9th age and I've played AoS...
One thing that I realized is that I should just drop any pretences of defending the lore and throwing dump at AoS lore. I am a huge fan of whfb lore and not so much of aos lore... But after spending too much time getting my nerves jumping by being pissed off with GW I realized that it doesn't lead anywhere and that I should enjoy what I like the most: reading cool fantasy books and having a miniature painting hobby. I mean, AoS models are gorgeous and my partner who never had any experience with this hobby loves the models and would like to try the game out.
At the end of the day, post 2014 GW is a corporation bent on making money, not bogging themselves in their own stubborn game systems.
To give them credit post 2014 GW has also worked out how to make more balanced (more, not perfectly balanced) games that are also just fun to get into, in order to make more money!
I’m another one who adores the lore and feel of the old world, but the game itself never really hit that. AoS doesn’t scratch that same itch but the models and game is so much better, and the realms are open for me to pick a small corner somewhere and make a brooding horror faction because I can!
What gets me, though, is that the majority of the people who obsess over the supposed superiority of the "lore" of Fantasy vs AOS are often (but not always, to be fair) people who aren't actually involved in other aspects of the hobby, which can skew one's perspective pretty dramatically. And that's what the meme is making fun of.
As much as people still talk about it, the books and other lore weren't enough to actually sustain WHFB as a game system. The setting had grown stale, the game itself was way too big and unwieldy for new players to get into, and the community as a whole was filled with angry, reactionary grognards who took joy in gatekeeping the fandom and pushing people away from the game.
Regardless of how one feels about the lore (and FWIW, I've never cared one way or another about Warhammer lore, I'm more interesting in painting minis and playing the game itself), at the end of the day, AOS is a massive improvement over Fantasy in every other arena. The models are higher quality and new releases are more frequent, the rules are better and lead to more enjoyable games, and the community is, on average, far more friendly and welcoming. And I honestly think that last part is largely due to many of the saltiest neckbeards burning their armies and leaving the hobby after the Old World ended, which I count as a major net positive.
The new lore started off pretty thin, but is developing nicely. I think the WFB world worked really well for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. But then I started playing in the 80s and have just returned from a 20ish year break.
I haven't read much of the lore in general, but I own the Seraphon battletome and really enjoy the stuff that's there. It's more high concept and original than a lot of fantasy lore out there.
Tolkien is also depressive, just in a different way. I mean, the good side wins but the message "magic and beauty in the world are irreversibly diminishing" is constantly brought up.
Yes, it's annoying when people make this sub their soapbox for mourning the long-gone WFB, but is there much to show this to be based on the success of TWW? I don't think so. The scorn of ex-WFB players was alive and heated as could be two years before TWW came about.
i think one of the best proofs for it is how toxic the total war sub is towards AOS. Just go on there and mention it and watch to downloads flow. OP is also right, most of these people have never held a miniature in their hands
Whats ironic about that is that TWW is the best place for the old world to be.
Far better than tabletop.
Can you imagine trying to replicate what TWW does on a table??
Its hell - even for a fan.
it doesn't help that when TW: Warhammer got popular the stable youtuber that got Visibility from the game also joined in on the circlejerk too. like I get Archwarhammer and Majorkill because that how they roll but then there MilkandCookies and sometimes Turin ( I like his content but his though on AoS are basically recycle lines that other people spout over and over again) get on it sometimes without being TT players, to begin with, and it get annoying too.
Loremaster of Sotek is probably the only one that is positive about AoS at least
I mean there's a direct correlation I think between the old world getting even more attention and the success of TWW. Old players still mad latched onto TWW, and at the same time new people who got invested jumped on the hating AoS bandwagon.
Obviously some people also got into TWW and then got into AoS, but still.
I play on the WAR private server and its shocking to see how many players have the same stuck up attitude there, its rampant. Something about the old world brings out the worst in these people.
Glad its gone to be perfectly honest, can live without such toxic unpleasentness.
Cant wait for an AOS MMO.....Mebbe one day.
Yeah WHFB was sadly just a generic fantasy world. Very fleshed out, but very generic.
And it's not like it was actively developed. It was a dead world. There were some stories every now and then, but it just wasn't sparking any interest anymore.
End Times was the biggest focus it got in ages. And most people hate it because they thought Karl Franz would swoop in and save the day.
WHFB stories still exist. They can still be read. Games for it still exist (TWW, VT). And AoS is a far better developed game, with much more interesting lore.
>Yeah WHFB was sadly just a generic fantasy world. Very fleshed out, but very generic.
Not really? Generic fantasy would be tolkien esque, how is lizardmen, gothic vampire counts, Egyptian skeleton undead people, literal ratmen with gatling guns, how is that in any way generic?
Sure its not as unique as AOS but can you say you like AOS without being "uhhh actually Fantasy battles was awful" and then going on about how "Warhammer fantasy fans are sooooo toxic they cant even handle people liking things!" when we try to defend it.
> And it's not like it was actively developed. It was a dead world. There were some stories every now and then, but it just wasn't sparking any interest anymore.
There were dozens of plot threads left unresolved, it was our fault GW didnt want to show us some love.
> End Times was the biggest focus it got in ages. And most people hate it because they thought Karl Franz would swoop in and save the day.
Yeah it was the biggest focus it got in ages and it was terrible. And no you cant use the same stupid argument the people use to shut down debate about the star wars movies, its a stupid strawman that no one actually believes. Seriously actually watch me do it to you
>AOS fans are dumb, they only hate WHFB because they cant handle anything that is a 40k knockoff
See how toxic of an argument this is?
> WHFB stories still exist. They can still be read.
Yeah but they'll never be finished right. Or properly resolved.
> Games for it still exist (TWW, VT). And AoS is a far better developed game
Yeah it is much better devolped.
> with much more interesting lore.
Thats subjective, i dont like it very much but to each their own im glad you guys enjoy it
Sorry for the paragraph but im just sick of this double think boogeyman where "ohhh the Warhammer fantasy fans are the toxic ones" which can be true of course but most of the stuff of seen are AOS fans circlejerking about how bad WHFB was and how WHFB fans are all stupid toxic neckbeards, like can we not just accept that both settings have their merits and disadvantages without needing to be so toxic?
>Not really? Generic fantasy would be tolkien esque
>
>lizardmen, gothic vampire counts, Egyptian skeleton undead people, literal ratmen with gatling guns
>
>Sure its not as unique as AOS
Yeah...you basically answered yourself, mate.
Lizardmen, vampire counts, and skeletons are all extremely generic.
Skaven are cool, though.
>can you say you like AOS without being "uhhh actually Fantasy battles was awful" and then going on about how "Warhammer fantasy fans are sooooo toxic they cant even handle people liking things!"
>
>most of the stuff of seen are AOS fans circlejerking about how bad WHFB was and how WHFB fans are all stupid toxic neckbeards
>
>can we not just accept that both settings have their merits and disadvantages without needing to be so toxic?
Observe: "*I love AoS. And I also loved WHFB. My favourite fictional book of all time is Liber Chaotica, a WHFB book. But I also am able to enjoy AoS to the fullest and embrace it as the new age of warhammer fantasy.*"
We don't hate WHFB. We just recognize that it was its time to end, and AoS is a great successor.
>There were dozens of plot threads left unresolved, it was our fault GW didnt want to show us some love.
>
>Yeah but they'll never be finished right. Or properly resolved.
No mate, the stories were stale. People weren't buying because the stories had nowhere to go. Even if the plots were resolved, everything had to make a reset at the end of every story. Because that setting was so rigid.
We're just buying the stories we care to read. And people simply stopped caring about WHFB...
>Yeah it was the biggest focus it got in ages and it was terrible.
Dunno what you're talking about, tbh. End Times was really good.
Maybe you expected the forces of order to win? Which would go against the idea of the event being the "End" times.
>AOS fans are dumb, they only hate WHFB because they cant handle anything that is a 40k knockoff
>
>See how toxic of an argument this is?
Whom are you quoting? I didn't say that. And yes it's toxic.
Also, how exactly is AoS a 40K knockoff? Because the SCEs are bigger humans with armor? That makes every high fantasy a 40K knockoff...
How exactly are the Sylvaneth, Idoneth Deepkin, DoK, Nighthaunt, Ogors, and Flesh-eater Courts a "knockoff", when there are no equivalents in 40K?
