As weird as it may sound I think the aesthetics are one of the reasons. Many people do like those tin cans very much. As I said before I don't mind them myself so I totally understand there are people who really like them. The other reason is some kind of self fulfilling prophecy: GW likes them and makes them the poster boys. The poster boys get most of the fluff and the rules favour them. They will always be one of the strongest armies. People like to play the strongest army. Even quite some people who dislike their style buy them because they are damn strong and you can mix them with every other order army. GW sees they sell well and produce more, stronger models. Everyone has some because all starter boxes and boxed games contain some. If you build a few you might notice those are actually quite fun to paint because they have many details. So from that point on they start to kinda work for themselves.
I completely agree with you. I absolutely hate the SCE. I don't think we have anything official from GW (nor will we). If I were to speculate, I'd say that their popularity stems from: the self-fulfilling prophecy that @Aginor outlines the fact that they can be used for 40k Space Marine conversions the fact that they are Sigmar's chosen in game that revolves around Sigmar they are a natural counter balance to Chaos Space Marine fans from 40k might be drawn to them and try AoS they are relatively easy to paint and you don't need that many models to field an army
Meh, if only they could at least balance out the factions a bit more... at least space marines have chapters with distinct rules, even if they're all spacemarines they're still about 5 different armies. So having a 150 space marines models and only 30 odd dark elves is sorta fine, it balances out to a degree. Whereas here we have 40+ SCE and then 5 ironjawz... Also, for the smaller factions in 40K it seems much more natural to combine em with other factions as they're subfactions. E.g. Adepta Sororitas or mechanicus troops fit naturally in a general imperium army. AOS factions on the other hand don't really have that apart from some of the older stuff like the old humans and elves, and even then it's only cuz the old humans are spread over 4 factions for some inexplicable reason none of which really form a functional army on their own. Ah well, maybe it'l get better.
How are you supposed to take your old Empire Army out of the box and field it anyhow? (Not that I have one, but say I did??) I do have an Orc/Gobbo army, 6-8 factions? I was trying to find plain ordinary plastic Orcs armed with bows. Could not find them. Anybody know where those ended up? Now that I could finally!! use them without having to rank them up!
There's rules for the stuff here and here in so far as it's still supported. Buying them from GW might be impossible though.
Be careful what you wish for. GW will see this and think "we obviously need more SCE factions". Then you'll end up with 200+ SCE and 5 ironjawz. Spoiler: Done!
My old Empire army is surprisingly effective AoS as an Order army or as a Free Peoples army. Maxed units of Handgunners are nasty, able to hit and wound on 2+ with the right buffs, plus they can stand and shoot. ("My big, huge Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon charges you!" "Ok. I get to shoot before you attack. [Roll. Roll.] Ok, make 20 saves at -1. Now my second unit of 30...") Free Guild Guard are good no matter which way you bring them. Swordsman are a base 4+ save, rerolling ones. Halbrediers are cheap troops with -1 AP. Militia weapons can do about the same thing as Handgunners, more shots, but no AP. Cannons and Rocket Batteries are nasty. The Celestial Hurricanum is one of the best buff wagons in the game, adding +1 to hit to everything around it, as well as a pretty strong source of mortal wounds. The old Empire army is in a pretty good place, you just need to find the right synergies.
Meh, the lore of the old game was better, but the game itself does seem to hae improved from what I can tell. And as for multiple SCE factions, if they're actually diverse that'd at least be an improvement over the current situation.
They were in the beginning, weren't they? Extremis Chamber or something. But they removed that at some point.
Nope... not even close. Of course "better" is a product of subjective judgement but in my humble opinion WFB was a million times better. Personally I view the shift from WFB to AoS as no different than moving from Chess to Snakes/Chutes and Ladders. Of course no one wants to hear my anti-AoS rants, so I'll leave it at that.
That seemed to only have been in name though, can't remember there actually being different rules for the two. Good chess is a fairly straightforward game, it's just too big for people to memorise but basicly it's just a larger version of 3 in a row and you can solve it. Chutes and ladders is far more complicated, it has randomness in it. I'm glad you like the improved complexity of AoS In all seriousness though, AoS seems more streamlined & it seems to avoid some of the pitfalls WFB had. It's by no means perfect but it does seem to improve in many aspects.
