9th Age Poll: AoS gets points... where does this leave The 9th Age?

I think the video posted below brings up an interesting point that is worth discussing...




So what do you guys think? Do you agree or disagree?

 

Well I think that 9th age already lost a lot of the players about the time of 0.994 or whichever update it was. Kings of war, AOS match play, will definitely affect the number of people interested in waiting for more balance and play testing. I don’t think it will kill 9th age, a lot of people invested a lot of time on building it. So I think it will get some play, but I doubt it will have the support it had when they initially set out.
Though I will never play it, I hope it pulls through somewhat to reward the people that stuck with it and put so much effort towards it.

 

The information was released on April 25th on GW's Facebook pages....

 

I doubt it. I can't imagine GW being particularly worried about competing with The 9th Age... especially not to such a degree that would result in them changing up their rules.

That's okay... we have @woogity and @Rikard on our side.

 

Agreed, I'm sure AoS isn't quite living up to their original lofty expectations.

 

aos has destroyed the wh world, its fluff, its darkish style,, this is the ultimate reason, 10 places after it comes - even with rules it will still be a skirmish game, blah...

for many peopple there is no going the aos way no matter what they do now...

 

I agree; there is pretty much nothing that AoS could do at this point to get me on board. I think many people (who dislike AoS) will feel this way, however I'm sure the inclusion of rules will attract some people. That's why in my opinion AoS getting rules will only have a "very minor negative effect" on the 9th Age. That was my selection in the poll.

 

Who knows what can/will happen next?

To be honest, the biggest relief so far has not been points, or promises of tournaments, but the press release from GW that said (and not in so many words) "We're sorry for everything Kirby has done and have placed him where he can do no more damage".

Apparently since his re-positioning, he hasn't attended a single board meeting.

 

Did that really happen?

When and where was this released?

 

Someone posted a link to the official statement on a large facebook group, although worded very differently from my paraphrasing, the message was clear.

I can't find it though, the group is large so there's a lot of posts.

 

Apologies for the double post, but I figured separating the two would be a wise move considering what I was/am about to type.

I think this change will have an overall positive outcome, but not enough to return fantasy to the level it was before, my thoughts as to the whys can be found just below... (disclaimer: these whys are primarily based off my own personal thoughts and feelings, but there are some observations thrown in too).

So to begin with I'll do my best to clear the air.

Myth: People don't like change, change killed warhammer.
Truth: I started when 4th edition was around (yup, it's been that long), however despite some HUGE changes in basic rules, I've gone from edition to edition, even though my favourite is still 6th, other people do the same too (a few in my local club), but you do/will always encounter people who play old and middle hammer, some people won't even deviate from 2nd or 3rd edition, but still maintain an interest in the goings on.

So why has the reaction been such a toxic one to AOS, if change was not the issue?
I think there's a very large number of reasons for this, no balancing/points system is actually somewhere on the lower end of this scale.

1. Kirby...yes, let's name the Elephant in the room rather than pretend it's not there. Kirby's biggest problem is he was about as appropriate for the role as a neurosurgeon working in a subway deli, you get very little or something that doesn't look like what you were led to expect and a neurosurgeon's charge added on to the end results, something that did and still does leave a very bitter taste in the mouth for many a hobbyist. He was completely inappropriate for the role and woefully out of touch with the garden variety wargamer. In interviews and statements, people have often remarked about how poorly he comes and how condescending he is in responding.

His attitude towards competitors I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong), was that he believed GW would always lead the field globally and therefore did not pay attention towards his competitors shares and profits and alarmingly, seemed rather proud of it (kind of like getting in your car, closing your eyes and driving down to the end of your street where you stop, get out and open your eyes, only to proudly announce you didn't hit a single child or pet).

His "reputation" within the wargaming community as a whole means that any changes (prices, re-boots, re-vamps, etc) are likely to be met with more hostility than they would if made by a different CEO.

"Games Workshop is in the business of selling toy soldiers to children."

- Tom Kirby, (former) Chairman of Games Workshop PLC

"...we recruit for attitude, not for skills."