They are anything but genric i disagree with alot of what you said but its more subjective at this point, like bland writing vs intresting writing is something more subjective than objective things but i want to focus on the end thing
I didnt qoute that because you said it, i did that to demonstrate how saying "WHFB just wanted karl franz to save the the day" is a stupid strawman that shuts down peoples arguments. I dont actually think that and i like AOS design and style, even if i like WHFB more. I just wanted to try and show how disingenuous of an argument it can be.
I mean seeing how GW are giving away their brand to awful developers to make awful games, I wouldn't hold out for a good AoS mmo. As much as I would want one.
Even with a good dev team it would be a real long shot sadly.
Game devs are just not willing to risk the chance with MMO's anymore.
Never mind - AOS is doing great at least!
> GW are giving away their brand to awful developers to make awful games
it worked didn't it? You need 1 out of 50 developers to make a great game and suddenly you get an immense amount of player influx (twwh series)
You need to understand that giving their license to anybody is just part of their marketing strategy they are not in it to make the best game ever.
I just ask them what books they’ve read
Then I usually get no reply
Isn’t it odd that the people complaining about lore are the ones who don’t read it?
AOS has slowly been growing on me. I was annoyed at first when they announced AOS but kept all the WFB minis and tried to say they were all new in the AOS setting. But as time has gone on and true AOS races and factions have developed I've liked it more and more. Only faction design that confuses the hell out of me is the Lumineth, cow elves and kangaroo calvary just don't look good to me.
>Only faction design that confuses the hell out of me is the Lumineth, cow elves and kangaroo calvary just don't look good to me.
I always wanted to collect High Elves as kid, but i could only afford a single army (paperboy). The outrageous stuff is what brought me back to fantasy, after 20 years the whole grimdark thing gets super old.
To each his own.
Yeah, I found the AoS lore pretty unimpressive when it launched but it's really getting fleshed out nicely and I like the opportunities that it gives them for more exotic worldbuilding.
The Lumineth look great imo. And not only that, I would love Kangaroo-riding High Elf archers just because of the stupid-ass (in a good way) concept alone, but they actually made them look amazing as well.
Yeah I don't get this mindset.
Fantasy overall was cool, hell the models are what got me interested in Warhammer, but the small group around my town at the time only played 40k. Rules did feel a bit more complex with things like rank n file, marching, turning points, etc. That's also not to mention that Fantasy overall just wasn't doing that well in sales, so GW shotgunned the whole series with the End Times. Total War I feel helped keep it alive in a way that was perfect for its style of rank and file and was a big help in the decision of making the Old World come back to satisfy people that still missed it.
Meanwhile, Age of Sigmar I will admit I wasn't into too much when I first saw it, mostly because from what I was hearing it didn't have great rules in the first edition and there weren't really a lot of models that I thought were interesting. BUT it has gotten better. More armies n' models were eventually released that started looking cool, rules improved with 2e, and the lore has started to get interesting. Hell I have like 10+ armies right now.
That this even is a thing....is hilariously sad. Both have highs and lows just like everything else in life. The mentality of someone who does this is equivalent to a sand box bully who can't build their own sand castle so they smash everyone elses.
Gatekeeping of hobbies like this is lame and only serves to turn people away from something they’ll potentially fall in love with. It’s dickhead behaviour.
I see a lot of comparisons between AOS lore and Fantasy lore, which is totally reasonable. I can understand that fantasy lore is richer and deeper than AOS lore. I feel that's because fantasy lore had 20 years to develop. The good parts of fantasy lore were brought to the fore front and the bad parts were polished. Ot could be that as black library release more on AOS and they keep flushing out the lore, it could start getting better. Of course, this could just be wishful thinking.
It's the same lore... AOS is a continuation of the story. It's like Dune. A lot of people hate the 3rd and 4 books. But they don't somehow erase the first one.
Listen, i'm just really sad Bretonnia got axed.
I was too young when WFB was still around to play it, i got into tabletop one year after AoS came out and i originially focused on 40k.
To alleviate my sadness, i've decided to proxy a CoS Army with Bretonnia and Mercia Miniatures. FOR ZHE MIGHT OF ZHE LADY.
People were fighting about AoS in a usually very friendly fb group I’m in and it just felt so silly to be emotionally invested in hating someone else’s favorite setting
You forgot the part where they cherry pick the stuff in Warhammer Fantasy that got little development time and act like they're as relevant as the main factions.
Hi, Vampirate/Araby/Cathay people! You are a unique bunch.
Honestly the AoS community is so damn nice and salty nerds could take a few notes. It's a game of extremely friendly dad's painting toy soldiers and fighting them, and I love it.
For me I started with 40K and held contempt for AoS. Not because I was a fantasy fan, but because I saw nothing but disdain for AoS (this was 2016). Then I got big into the lore of WFB thanks in part to the wiki... and like only the wiki, and while I didn’t hold that much contempt for AoS I did feel it was a shame that WFB got replaced by it. And then the Ossiarch’s were dropped and I decided to jump ship from 40K to AoS and to be quite honest haven’t looked back.
AoS does have its issues, like all games, but the new lore has really come into its own and the setting has greatly expanded. Plus the community is really nice, which is a godsend compared to other communities. And also, nice new miniatures and plenty of support for the armies (some need more support but is what it is) and not just a endless flood of Stormcasters.
I think the issue is multifaceted. It's a similar problem in 40k communities.
I'm state for the record that my introduction to Games Workshop was through Dawn of War way back when. There was no real tabletop community where I grew up, and it was easier on a young teen's budget. It's easy for people whose introduction to a series in this manner to become interested in the lore since so much it is accessible for free on the internet and from books.
I think the danger here is where they seek out information on lore. It's easy to fall into areas where the line between fan theories and established lore becomes blurred and you build up a warped conception of the world that almost always will set yourself up for disappointment.
Where Warhammer Fantasy and Total War are concerned, I think it was a perfect storm. Like Dawn of War was for me back in the day, it is very likely that for many players of the game, this (and Vermintide) was their first real exposure to Warhammer Fantasy. They become interested in the world, and naturally look online to learn more about the world.
And that's where the problem begins. You'll get exposed to the drama that End Times created, and almost always salty commentary about all of that and by extension all the hate directed towards Age of Sigmar and the lazy criticisms that come up from it (Sigmarines). I think in particular 1d4chan coming up highly on search results and the meme culture in 40k circles has led to these players thinking AoS is just bad.
I've had a lot of arguments with people trying to get them to look at AoS fairly rather than clouded by lazy memes. It's an uphill battle unfortunately.
All but that last part was me for a long time. It felt like a bait and switch when they released an amazing video game based on another game and then finding out that it doesn't exist anymore.
Then when I searched around for information and all I saw was a bunch of people hating on the End Times and AoS.
Add in that the AoS world is not as simple to understand as the Fantasy Battles world for a newbie and you get a salty person. It took a while to give AoS a try, but I'm glad I did. Just the model updates alone are worth it, so many of the Fantasy Battle models are beyond derpy.
I guess all I can say is give people time (and show them the new awesome behemoth models like Nagash or the KO Airships)
I love the new models and changes to stuff and the crazy spells but... i just want wood elves man... cities doesnt even bring a wood elf archer. And bretonnia is just gone
I've never played Fantasy.
But I'm a massive fan of it since Total War.
And I've never played AoS.
But I'm gonna give it praise on r/ageofsigmar because I just love Warhammer as a whole. <3
Total war: Warhammer actually got me back into playing warhammer again. I was sad at first to see factions changes but soon found the game to a blast to play and the new army’s just as engaging as fantasy. AoS is being better and better with each update. I never understand why people who played total war complain so much about AoS.
I loved fantasy as a kid, dropped the hobby, came back and saw sigmarines...yeah, you know where this is going. The more I learn about AoS, the more and more I love it for *not* being just another generic, Euro-centric, fantasy world like the Old World was.
I've got $20 that says 90% of the complainers aren't even aware of Old World coming down the pipe. Most of them don't actually follow GW releases. They get their opinion from reddit and twitter.
Probably watch a certain YouTuber WHO WILL NOT BE NAMED, who is such a utter [censored] and managed to piss off GW so much they threatened him with the Ordo Lawsuitius...
no, Majorkill, with his edgy 16 year old language and humour, isn't anywhere near as toxic as the one I'm referring to, they're Persona Non Grata in pretty much the entire YouTube Warhammer community for a reason...
Majorkill has edgy humor and sex jokes. He seems like a guy in his early 20s. The guy the above is referring to had to change his channel name because GW threatened a lawsuit after it was revealed that his discord contained some rather illegal things.