Nevaaaaaaaaaaa Though I do agree certain aspects seem to have overshot their goals... For example magic in AoS is.. a tad dissapointing
personally, magic (and special abilities) & the weird way protecting special troops works. A dude with the banner in a unit is the last one to die if I want it to be so, regardless of the stunts my opponent pulls to kill him first, but I can't protect my starpriest from being turned into a porcupine by archers unless I literally hide him from sight completly. I want a "look out sir" rule. Some models are way too easy to kill without it. A great example being skaven weapon teams, 3 wounds a 6+ save, basicly the moment someone gets in range of it they get ripped apart. Lemme attach those to a squad of skaven clanrats or something so he has to shoot through all the clanrats first, they might survive a round then...
On the topic of shooting, why the hell is there no drawback to shooting. The only thing they can't do is run. But pointblank shooting in the middle of a melee after walking halfway cross the board is fine for some reason...
Well, it is quite simple that way. The idea was to have shooting be simple but shooting does either not do a lot of damage or units that have a lot of shooting are also squishy and bad in melee. I think that shooting without drawbacks can work, but they have to balance the units accordingly.
Judicators laugh at your statement, they have basicly the same stats as liberators... I don't think balancing it without drawbacks is possible. It'l end up in one of the following possibilities: Ranged units are comperative in statline with melee units, basicly what we're in now Ranged units have massivly worse statline in melee, but devastating ranged attacks: they'l remain dominant, but armies utilizing them will either field cannonfodder to slow down the opponent or they'l become armies that'l nuke literally everything turn one with their superiour range. At best this'l leave it "balanced" in the sense that if everything is equally broken things are "balanced' which personally is not a style of balance I like. Ranged units have a worse statline in melee, ranged attacks are puny as well, basicly our skinks when not fielded as a horde: they'l become largely irrelevant as a threat. They'l only see use if they have some good secondary abilities (again, like our skinks) but the actual ranged attacks are little more than a nuisance. This is sort of balanced, our skinks are a decent unit in small sizes. But they're also utterly irrelevant as a threat. They're fodder and objective grabbers. The fact that their attack happens to be ranged is largely irrelevant in this case, they'd be just as good at it using their clubs. The boltspitters just mean that now they might actually attempt to score a wound without fearing being annihilated in melee. But much more than a handfull of wounds per game it's not going to be, if that. None of those are all that appealing to me. I'd rather just have limits. Personally I like how it work in the old lotr game they had. No idea if they still do it this way in the current hobbit incarnation, but they had 3 rules for proper ranged attacks (there's some additional rules for special stuff like gimli lobbing a throwing axe in your face). You can only move half-distance if you want to shoot. Any large enough object that's in the way between shooter and the target can block the shot. This includes other models. Roll a dice for each object. If you roll a a 4+ you hit the intended target, else you hit the thing's that in the way. Also, good guys couldn't shoot if an ally was in the way, bad guys didn't care for friendly fire. You can't shoot if you're involved in a melee. Also, in my memory, the range on their attacks was far smaller, though that might just be my memory, been over a decade. This solves most,if not all, of the issues I have with it. Though that game had several other rules that were quite nice as well. The way it resolved combat meant that a single model wouldn't be able to take on entire armies at a time, being surrounded was an issue even if you're some legendary hero and you're surrounded by puny goblins or some such. Stops those units that in AoS become unkillable monstrousities that just rampage through armies without a care in the world. Sadly the special rules were less interesting (an elf archer is the exact same as a human archer, just better stats but no special trick shots or anything) and the variation in races/armies was far less. Makes me wonder sometimes if the designers of each game actually cooperate in some time or just ignore eachother completly.
Judicators are a bad example. They are SCE. As for your proposed changes: IMO that would kill the simplicity tjat AoS was made for. If you want a good shooting ruleset I think 40K is the way to go. Shooting phase before movement phase and all the restrictions. The ruleset is just better.