Maybe version 10 will be sufficient. We're still in a good place compared to some 40k and WHFB armies who reportedly didn't get books for, like, three full editions of the game. (Btw. is that actually true? What was the longest timespan an army of 40k/WHFB/AoS went without any significant updates but not getting dropped?)
I think that must be WHFB Bretonnia, their latest army book came out in 2004 and they stopped producing them after the end times concluded in 2015.
I honestly feel like both 40k and AoS have enough unique factions at this point. They keep adding more factions instead of fine tuning what they have. We now have another Death army coming out with TONS of new models, all that production time could have gone into updating resin models across every AoS line. It's also strange how we don't see smaller balance updates with the release of the AoS app where all updated war scrolls are held. How difficult would it be to make monthly/quarterly changes to what is essentially static images inside an app? They have plenty of data across so many tournaments to see how different factions are performing and many of those tournaments even have unit lists included as well. Upping the save / hp values / point values of units here and there would end up going a long way to actually attaining a Warhammer franchise with at least a somewhat focus on balance. Of course its always possible to overcorrect, but I'd just like to see SOMETHING happen on a more frequent timescale than once per year. :|
Has there ever been a statement as to how many factions GW thinks is healthy? Especially for AoS, we're currently at 22, and we know there's still at least 4 new ones coming (darkoath, the new undeath stuff, the two aelven factions made by malakith and tyrion). It's getting rather much. I'd be curious if they have state a limit themselves. I think that'd create too big a dependency on the app. Players who for whatever reason don't want to use the app would be struggling to keep up with all the constantly updated warscrolls. Also "small" changes like an extra wound here, or even an improved save value can have massive cascading effects. Updating that quickly, on that big a scale, especially with how limited their playtesting seems to be (doesn't seem like they have 100's of testers) would definitly lead to unforseen issues.
Oh man I have deepkin and I don't even want this. Not yet! I think a monthly update would be great, but I honestly don't think the vast amount of players are getting in more then 5 if even any matches a month. So you would have a bunch of updates that only effect the top/active 10%. I could be wrong but most people in my circle don't play a lot. Our last local tournament was the first time most of us played since the new generals handbook. I think I had 2 hobby sessions between forbidden powers and ghb2019. However, maybe more constant updates will encourage more active playing and more importantly for GW purchases
Not as far as I know, but based on the number of releases they seem to be able to make each year the viable number could somewhat reasonably be somewhere between 24 and 30. Edit: there was a thread about that topic on TGA a while ago, this was my post with the reasoning for the number 24: I think 24 or so is a good number, mainly for product life cycle and production time reasons: If they renew their rules with new editions every 3-4 years or so, they will need to put Battletome releases of most factions into that timeframe. So if they release two BTs every three months, that is 8 books a year. Thus all factions would have a new book every three years. They will do other releases as well so they might not make it in three years for everyone. That's where rules updates in the GHB come into play (like for Seraphon, still playable with the Battletome from 2015. Well, mostly) If the rules in the new edition don't drastically change they can maintain a faction playable with those small updates, so they might only have to release 6 Battletomes a year. So yeah that is what I think. They make ~8-9 books a year for AoS, of which 6-7 can be Battletomes. If they want to renew their game every four years they can sustain ~24 major factions. Edit: If I didn't count wrong we have 32 Battletomes since AoS release, making it 6.4 per year on average. Sounds like it could fit my above theory.
Very fair point. I'd hope that there is somewhat of a middle-ground that could be obtained though. At the very least a more regular blog which shows what their team is working on / thinking to keep everyone informed. This could create useful discussions across the community (and complaints, lets be real) that could prevent disastrous releases. It would also just in general be nice to know where their heads are at instead of endless speculation and feels of despair from certain players who feel totally ignored.
yeah, an indication of what they're working on and that faction X is being looked at would definitly help things.
Could have a small boost in sales too if someone finds out they are working on X faction. Could be the motivation to collect new/more.
So not sure if anyone else has posted this but as of 10/10/19 the terradon and bastilodon kit have been moved from trade to direct order items. This usually means one of a couple of things. The first being that those items are no longer considered "essential" and will be made in smaller batches. Second is some sort of new release for lizards. Lizards at this point would only have 4 trade items being the following. Start Collecting! Seraphon Skink Starpriest Skinks Saurus Guard This would leave us at the lower end of trade items for current factions.
unfortunately this doesn't mean anything anymore. they have been moving a lot of products across a lot of ranges to trade only. just had this same discussion with my LGS owner a he was looking at his army (ironjaws)
That is actually something that's becoming worrisome. Especially for stores that aren't just GW stores. There's only so much available shelvespace.
Over the last year, year and a half, my local store has only had the start collecting Seraphon box for sale. Pretty much only start collecting boxes and some new units for AoS. Lots of 40k and lots of other games.
My LGS also only carries the Start Collecting boxes for Seraphon - and indeed, most other factions - while a good majority of the shelf space in their wargames section is dedicated to WH40k. The long and the short of it is that AoS is statistically far, far less popular than Warhammer 40k, and it's not financially viable to keep a bigger stock of it in a lot of these places. A good 60% of the boxes I see sitting on the AoS shelf at my store have been sitting there for over a year. Of course, that's not to say that there isn't an invested player base (indeed, I'm one of them!) There is just far fewer of us that are invested in AoS than there are of people who are invested in 40k
meh, I think my lgs has about 50-50 AoS-40K but it's a mess of an organisation so it's difficult to judge. There's definitly a lot more than just SC boxes, but what's missing seems to be rather random and more often than not they won't have what I want... it's annoying as hell.
I went to the New Hobby Expo over the last weekend and visited the big store in Grapevine, Texas. I was really surprised that they have Seraphon on the shelves. Not like, a little amount either. Just as much as every other faction (including 40k). My local store just like others have said only have the SC box for them.
Next boxed set is Ogors and Ossiarchs. Plus, a new Ogors/Beastclaws combo battletome is next. Darn! I hoped it would be Ossiarchs and Seraphon.
meh, why would we be fighting the ossiarchs? Their whole thing is that they're obsessed with the bonetithe and are going around collecting it. We're the least fit to be their targets as we don't really care about the bonetithe. To be honest, I'm halfway surprised narritivly that it's not a cities of sigmar army that's their target. Would fit nicer in terms of the narrative. Though at least the ogers can claim they wanted to make soup out of the bones and had been claiming them for that reason... yeah, the seraphon stuff is one of the more prominent ones at my lcs as well. It helps that we have several boxes and are brightly coloured . The boxes that are missing there appear to almost be random. And there isn't really any one faction that truly jumps out as being the most prominent.