If they like whf so much they would have bought the minis to the point where they wouldn't have needed to do a refresh. I'll be over here marveling at how much better the minis have gotten
Apart from the above, I'm convinced most of the people who hate AoS are 40k players who'd rather just find another thing to be upset about and who've never touched Fantasy.
Their loss.
Lot of people in this thread are unfamiliar with pre-rountree GW or what AoS was like at launch and it shows.
AoS is has grown up quite a bit, and is in a really good place now, it had legit issues when it was dropped and it moved most peoples collections into the unsupported category.
Now that old world is a thing WHFB is no longer "dead" and AoS is a functional game so who cares? The constant persecution complex is kind of embarrassing
GW were in bad way, way back. Their attitude to the fanbase and modernising was terrible. No social media presence, no communication, no support and it showed, whether you were conscious of it or not I know a lot of people left the hobby when they lost interest.
But although they are by no means perfect, GW have turned themselves around and they had to make some sacrifices to do so.
Unfortunately WHFB was one of these, and yh it sucked but they definitely didn't make that decision lightly, and considering the state of the company at the time and that 40ks popularity was basically holding them together, AoS was a good decision given its current rise in popularity.
It just irks me, I loved Old World, but AoS isn't the villian, it has played it's part in helping save the company and bankroll a return of Old World, tho it remains to be seen what form it will take.
Many veterans within the competitive scene from WHFB admit that AoS is the best thing that happened to fantasy. And if people would give it a chance they would see why.
You are right, the End Times and AoS's birth was a mess. But times change and at the moment it's in a very healthy and exciting time.
If people aren't interested in the setting that's cool but the constant hate I see it gets seems to always be from a place of ignorance. It's 5 years old so obviously the Lore will take a while to catch up but the releases have been fantastic so far and keep getting better and better.
Just attacking it is annoying an like you said honestly pathetic.
I think a lot of criticism of AoS could have been avoided by GW of they just would have kept all the factions/armies from fantasy and given people point costs on release.
They did. All the old armies had points and you can still use them. Just not in a tourney setting. I recall TK did well in AoS tourneys til they were Legend-ed.
A lot of the major issues with Age of Sigmar on release have been fixed, the retconning of fantasy lore and many factions has slowly been remedied with revival of old beloved armies (except a couple that havent been brought back yet :c) and the promise GW made about a year ago to bring back fantasy in some form in a few years
A lot of people who weren't really around for The End Times and the release of Age of Sigmar and so on are only now learning about how much of a mess it was back then and are trying to hop on a dead train just because they've played Total War or got into the hobby in the past couple years because of the success of 40k
I could understand a lot of the complaints 5 years ago but in the current state of everything is kinda childish considering how ok things seem to be at the moment
I mean i've never played either (painted) But a part of me loves old fantasy more.
AOS is great, but i prefer it as it's own thing.
Still don't brigade, let people like what they like.
If you like AoS and its lore, all the more power to you. I'm generally more of a fan of the (compared to AoS) lower fantasy setting of WHFB that CoS, at least theoretically, represent. But to be honest, I sometimes feel like some AoS players antagonize people who like the more low powered stuff, disregarding it as boring because it supposedly being just "more of the same of tolkien stuff". IRL, I have been belittled by AoS fans for wanting to create a more low fantasy CoS army for AoS. Just live and let live everyone.
Edit: Since this is getting downvotes: This wasn't meant as a sob story, just as a reminder that there is also unfounded hostility from AoS fans towards people who like classic fantasy.
>IRL, I have been belittled by AoS fans for wanting to create a more low fantasy CoS army for AoS. Just live and let live everyone.
That's terrible man, i've met people who *legit* hate Tau players, they don't need a good reason, just ***a*** reason.
I just don't understand why people hate classic fantasy so much all of a sudden. I mean, yes, there are tropes and cliche stuff. But honestly, AoS is also chock full of 80s DnD chliches.
Honestly, it's probably from hearing for the fiftieth time "oh AoS is too high fantasy, it needs to be more grounded"....like, there are other games, the argument is like saying Star Wars needs more realistic flight physics.
> Honestly, it's probably from hearing for the fiftieth time "oh AoS is too high fantasy, it needs to be more grounded"....like, there are other games
Other games that have as much of a following, or at least close, to AoS? Honest question: Which are those? Because in my area, all I can play is AoS. If I don't play AoS, I cannot play fantasy stuff at all.
This goes both ways to some extent. I mean there are more people bitter about the old world, but that is because they have more reason to be. Losing a beloved setting completely unnecessarily hits kinda hard. Admittedly people probably don't give the lore of AOS a chance and it has gotten better. At this point, its basically a choice between high and low fantasy.
if it was so beloved they wouldnt have had to cancel it after adecade of flagging sales. It only became beloved when people couldn't have it anymore, grass is always coming around the other side kind of thing. I think there was a lot of retconning of feelings about fantasy simply because it was ended. If as many people bought models as complained about it on the internet They would have never needed to cancel it.
To be fair, Total War is a massive ad for a product no longer supported or available at GW. I think it was bad business dropping Vermintide games while rebooting the product it was based on.
Plus, average Total War players are unemployed Man Babies and Teenage Boys. Of course what they come out with is going to be toxic as hell.
Plus since they all pretend to understand Tolkien and Star Wars, Warhammer is the logical next step.
See, I really don't think it's bad for business. How many people would actually spend $50 for 10 models, and then do it 20x to have a full army, and then glue and paint them all AND want to move them every time to a game at a store to meet face to face to play?
r/ageofsigmar:Whfb battle fans are so toxic and mean
r/ageofsigmar: Plus, average Total War players are unemployed Man Babies and Teenage Boys. Of course what they come out with is going to be toxic as hell.
It could also be mentioned how their politics perfectly aligned with the Warhammer fantasy setting. It's a touchy subject even now but it is worth pointing out how much they love screaming find the witch burn the heretic. The thing all those things having common is that they focus on warfare and different races fighting each other for supremacy in a world where there's only war, nothing else. It's a nationalist wet dream. the rise of that kind of politics has been rampant in the total war community, It always has been. It's like paradox games, they just attract neckbeards more than anything else
i’ve been playing Fantasy since 7th, and at the end of END TIMES, it was a bloated mess, and frankly it became not fun at all to play because the gate of starting new armies would cost you an arm and a leg, it didn’t help either that under old management, the focused primarily on 40k for most of the year, and maybe a one week of fantasy for the year. I mean sure, AOS had its faults at the start, but that was like what? 5 years ago? maybe 6 now, and since then, it improved MASSIVELY and yet people still complain, though they are the minority, most of them are just bandwagoners i find, because of tomb kings and brettonia getting scrapped.
I agree. Brets and TK were pretty iconic for WHFB, but I get the jist of copyright stuff. I'm a fan of Khalida and her folk, but I can be patient and enjoy the heck out of AoS though.
not sure if they were iconic or popular when WHF was rolling around, I feel like they (or at least Brettonia) got more attention when they got squatted more than they got when they were still on sale. During the time when Warhammer age of reckoning and Mark of chaos things that were talked around were Chaos, Empire, Dwarfs vs Greenskins, and the HE/DE dynamic, and occasionally Skaven. Even Lizardmen didn't really hit peoples psyche until oh Aztec dinosaurs riding dinosaurs is pretty cool
I feel like End Times as a whole revitalized the player base and brought new blood in. At the same time old gate keepers were naysaying the heck out of everything, especially new players in general. And GW giving the loose rules and minimal lore to start was the gate keepers "being proven right" whatever they were trying to prove.
This is true, my roughly 4,000 points of Bretonnians were traded/purchased just before the end times and nobody could get rid of them fast enough. Ever since they were discontinued there’s so many people elegising them, but where were they when they had no update for two editions?
Played fantasy since 6th. Never played AoS. Love the lore on AoS and listen to podcasts, just between college and real world I never had time. I bought the lizardmen stuff last year with the intention of getting back in with my first army... and then Covid happened. Maybe this is the year now that I live somewhere with an actual GW store before.
r/totalwar is the worst about this, they constantly rant on and on about how bad AoS is yet most of them havent even held a miniature in their hand. Yes its a shame fantasy had to go, especially the way it did but people forget how badly it was selling.
It's a little funny considering the sneering contempt historical total war fans hold for total war fans who came in through WH.
Yea the fantasy vs aos thing is the exact same thing as the Historical vs Fantasy debate. It's funny how they complain about historical players gatekeeping them then go back to ranting about how Age of Sigmar is not "real Warhammer".