- Tom Kirby

Since Kevin Rountree became the new CEO, Kirby is reported to not having attended a single board meeting.

2. The End Times.
Several points on this one, the biggest to be honest I think was the Limited release tactic. Here you have these five delicious looking carrots dangled in front of the wargaming donkey, only to have them hoiked away at journey's end. A combination of books, limited die and some models (many of which turned out to be not so limited despite what was initially said), only to then be rendered obsolete when in book five the world got destroyed and AOS popped up (the completely different rule set compounding this as you could go on the GW website and download rule equivalents for these books for FREE).

Personal thoughts: I didn't actually mind the ending of the warhammer world in book five, when the sneak peak of the AOS symbol appeared, I actually thought a book 6, or ninth edition was on the way, I even remembered hearing, seeing and speculating that perhaps it would be a three tier system, so you would have rules for 8th ed (pre-end times, with tweaks), present end times (combi lists like in the books) and post end times; the later being an almost Mordheim like battle system, survivors in the a horrific chaos saturated old world duking it out in skirmishes.

However, the new turn out with AOS (especially the rules, not the lack of points), came across as the ultimate snub, not just to the long term games, but anyone who had spent money and invested time and enthusiasm into the warhammer (this is a generalisation, I know there are people who have transitioned into AOS and play it and are very happy, which I think is important to note). I thought the rules like the dancing daemonettes or the old grumblers for the Dwarves was actually rather amusing (and not just because it takes very little for me to break out a victory dance in the local gaming club because I haven't rolled a string of ones). However, one thing I've seen from the rules both online and off it, is that those same light hearted rules were taken as an addition insult by more of the adult and long term games (anyone who played 2 editions or more of warhammer). These are not people who lack a sense of humour either, but for them this was the equivalent of having the barb not just stabbed in, but twisted too for good measure.

In fact Tomas purine (damn you spell check, I can't find his name), who has pretty instrumental in the older school daemon's design, made only one glaringly negative comment towards age of sigmar and it was on these rules (the rest of his quote on the matter reads very much like he was being held at gun point, but burning bridges with past employers is never a good idea).

Where fluff goes to die.
- Unfortunately I cannot find the original quote (not doing well here today), but I do remember one decision given for the Warhammer world's axing was a complaint about being stifled by it living on the cusp of destruction. How do you advance and develop an army book, storyline, characters of a universe where they're staring down the barrel of a gun?

So originality appears to be the problem here, the beloved warhammer world turned into an evolutionary dodo and bumped into a load of human settlers.

This would be a fair argument, were it not for the following 4 points.
1. If your new world, narrative and characters not only surpass the limitations set on them previously, but take off in new and exciting directions in a veritable big bang of creativity, then your reasoning was not only sound, but justified. Sadly this is not the case (disclaimer 1: this is going to sound very hypocritical coming from someone who will not be remember for any form of literary genius or skill....yes I know I need to advance my fluff and massively clean up the writing style of the characters).

The style, characters, fluff is...bland and rather poorly written in comparison, it's not quite cliche, but the whole celestial dragon who likes gold remaking everything and everyone, it just...why? Where is the twist, where is the linked narrative, where is the relevance? It's just suddenly there like a hog roast that suddenly materialises in the middle of a vegan only Tofu sampling buffet (disclaimer 2: I love pork and loath Tofu). Out of place....yes...very much so.

2. Previous high ups and Nottingham have/had been writing and rewriting fluff successfully for many years before hand.

3. Who says you can't advance the storyline?
I loved those summer campaigns GW used to run (fantasy one year, 40K the next), whenever you have a re-vamp of an edition, why not advance the fluff of the appropriate army books? Five years of actually time condensed into five years of the warhammer world is a drop in the ocean, it will not water down the original content (and I'll stop with the liquid based analogies). This means you can kill characters, or have them go missing, advance certain races who make a sudden surge forward (like Dwarves retaking a considerable number of their holds back and forcing the Orcs and Goblins into retreat...yes, it's ok to have the "good" races win every once in awhile).

This also means you CAN introduce new rules, campaigns, characters, units.

4. The new Orruks, where the only major difference appears to be the name.

Andy Chambers had this to say upon seeing the new Orruks.