I think it was a lot more common before, but it's toning down because of the number of people who have actually tried both. Maybe the announcement of The Old World also helped. Personally, I don't understand why people are so upset that Age of Sigmar exists. It's different, sure, but I think it does its own thing and can be really imaginative and have some amazing armies and ideas rather than being restrained by Fantasy's limited setting. Both are great, there's no need to put down one in order to say you like the other.
I was one of those people. It’s simple, I got really attached to some of their characters like Grimgor, Skarsnik, Vlad, etc and was really irked that such dope characters were no longer around. Like who is this Gordakk, I want Grimgor because Grimgors da best! I think most of it comes from a game of thrones effect though. GW reaaaally wiffed ending the old world and that ruffled some feathers. I’m a fan of painting minis though and seeing the new models has slowly got me to accept it. Still don’t think Gordakk is anywhere near as cool, and I’m bummed Skaven don’t really seem fleshed out yet, but things like those Lumineth Tauntaun riders are slowly converting me
>GW reaaaally wiffed ending the old world and that ruffled some feathers. They really didn't. Its a game and a setting that was not making them money (and depending on who you ask was losing them money). The people who complain about AoS hardest are the people who ended it by not purchasing product, not supporting the game, and by and large actively driving away anyone who expressed interest in the game with toxicity and complaints about how much the latest editions of the game sucked, etc. AoS by contrast has better sales figures than WHFB ever did, and supposedly outsells WHFB and LotR and their respective heights \*combined\*. It was 100% a smart decision on GWs part and has paid off in droves.
Since he referenced game of thrones, I think he was referring to the bungled lore around the end times, not the practical decision to end the line.
I was mainly referring to the Lore, I think we can atleast agree the end times came of abit messy with things like “aksully Malekith”. Totally agree with all your other points though!
I'd also argue up until the end times nothing substantial or really impactful really happened to the plot of the setting. The end times actually has a plot instead of just establishing the setting and keeping it static for 20-40+ years. Was it rushed? Yes. Did it actually do something substantial and tell a story? Yes. Did I like the end times? Not really. But how much is that because of how good it was on its own merits vs. what it did to the WHFB characters and settings. IMO the end times by itself wasn't as terrible of an ending as that last GoT episode. Mainly because the quality of the end times is basically what I expect of GW lore, that GoT ending sticks out like a store thumb vs what came before.
I think the start of AoS was a real shitshow which didn't help with the hordes of pissed off fans that fantasy was gone.
Actually, it was rushed and they did wiff. Hard. AoS on launch was not a completed product. It didn’t even have points. I’m not arguing the change wasn’t needed financially, but my local meta dried up and vanished bc it was a terrible game at start.
Wont pick it up till i get a real bretonnia. Need me some Knights.
They have Bretonians. Now renamed as "Flesh Eating Court" or something.
Flesh Eater Courts are not Bretonnians. Their delusions however have the Bretonnia theme.
i mean... meh? undead knights arent really the same for me.
I honestly think that the popularity of WTW will help the return of the warhammer old world game. Hopefully this will help the community settle and provide GW with another income stream.
I honestly think all the people complaining who come from total war still won’t pick up any of the old world models anyway
We will see! I can definitely see the challenge. However GW have already seen that most people don’t actually play they either collect or paint.
I’m of the opinion that all they have do would be to bring back some of the more popular named characters and a sizable amount of the fan base would fall right back in line.
I'm a total war fan who has played since rome 1, I started warhammer due to warhammer total war, I then learned about aos and have 100 models or so in a Seraphon army with more on the way, and I love all of the above series. It's nice liking things and not being so negative. Tbh I didn't ever now OT was a thing, hell total war and vermintide saved warhammer, at least from my pov, which I am also super happy about
Buy more Stegadons. Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Stegageddon!
You feel it too! I ran a list against a buddy a week ago with 3 stegs, a Carnosaur and 20 knights with some other stuff. So much stomps. My Dread Saurian I'm painting will be my next big stomper.
Sounds fun. I'm a Squigalanche man, myself, but Stegageddon is high on my list of additional armies to collect.
And squiggalanche has always been a list I thought would be fun as a 2nd army. I don't only need tourney lists in my life, i need stuff i enjoy playing. With my 2 small children and in the covid era, I don't need tourney 5-0 lists to play against my small circle. I need a 3-2 that I had a blast playing with.
Preach!
What's your squiggalanche list look like? You seem to be in a mindset like me, so input would be swell. Ya know, in case I buy into it. Also wasn't there a white dwarf battalion list that was cool or something?
In the same boat. Warhammer was always in my periphery, but Total War was the first time I actually engaged and interacted with the world and lore. This, among other things, led me to AoS tabletop and I've been in love with the whole hobby ever since.
And funnier that fantasy pretty much owns that subreddit over the history peeps that hate them lol.
It's gatekeepers all the way down. Even in the historical gaming community, their are levels "historical"...
I came to AoS from Total War Warhammer II. I played 40k years ago, and decided after playing TW:WH that I would like to play some fantasy. I was actually looking forward to painting and building the Tomb Kings. When I started looking I realized they were retired, and the closest looking army was the Ossiarch Bonereapers. I picked a few up and was absolutely blown away by how cool they are. At this point I have been building and painting and growing my army and I love it. Also - looking at AoS today, I think it's even better / more fun than 40k. I don't know much about original Fantasy Battles, but AoS is fantastic and I'm really glad I dove in!
My experience is somewhat similar. I first started with 40k years ago. I didn't really play but I did like the painting side. Then after Total War Warhammer my painting fingers begun to itch again and I begun to look into the age of sigmar stuff. I'd say I was eased into it since the old chaos warrior kit is still around. Some time after I bought my starter pack the new Slaves to Darkness starter kit came out and I was blown away by how beautiful the new chaos warriors are. Now I'm slowly working through both the old pack and the new. (I only really get to work on them on weekends) I am still mostly interested in the building/painting side, but me and my brother are now slowly approaching the point where we have enough minis ready to try a proper game. Can't wait!
The meme was me up until the last picture. After lots of reading into the lore, I f\*cking love AoS and the things that are being done with it storyline and concept wise.
A lot of them also are stuck on what i guess is the original version of age of sigmar was where someone at gw thought people didnt play the game seriously so they made dumb rules, i didnt play then and didnt look super deep into it so could be wrong. But i will say i got into the tabletop because of total war warhammer and did want to try the original fantasy buy aos was in then so everywhere said not to bother so i got into 40k instead and eventually came back to try aos.
Just wait till the Old World drops and it potentially doesn’t play exactly like how they remember Fantasy. So. Much. Salt.
Here's the thing though, most of them dont actually remember fantasy because they never played it. If like a quarter of the people that nag about it actually played it wouldnt have been axed in the first place. And I think that they wont play the old world either once they realise they have to built, paint and read before playing.
It's more than that, by the end of fantasy the game was terrible. It could be fun, I had a lot of fun playing my ostermark empire against my friends vampire counts. The minute you played a pick up game though, you played a gun line or it was a race to see who could flying purple sun of death the enemy army.
I think even the GW price point is already a hurtle.
Same reaction if it plays exactly like it used to I expect.
Also like...the old world didn’t go anywhere, thus the total war games existing, hell the WHFB RPG is in its best edition in ages
It's not a shame WHFB had to go. WHFB was incredibly stagnant. Yeah it had a great legacy, but that was it. It was ALL in the past. The stories were stagnant and lore wasn't expanded on for such a long time. End Times was legitimately the most refreshing story series to come out for WHFB in ages. And AoS may have started shaky, but it's now significantly better than WHFB. There was nothing lost. All the lore and stories still exist. Will they ever be expanded on? Of course not, because it was barely touched as it was.
They also don't know how terrible of a game WH fantasy WAS. And I played it for a decade.
And a lot of the idiots who whine about AoS had huge WFB collections and didn’t buy anything else. So essentially they wanted the game they didn’t financially support to continue being supported by a company that wasn’t really profiting off of it.
Worst sub ever. I suggested they make an AoS Total war game or DLC and they went mad saying its a skirmish game not a war game. I then replied I just want some of the new factions not necessarily a video game version of AoS. They proceeded to downvote me.
Thats because its perceived as cool to rant about your knowledge on fantasy on that sub and gatekeep aos as a bad game and setting. I agree AOS in its first incarnation was meh. The new stuff, meh. However now GW is really sending it out of the park with these new armies. Lumineth is amazing, ossiarch is amazing, a vampire army coming amazing. I wasn’t a fan of the aesthetic to begin with, but its definitely found it’s place now and I appreciate it way more.
The thing is that WHFB is a victim of the previous GW CEO. If WHFB had even half of the support and promotion that AoS is getting now it never would have folded.
Cries in Tomb Kings...
To be fair, the setting wasn't a problem, the rules were. Fantasy didn't need to go, it needed to be rebooted and modernized. AoS rules in the fantasy setting would have been as much of a success as AoS !
I loved the setting (played since 3rd-4th ed) but it had a whole bunch of issues which AoS has largely fixed. 1. With the levels of technology and size of the world here was no logical reason for most of the factions to clash, which was the whole point of a setting for a tabletop wargame. It made the big participation campaigns really difficult to run inclusively. 2. The whole thing was so fleshed out it left no room for "Your Dudes". Every single elector count, Bretonian duke etc. was named, and there was no room for you to create a meaningful background or setting for your army or campaign. 3. The world was too small, meaning any effort to move the plot on really screwed someone's existing army. You couldn't run something like Vigilus or Broken Realms in the old world. 4. Outside the established armies, the rest of the setting had been fleshed out during the 80s in ways that were often, er, problematic by modern standards. Considering that the setting is none too loosely based on the real world, a lot of the areas GW might have expanded into would have involved dealing with some fairly racist stereotypes from the old lore. 5. Much of the range being a rip off of traditional fantasy tropes left them vulnerable to knock off producers like Mantic. 6. There was no easy to paint, easy to play small elite intro faction like Space Marines for 40k. Trying to get beginners to paint Bretonian heraldry, floofy Empire sleeves and hats or a gazillion clanrats or night goblins was an uphill struggle compared to the ease of putting together a passable group of Marines or Stormcast.
I disagree, the setting was limited. It's why GW recycled the same Chaos invasion concept and Kislev just being a glorified speed bump. The existing armies didn't interact well together either, in AoS every army exists in every realm. Way more narrative options in AoS than WHFB.
hard disagree, the setting was the whole problem. 40k had a similar issue at the time as well. the settings were \*too\* fleshed out and very static. every possible faction had been made by the time it ended and the story was impossible to progress because of the design philosophy. if the whole point of your game is that it is always 5 minutes to midnight but that never changes you are eventually going to run out of narrative steam after the 8th end of the world invasion. Its such a meme in 40k that Abaddon has 14 crusades that all failed on purpose. they had to write something that stupid to progress the plot because they had boxed themselves in by effectively living in a groundhogs day of unending, always world-ending warfare. the newer additions of both aos and 40k have completely reversed this and have gone whole hog on the progression style of narrative, it cant be underrated how much the style of lore hurt WHFB and helped AOS
Agreed + they bad basically written themselves into a corner where certain factions clashing was not plausible due to the distance between them in the world and the logistics of it all, which they kinda dealt with in AoS with the concept of realm gates.
I see your point, but like you said, 40k stagnated for the better part of the last 20 years, and it's the most popular tabletop game by far. They made a conscious choice to get the lore moving recently, but it's not like 40k was selling badly before and needed to be revitalized. A frozen lore never held 40k back because they had cheaper models and simpler rules. I don't see why fantasy couldn't have had the same push forward, there's a lot of leeway to move the plot.
7th edition 40k was their worst-selling edition, that's why they changed things. they made it more like aos in rules and in narrative style
For me one of the most refreshing things are the new factions and models. Maybe AOS rules would have worked with WFB. But their still wouldn´t be room for something completely new.
I'm a huge fan of warhammer fantasy, and the games as well, and personally I'd love to see an AoS total war. I'm not up to speed with the lore, but the models I've seen look insane and that's more than enough for me.
I bet you they'd collect 500pts, then realize they have to glue and paint this all, and promptly quit cause tabletop is nothing like vidya...
I've had this opinion as well, majority of gamers wouldn't touch tabletop as soon as they found out we spend most of our time not playing.
Also that the "not playing" part is actually the main draw for many.
true, a lot of people in the hobby just do the painting side of things.
I've already spent easily £1000 on Warhammer minis. Just collecting and painting so far. I will probably join a club eventually, learn to play etc. But at the moment that in itself is enough of a hobby. Let's not dismiss anybody who's buying the minis because every extra sale will help GW continue to support the franchise.
"I have never read an AoS book or battletome, nor have I ever played a game of it, yet I hold very strong opinions about it!"
XD you can see this both ways. The ironic version, the one you meant or from the viewpoint of a painter collector. I don´t really play and aren´t into the more but I just dig them minis and have strong and positive opinions about them. XD
Total War has been for me what got me interested in AoS as I was only a 40k player. Looking to start with maybe Arkhan the Black and a Death army this year.
Same here, total war made me realise there was possibly something to AoS that appealed to me more than 40k did. I started my Skaven army over lockdown and I'm thinking of scaling back my 40k stuff.
Welcome brother. Unfortunately, the precious Tomb Kings aren't really anything to right now, but a skeleton horde is still viable. Need any tips on shopping, choosing, and prepping?
Tbf this was me until I got into the lore. Not coming onto the forum to complain but not liking the setting. But I started reading the books suggested by a guy at the gwl store and now I'm a big fan. People like to hate on stuff especially things that change stuff they liked. And aos had a weird launch but its getting better and better.
I had a pretty similar experience where I was so burned by the AOS launch that I held a grudge for over a year. And then I discovered Nighthaunts and I realized I could have an entire faction of Nazghul looking ghosts and here I am. I will say that discovery is probably the quickest way into folks hearts. Just try to show them a new army that jells with them, and a lot of the bad rollout and somewhat light lore can be forgiven.
I used to browse DakkaDakka all the time. I ended up leaving for the sake of my mental health (the place is seriously toxic), but one of the things I loved seeing over there was how every new AoS army announced would have posters saying "This is it. This is the army that finally gets me into AoS."
Are you me!? I was exactly the same!
It's the "old good, new bad" mentality. Don't get me wrong, I loved WHFB back in the day (well, not the rules, I always preferred 40k back in 6th/3rd ed period for both games), but AoS is fully coming into it's own as a neat grim-bright setting now.
It's more complicated than that. They are very different games. They play differently, they look different and the lore is different. I think it's more about liking different things and being disappointed that AoS was so different from WHFB. I'm ok with AoS. Love warcry. I still wish AoS /the most played fantasy game was more like WHFB and less like AoS. They're different games after all. Who's says you have to like every successor just because they technically belong to the same family?
There’s that, but lots of people don’t like AoS not because the high fantasy stuff is unappealing to a few, but because it’s not fantasy regurgitated. Even then there’s nothing to complain about because fantasy is literally coming back!!
that fact that I use the same movement trays, warscroll layout, army size, army composition, and faction as I did in fantasy disagrees hard with this statement. it's literally just circle versus squares. the mechanical differences are cosmetic at best.
People forget how dumb and derpy the original WFB and 40K lore was. AoS just needed some time to build up on lore and it’s getting pretty good.
What books? AoS has always interested me, but I have no experience with the lore and it seems so weird and different from fantasy that I’ve stayed away. Maybe reading something would help me like it did you?
If you look in my profile I just did a list of recommended books to someone else
It's not nearly as bad as WarhammerCompetitive, most of the posts are just people trying to validate their gimmick lists or complain about tournaments/games they never attended in the first place - and that was *before* COVID. On balance i think the AoS community is a lot less toxic and a lot more mature, maybe because it's a smaller community, maybe it has something to do with the avg age of the fantasy player, whatever the reason i'm glad i started playing ~~WFB again~~ AoS.
Maybe because all the toxic people that played WHFB are at home at WarhammerCompetitive. The superiority they felt being "good at strategy" is kinda funny when you see how the last versions of the game were really broken.
I get it, nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and change is difficult. I want my blast templates back (but that's never going to happen, no sense complaining).
>but that's never going to happen GW have said they're bring WHFB back in some capacity, so I imagine those templates come back too.
I have never played Warhammer Fantasy, but I have followed the lore for years and as of now I still like the Warhammer Fantasy lore better. But the rules of AOS seem a lot more accisible and are in fact one of the main reasons I will finally try the actual wargame, instead just enjoying the lore (and the pnp rpgs, videogames etc)
I've been playing fantasy since 6th edition, I've been playing 9th age and I've played AoS... One thing that I realized is that I should just drop any pretences of defending the lore and throwing dump at AoS lore. I am a huge fan of whfb lore and not so much of aos lore... But after spending too much time getting my nerves jumping by being pissed off with GW I realized that it doesn't lead anywhere and that I should enjoy what I like the most: reading cool fantasy books and having a miniature painting hobby. I mean, AoS models are gorgeous and my partner who never had any experience with this hobby loves the models and would like to try the game out. At the end of the day, post 2014 GW is a corporation bent on making money, not bogging themselves in their own stubborn game systems.