"Wow, just wow. We have truly reached the end times. I'm honestly startled; how many years of working with Orky imagery? 30? Three decades and this is the quintessential essence of it all in the shining new future that is Age of Sigmar? Not-get-it levels of over 9000!"

Ok so that yellow paint job was not the smartest of moves, others were quick to point out the striking similarities between the shamen and Tim. I should also point out here, I actually like some of the new Orruks (the Wyvern is pretty nice) and yes, everything has been done before, but not by you, so people will always draw correlations between things and I most likely would not be doing any kind of mini sculpting were it not for that fan art, inspiration combi-driven enthusiasm.



5. A potential fifth point here would be "Then why haven't you done the same to 40K?", I could be tempting fate with this one, but Now that Kirby is out and Kevin is in, I can't see this happening.


I can 100% confirm that since the End Times, not a SINGLE player in my gaming group (about 30 people altogether) has touched AOS, even that one guy who has over 1000 painted zombies (not joking on this one....). I'd say that before AOS only about 12-15 of them, myself included played fantasy. All of them have just moved over to 40K armies, or they already had 40K armies and just concentrated on them more.


Nice Text wall Rik, but what does any of this mean????
Well it means that Kevin has been handed a waterlogged boat and has only a boot with a hole in it with which to drain it (ok I lied, that's one more water based analogy for you), he has a lot of work to do, but scrapping the ENTIRE AOS line and re-booting the warhammer world, I do not want to be the person who would have to explain and PERSUADE the stockholders to let that happen, the amount of time and the cost involved is immense. It seems to me that the best course of action is to try and make AOS as profitable as possible without doing a Kirby.

This might explain why there's been actually bundles with decent savings on the GWs website.
It would certainly explain why point systems and tournaments are already on the way.
It could also explain why Mordhiem, BFG, Necromunda and blood bowl are all due to return, they were never scrapped because they weren't popular, they were scrapped because people didn't need or have to spend the money on it that they did and do on fantasy and 40K.

The big question though: Will fantasy as we knew it ever return.
The hopefully answer: Possibly... but if that is his goal, he will need the shareholders on his side and his best bargaining tool for that will be to show an increase in profit, blaming everything on the last guy is never enough and only makes you look bitter, even if it's true, you need to show that you are better than the last guy by being better.

I think Kevin has got a long hard road ahead of him, but he seems to know what he's doing and I think he's going about it the right way, get back in touch with the players, make them feel valued and heard and keep Kirby locked in the broom closet.



That turned out far longer than I would have liked, hopefully I didn't lose track of everything.

 

I reckon it will only have a minor effect on the amount of players and maybe not even then, KoW has been spreading it's player base, at least based on who's talking about it in here, yet it doesn't seem to draw people away from 9th age. I haven't done any statistics on it, but I really don't see it being an issue for the player base of 9th age.

To be honest they'll probably provide very different kind of play-styles any who, so maybe it'll just stand as different alternatives. Hopefully

 

The main thing that put me off trying AoS properly was that I wasn't good enough at judging power levels to create an interesting game and it felt that I was being excluded for not being good enough. This is solved by the points system so I'll be trying out AoS properly at some point, that said I've tried other skirmish systems and not enjoyed them as much as the ranked battles of Fantasy so I doubt I'll go over entirely.

I'm guessing that a lot of people feel this way so I expect a minor negative effect, possibly only temporary.

 

My vacuum cleaner is a Kirby. I hear and obey, master.

Thanks Rikard for your waterlogged analysis. I have one complaint about it, though - You just reminded me that I was one of the fools who bought end times hard backs (even though I never read past the middle of book 2 because the story was so execrable - Son of Bob summarised it all for me) and I was one of the people invested the fluff side of the matter, more than the game side. I was actually positioning myself to write some saleable stories at the moment that the future was yanked away from me.

Now I just write for enjoyment, and everyone is suffering the consequences. Thanks for picking the scab on that old wound, bro

Sa-a-a-ay, aren't you due to write more of your own fluff? For some reason, I lose my mind whenever I try to critique it. I think that is because it is good.