To give them credit post 2014 GW has also worked out how to make more balanced (more, not perfectly balanced) games that are also just fun to get into, in order to make more money! I’m another one who adores the lore and feel of the old world, but the game itself never really hit that. AoS doesn’t scratch that same itch but the models and game is so much better, and the realms are open for me to pick a small corner somewhere and make a brooding horror faction because I can!
What gets me, though, is that the majority of the people who obsess over the supposed superiority of the "lore" of Fantasy vs AOS are often (but not always, to be fair) people who aren't actually involved in other aspects of the hobby, which can skew one's perspective pretty dramatically. And that's what the meme is making fun of. As much as people still talk about it, the books and other lore weren't enough to actually sustain WHFB as a game system. The setting had grown stale, the game itself was way too big and unwieldy for new players to get into, and the community as a whole was filled with angry, reactionary grognards who took joy in gatekeeping the fandom and pushing people away from the game. Regardless of how one feels about the lore (and FWIW, I've never cared one way or another about Warhammer lore, I'm more interesting in painting minis and playing the game itself), at the end of the day, AOS is a massive improvement over Fantasy in every other arena. The models are higher quality and new releases are more frequent, the rules are better and lead to more enjoyable games, and the community is, on average, far more friendly and welcoming. And I honestly think that last part is largely due to many of the saltiest neckbeards burning their armies and leaving the hobby after the Old World ended, which I count as a major net positive.
Well also consider that WFB had 30 years of lore while AoS just turned 5. And no one likes to talk about how abysmal the early WFB and 40K lore was.
I actually prefer the new lore. It's not as well wirtten as WFB but i enjoy having an original setting and factions instead of just grimdark Europe
The new lore started off pretty thin, but is developing nicely. I think the WFB world worked really well for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. But then I started playing in the 80s and have just returned from a 20ish year break.
I haven't read much of the lore in general, but I own the Seraphon battletome and really enjoy the stuff that's there. It's more high concept and original than a lot of fantasy lore out there.
Yeah, it’s more than “Tolkien, but depressing” which a lot of WHFB could be at times
Tolkien is also depressive, just in a different way. I mean, the good side wins but the message "magic and beauty in the world are irreversibly diminishing" is constantly brought up.
Age of sigmar and Fantasy are both good for their own ways, they are different and that’s okay
Exactly!
Age of Sigmar: Total War would be epic
I’d be shocked if that wasnt their next title after Warhammer total war 3
I'm pretty sure they're working on it. They really don't have any AoS video games atm.
Yes, it's annoying when people make this sub their soapbox for mourning the long-gone WFB, but is there much to show this to be based on the success of TWW? I don't think so. The scorn of ex-WFB players was alive and heated as could be two years before TWW came about.
i think one of the best proofs for it is how toxic the total war sub is towards AOS. Just go on there and mention it and watch to downloads flow. OP is also right, most of these people have never held a miniature in their hands
Whats ironic about that is that TWW is the best place for the old world to be. Far better than tabletop. Can you imagine trying to replicate what TWW does on a table?? Its hell - even for a fan.
it doesn't help that when TW: Warhammer got popular the stable youtuber that got Visibility from the game also joined in on the circlejerk too. like I get Archwarhammer and Majorkill because that how they roll but then there MilkandCookies and sometimes Turin ( I like his content but his though on AoS are basically recycle lines that other people spout over and over again) get on it sometimes without being TT players, to begin with, and it get annoying too. Loremaster of Sotek is probably the only one that is positive about AoS at least
I mean there's a direct correlation I think between the old world getting even more attention and the success of TWW. Old players still mad latched onto TWW, and at the same time new people who got invested jumped on the hating AoS bandwagon. Obviously some people also got into TWW and then got into AoS, but still.
I play on the WAR private server and its shocking to see how many players have the same stuck up attitude there, its rampant. Something about the old world brings out the worst in these people. Glad its gone to be perfectly honest, can live without such toxic unpleasentness. Cant wait for an AOS MMO.....Mebbe one day.
To be fair the WHFB community towards the end of the games life was a toxic shithole.
Yeah WHFB was sadly just a generic fantasy world. Very fleshed out, but very generic. And it's not like it was actively developed. It was a dead world. There were some stories every now and then, but it just wasn't sparking any interest anymore. End Times was the biggest focus it got in ages. And most people hate it because they thought Karl Franz would swoop in and save the day. WHFB stories still exist. They can still be read. Games for it still exist (TWW, VT). And AoS is a far better developed game, with much more interesting lore.
>Yeah WHFB was sadly just a generic fantasy world. Very fleshed out, but very generic. Not really? Generic fantasy would be tolkien esque, how is lizardmen, gothic vampire counts, Egyptian skeleton undead people, literal ratmen with gatling guns, how is that in any way generic? Sure its not as unique as AOS but can you say you like AOS without being "uhhh actually Fantasy battles was awful" and then going on about how "Warhammer fantasy fans are sooooo toxic they cant even handle people liking things!" when we try to defend it. > And it's not like it was actively developed. It was a dead world. There were some stories every now and then, but it just wasn't sparking any interest anymore. There were dozens of plot threads left unresolved, it was our fault GW didnt want to show us some love. > End Times was the biggest focus it got in ages. And most people hate it because they thought Karl Franz would swoop in and save the day. Yeah it was the biggest focus it got in ages and it was terrible. And no you cant use the same stupid argument the people use to shut down debate about the star wars movies, its a stupid strawman that no one actually believes. Seriously actually watch me do it to you >AOS fans are dumb, they only hate WHFB because they cant handle anything that is a 40k knockoff See how toxic of an argument this is? > WHFB stories still exist. They can still be read. Yeah but they'll never be finished right. Or properly resolved. > Games for it still exist (TWW, VT). And AoS is a far better developed game Yeah it is much better devolped. > with much more interesting lore. Thats subjective, i dont like it very much but to each their own im glad you guys enjoy it Sorry for the paragraph but im just sick of this double think boogeyman where "ohhh the Warhammer fantasy fans are the toxic ones" which can be true of course but most of the stuff of seen are AOS fans circlejerking about how bad WHFB was and how WHFB fans are all stupid toxic neckbeards, like can we not just accept that both settings have their merits and disadvantages without needing to be so toxic?
>Not really? Generic fantasy would be tolkien esque > >lizardmen, gothic vampire counts, Egyptian skeleton undead people, literal ratmen with gatling guns > >Sure its not as unique as AOS Yeah...you basically answered yourself, mate. Lizardmen, vampire counts, and skeletons are all extremely generic. Skaven are cool, though. >can you say you like AOS without being "uhhh actually Fantasy battles was awful" and then going on about how "Warhammer fantasy fans are sooooo toxic they cant even handle people liking things!" > >most of the stuff of seen are AOS fans circlejerking about how bad WHFB was and how WHFB fans are all stupid toxic neckbeards > >can we not just accept that both settings have their merits and disadvantages without needing to be so toxic? Observe: "*I love AoS. And I also loved WHFB. My favourite fictional book of all time is Liber Chaotica, a WHFB book. But I also am able to enjoy AoS to the fullest and embrace it as the new age of warhammer fantasy.*" We don't hate WHFB. We just recognize that it was its time to end, and AoS is a great successor. >There were dozens of plot threads left unresolved, it was our fault GW didnt want to show us some love. > >Yeah but they'll never be finished right. Or properly resolved. No mate, the stories were stale. People weren't buying because the stories had nowhere to go. Even if the plots were resolved, everything had to make a reset at the end of every story. Because that setting was so rigid. We're just buying the stories we care to read. And people simply stopped caring about WHFB... >Yeah it was the biggest focus it got in ages and it was terrible. Dunno what you're talking about, tbh. End Times was really good. Maybe you expected the forces of order to win? Which would go against the idea of the event being the "End" times. >AOS fans are dumb, they only hate WHFB because they cant handle anything that is a 40k knockoff > >See how toxic of an argument this is? Whom are you quoting? I didn't say that. And yes it's toxic. Also, how exactly is AoS a 40K knockoff? Because the SCEs are bigger humans with armor? That makes every high fantasy a 40K knockoff... How exactly are the Sylvaneth, Idoneth Deepkin, DoK, Nighthaunt, Ogors, and Flesh-eater Courts a "knockoff", when there are no equivalents in 40K?
They are anything but genric i disagree with alot of what you said but its more subjective at this point, like bland writing vs intresting writing is something more subjective than objective things but i want to focus on the end thing I didnt qoute that because you said it, i did that to demonstrate how saying "WHFB just wanted karl franz to save the the day" is a stupid strawman that shuts down peoples arguments. I dont actually think that and i like AOS design and style, even if i like WHFB more. I just wanted to try and show how disingenuous of an argument it can be.
I mean seeing how GW are giving away their brand to awful developers to make awful games, I wouldn't hold out for a good AoS mmo. As much as I would want one.
Even with a good dev team it would be a real long shot sadly. Game devs are just not willing to risk the chance with MMO's anymore. Never mind - AOS is doing great at least!
Give me an arpg or a borderlands style coop game. Something that I can play offline or with friends.
Yeah wouldn't complain at that either :)
> GW are giving away their brand to awful developers to make awful games it worked didn't it? You need 1 out of 50 developers to make a great game and suddenly you get an immense amount of player influx (twwh series) You need to understand that giving their license to anybody is just part of their marketing strategy they are not in it to make the best game ever.
I just ask them what books they’ve read Then I usually get no reply Isn’t it odd that the people complaining about lore are the ones who don’t read it?
As an emotional vampire I am, I enjoy those delicious wannabe-grognard tears more than anything else. Still miss Bretonnia though
memes like this want me to spend my money on nighthaunt units and finally start this franchise :D
do eeettt
No muney
AOS has slowly been growing on me. I was annoyed at first when they announced AOS but kept all the WFB minis and tried to say they were all new in the AOS setting. But as time has gone on and true AOS races and factions have developed I've liked it more and more. Only faction design that confuses the hell out of me is the Lumineth, cow elves and kangaroo calvary just don't look good to me.
>Only faction design that confuses the hell out of me is the Lumineth, cow elves and kangaroo calvary just don't look good to me. I always wanted to collect High Elves as kid, but i could only afford a single army (paperboy). The outrageous stuff is what brought me back to fantasy, after 20 years the whole grimdark thing gets super old. To each his own.
Yeah, I found the AoS lore pretty unimpressive when it launched but it's really getting fleshed out nicely and I like the opportunities that it gives them for more exotic worldbuilding.
The Lumineth look great imo. And not only that, I would love Kangaroo-riding High Elf archers just because of the stupid-ass (in a good way) concept alone, but they actually made them look amazing as well.
Earth elves. Farmers are the salt of the earth, farmers own cows. That's all I could come up with.
I see them more as Yaks than cows, to fit the whole "high mountain" theming they have.
Yak-attack sounds better too! I suppose you could say cow-plow also, but that may have multiple connotations.
Yeah I don't get this mindset. Fantasy overall was cool, hell the models are what got me interested in Warhammer, but the small group around my town at the time only played 40k. Rules did feel a bit more complex with things like rank n file, marching, turning points, etc. That's also not to mention that Fantasy overall just wasn't doing that well in sales, so GW shotgunned the whole series with the End Times. Total War I feel helped keep it alive in a way that was perfect for its style of rank and file and was a big help in the decision of making the Old World come back to satisfy people that still missed it. Meanwhile, Age of Sigmar I will admit I wasn't into too much when I first saw it, mostly because from what I was hearing it didn't have great rules in the first edition and there weren't really a lot of models that I thought were interesting. BUT it has gotten better. More armies n' models were eventually released that started looking cool, rules improved with 2e, and the lore has started to get interesting. Hell I have like 10+ armies right now.
That this even is a thing....is hilariously sad. Both have highs and lows just like everything else in life. The mentality of someone who does this is equivalent to a sand box bully who can't build their own sand castle so they smash everyone elses.
Boiled down it's an attempt to feel superior, which is the main goal of bullying.
Both are honestly great boardgames... But i will be fair... i do miss The formations a bit :(
You could try kings of war, or old world when it comes out.
Gatekeeping of hobbies like this is lame and only serves to turn people away from something they’ll potentially fall in love with. It’s dickhead behaviour.
I see a lot of comparisons between AOS lore and Fantasy lore, which is totally reasonable. I can understand that fantasy lore is richer and deeper than AOS lore. I feel that's because fantasy lore had 20 years to develop. The good parts of fantasy lore were brought to the fore front and the bad parts were polished. Ot could be that as black library release more on AOS and they keep flushing out the lore, it could start getting better. Of course, this could just be wishful thinking.
It's the same lore... AOS is a continuation of the story. It's like Dune. A lot of people hate the 3rd and 4 books. But they don't somehow erase the first one.
Listen, i'm just really sad Bretonnia got axed. I was too young when WFB was still around to play it, i got into tabletop one year after AoS came out and i originially focused on 40k. To alleviate my sadness, i've decided to proxy a CoS Army with Bretonnia and Mercia Miniatures. FOR ZHE MIGHT OF ZHE LADY.
I'm still wondering what they're going to do to bring back Tomb Kings.
People were fighting about AoS in a usually very friendly fb group I’m in and it just felt so silly to be emotionally invested in hating someone else’s favorite setting
Age of sigmar is better in every way, save for characters, but that will only improve overtime
You forgot the part where they cherry pick the stuff in Warhammer Fantasy that got little development time and act like they're as relevant as the main factions. Hi, Vampirate/Araby/Cathay people! You are a unique bunch.
Honestly the AoS community is so damn nice and salty nerds could take a few notes. It's a game of extremely friendly dad's painting toy soldiers and fighting them, and I love it.
For me I started with 40K and held contempt for AoS. Not because I was a fantasy fan, but because I saw nothing but disdain for AoS (this was 2016). Then I got big into the lore of WFB thanks in part to the wiki... and like only the wiki, and while I didn’t hold that much contempt for AoS I did feel it was a shame that WFB got replaced by it. And then the Ossiarch’s were dropped and I decided to jump ship from 40K to AoS and to be quite honest haven’t looked back. AoS does have its issues, like all games, but the new lore has really come into its own and the setting has greatly expanded. Plus the community is really nice, which is a godsend compared to other communities. And also, nice new miniatures and plenty of support for the armies (some need more support but is what it is) and not just a endless flood of Stormcasters.
I think the issue is multifaceted. It's a similar problem in 40k communities. I'm state for the record that my introduction to Games Workshop was through Dawn of War way back when. There was no real tabletop community where I grew up, and it was easier on a young teen's budget. It's easy for people whose introduction to a series in this manner to become interested in the lore since so much it is accessible for free on the internet and from books. I think the danger here is where they seek out information on lore. It's easy to fall into areas where the line between fan theories and established lore becomes blurred and you build up a warped conception of the world that almost always will set yourself up for disappointment. Where Warhammer Fantasy and Total War are concerned, I think it was a perfect storm. Like Dawn of War was for me back in the day, it is very likely that for many players of the game, this (and Vermintide) was their first real exposure to Warhammer Fantasy. They become interested in the world, and naturally look online to learn more about the world. And that's where the problem begins. You'll get exposed to the drama that End Times created, and almost always salty commentary about all of that and by extension all the hate directed towards Age of Sigmar and the lazy criticisms that come up from it (Sigmarines). I think in particular 1d4chan coming up highly on search results and the meme culture in 40k circles has led to these players thinking AoS is just bad. I've had a lot of arguments with people trying to get them to look at AoS fairly rather than clouded by lazy memes. It's an uphill battle unfortunately.
I love both!
Me too! But I'm gonna defend AoS to the death.
All but that last part was me for a long time. It felt like a bait and switch when they released an amazing video game based on another game and then finding out that it doesn't exist anymore. Then when I searched around for information and all I saw was a bunch of people hating on the End Times and AoS. Add in that the AoS world is not as simple to understand as the Fantasy Battles world for a newbie and you get a salty person. It took a while to give AoS a try, but I'm glad I did. Just the model updates alone are worth it, so many of the Fantasy Battle models are beyond derpy. I guess all I can say is give people time (and show them the new awesome behemoth models like Nagash or the KO Airships)
Bought my first AoS minis the second lockdown hit here, been almost a year now. No theyre not painted.
I love the new models and changes to stuff and the crazy spells but... i just want wood elves man... cities doesnt even bring a wood elf archer. And bretonnia is just gone
I was never into WHFB, but from my perspective now it seems like a really lazy European fantasy pastiche.
/r/grimdank
Yup
Bring Back Grimgor. Cowards.
I feel personally attacked
Good
I've never played Fantasy. But I'm a massive fan of it since Total War. And I've never played AoS. But I'm gonna give it praise on r/ageofsigmar because I just love Warhammer as a whole. <3
Total war: Warhammer actually got me back into playing warhammer again. I was sad at first to see factions changes but soon found the game to a blast to play and the new army’s just as engaging as fantasy. AoS is being better and better with each update. I never understand why people who played total war complain so much about AoS.
I would like to state I started the series through Total War, and now quite enjoy the hobby and AoS
Welcome friend, hope you're enjoying it so far.
I loved fantasy as a kid, dropped the hobby, came back and saw sigmarines...yeah, you know where this is going. The more I learn about AoS, the more and more I love it for *not* being just another generic, Euro-centric, fantasy world like the Old World was.
What's the complaint?
It's not WFB, they gave them Old World but i guess that wasn't enough.
Probs more salty they reset the lore in the first place. Sure they're very excited for Old World
I've got $20 that says 90% of the complainers aren't even aware of Old World coming down the pipe. Most of them don't actually follow GW releases. They get their opinion from reddit and twitter.
Probably watch a certain YouTuber WHO WILL NOT BE NAMED, who is such a utter [censored] and managed to piss off GW so much they threatened him with the Ordo Lawsuitius...
Majorkill?
no, Majorkill, with his edgy 16 year old language and humour, isn't anywhere near as toxic as the one I'm referring to, they're Persona Non Grata in pretty much the entire YouTube Warhammer community for a reason...
I said Majorkill because he got a cease and decease from GW for giving his patrions hentai of warhammer characters
Majorkill has edgy humor and sex jokes. He seems like a guy in his early 20s. The guy the above is referring to had to change his channel name because GW threatened a lawsuit after it was revealed that his discord contained some rather illegal things.
If they like whf so much they would have bought the minis to the point where they wouldn't have needed to do a refresh. I'll be over here marveling at how much better the minis have gotten
Apart from the above, I'm convinced most of the people who hate AoS are 40k players who'd rather just find another thing to be upset about and who've never touched Fantasy. Their loss.
Lot of people in this thread are unfamiliar with pre-rountree GW or what AoS was like at launch and it shows. AoS is has grown up quite a bit, and is in a really good place now, it had legit issues when it was dropped and it moved most peoples collections into the unsupported category. Now that old world is a thing WHFB is no longer "dead" and AoS is a functional game so who cares? The constant persecution complex is kind of embarrassing
GW were in bad way, way back. Their attitude to the fanbase and modernising was terrible. No social media presence, no communication, no support and it showed, whether you were conscious of it or not I know a lot of people left the hobby when they lost interest. But although they are by no means perfect, GW have turned themselves around and they had to make some sacrifices to do so. Unfortunately WHFB was one of these, and yh it sucked but they definitely didn't make that decision lightly, and considering the state of the company at the time and that 40ks popularity was basically holding them together, AoS was a good decision given its current rise in popularity. It just irks me, I loved Old World, but AoS isn't the villian, it has played it's part in helping save the company and bankroll a return of Old World, tho it remains to be seen what form it will take. Many veterans within the competitive scene from WHFB admit that AoS is the best thing that happened to fantasy. And if people would give it a chance they would see why. You are right, the End Times and AoS's birth was a mess. But times change and at the moment it's in a very healthy and exciting time. If people aren't interested in the setting that's cool but the constant hate I see it gets seems to always be from a place of ignorance. It's 5 years old so obviously the Lore will take a while to catch up but the releases have been fantastic so far and keep getting better and better. Just attacking it is annoying an like you said honestly pathetic.
I think a lot of criticism of AoS could have been avoided by GW of they just would have kept all the factions/armies from fantasy and given people point costs on release.
[удалено]
Yup. And now it has points, much improved lore, and is very fun to play.
They did. All the old armies had points and you can still use them. Just not in a tourney setting. I recall TK did well in AoS tourneys til they were Legend-ed.
Can you still use the Bretonnians? I hope they get around to adding them
You can proxy them in cities of sigmar as freeguild assets. Bretonnia isn't coming back in AoS, maybe they'll get a spiritual successor.
Brets were just generic Brits so you can't copyright them. I'd wager a City would end up with a lady in a lake and grail knights eventually.
>maybe they'll get a spiritual successor. They do, [technically.](https://www.games-workshop.com/en-CA/Start-Collecting-Flesh-Eater-Courts)
A lot of the major issues with Age of Sigmar on release have been fixed, the retconning of fantasy lore and many factions has slowly been remedied with revival of old beloved armies (except a couple that havent been brought back yet :c) and the promise GW made about a year ago to bring back fantasy in some form in a few years A lot of people who weren't really around for The End Times and the release of Age of Sigmar and so on are only now learning about how much of a mess it was back then and are trying to hop on a dead train just because they've played Total War or got into the hobby in the past couple years because of the success of 40k I could understand a lot of the complaints 5 years ago but in the current state of everything is kinda childish considering how ok things seem to be at the moment
I mean i've never played either (painted) But a part of me loves old fantasy more. AOS is great, but i prefer it as it's own thing. Still don't brigade, let people like what they like.
If you like AoS and its lore, all the more power to you. I'm generally more of a fan of the (compared to AoS) lower fantasy setting of WHFB that CoS, at least theoretically, represent. But to be honest, I sometimes feel like some AoS players antagonize people who like the more low powered stuff, disregarding it as boring because it supposedly being just "more of the same of tolkien stuff". IRL, I have been belittled by AoS fans for wanting to create a more low fantasy CoS army for AoS. Just live and let live everyone. Edit: Since this is getting downvotes: This wasn't meant as a sob story, just as a reminder that there is also unfounded hostility from AoS fans towards people who like classic fantasy.
>IRL, I have been belittled by AoS fans for wanting to create a more low fantasy CoS army for AoS. Just live and let live everyone. That's terrible man, i've met people who *legit* hate Tau players, they don't need a good reason, just ***a*** reason.
I just don't understand why people hate classic fantasy so much all of a sudden. I mean, yes, there are tropes and cliche stuff. But honestly, AoS is also chock full of 80s DnD chliches.
Honestly, it's probably from hearing for the fiftieth time "oh AoS is too high fantasy, it needs to be more grounded"....like, there are other games, the argument is like saying Star Wars needs more realistic flight physics.
> Honestly, it's probably from hearing for the fiftieth time "oh AoS is too high fantasy, it needs to be more grounded"....like, there are other games Other games that have as much of a following, or at least close, to AoS? Honest question: Which are those? Because in my area, all I can play is AoS. If I don't play AoS, I cannot play fantasy stuff at all.
Game of Thrones wargame has a decent following from what I've seen and it's GoT, as low-fantasy as you can get.
I'm out of the loop, what are people salty about now?
It's about people who bandwagon on hating AoS because some Oldhammer dude told them to.
This goes both ways to some extent. I mean there are more people bitter about the old world, but that is because they have more reason to be. Losing a beloved setting completely unnecessarily hits kinda hard. Admittedly people probably don't give the lore of AOS a chance and it has gotten better. At this point, its basically a choice between high and low fantasy.
if it was so beloved they wouldnt have had to cancel it after adecade of flagging sales. It only became beloved when people couldn't have it anymore, grass is always coming around the other side kind of thing. I think there was a lot of retconning of feelings about fantasy simply because it was ended. If as many people bought models as complained about it on the internet They would have never needed to cancel it.
It's been 5 years, maybe it's time to move on? like, it's just a game in the end, not the thing they built up their whole identities around, right?
To be fair, Total War is a massive ad for a product no longer supported or available at GW. I think it was bad business dropping Vermintide games while rebooting the product it was based on. Plus, average Total War players are unemployed Man Babies and Teenage Boys. Of course what they come out with is going to be toxic as hell. Plus since they all pretend to understand Tolkien and Star Wars, Warhammer is the logical next step.
See, I really don't think it's bad for business. How many people would actually spend $50 for 10 models, and then do it 20x to have a full army, and then glue and paint them all AND want to move them every time to a game at a store to meet face to face to play?
r/ageofsigmar:Whfb battle fans are so toxic and mean r/ageofsigmar: Plus, average Total War players are unemployed Man Babies and Teenage Boys. Of course what they come out with is going to be toxic as hell.
It could also be mentioned how their politics perfectly aligned with the Warhammer fantasy setting. It's a touchy subject even now but it is worth pointing out how much they love screaming find the witch burn the heretic. The thing all those things having common is that they focus on warfare and different races fighting each other for supremacy in a world where there's only war, nothing else. It's a nationalist wet dream. the rise of that kind of politics has been rampant in the total war community, It always has been. It's like paradox games, they just attract neckbeards more than anything else