Topic: The grassy fields of Averland are a thing of the past (AoS Top 10)

[knightofthelance]

I watched an interview that sums up my prediction;  Some company somewhere will fill this new void of mass tactical fantasy combat.  Don't know who it will be yet but if there is a need/demand, someone will fill it.

My guess is currently KoW. It may never be the commercial powerhouse that WFB was at one time, but it's a pretty decent ruleset. Honestly it's better for large battles than WFB. It has it's flaws, but I've yet to see a game that doesn't.

[Syn Ace]

WHFB used to be hugely popular in my neck of the woods, but yeah, it's popularity dropped. Just off the top of my head, here's a few things that I think helped bring about the game's demise.

1. Terrible production schedules--some armies would never get updated, sometimes for a couple of editions, or the update would finally come out and guess what? We're moving to a new edition! I think some people just got fed up.

2. It became too expensive which made it unattractive to new players. Compounding the problem of frequent price increases was the fact that it's a mass combat game requiring a lot of figures. Then 8th came along with hordes, which was fine if you viewed it from a purely rules standpoint, but the number of figures needed so a unit that could stand the rigors of the 8th edition close combat gave new players sticker shock as GW kept cranking up prices ($60 U.S. for 10 witch elves!!). And the prices for some of the big figures is just insane. And their books! I used to buy all of them, then got to only buying the one for my army.

3. They stopped pitching it to a younger market some time ago and went for adults with discretionary income. No more Young Bloods coming in. We used to run a Young Bloods program and would have a mob of kids from age 12 on up.

4. Marketing tactics that left a bad taste in the consumer's mouth: I still have a friend who is mad that his original Chaos Dwarf army got Squatted (though it did make a comeback years later as a ForgeWorld army--after he sold it). I have a friend who is bitter that his Dogs of War army was invalidated. And another who bought a Storm of Magic Middenheim army. GW loves marketing to suckers.

5. Power creep -- shitty attempts at balancing armies turned off people.

6. Lame rules support -- how many times did we all bitch about their lack of action on badly written or broken rules?

I don't know to what degree console gaming among the younger generation and a general inability to focus affected the game. The rules are rather convoluted (not as intense as other games perhaps) and a lot of young people can't be bothered or don't have the attention span these days -- they just want to jump straight in for immediate gratification. I even see that with my nephew -- he thinks my stuff is cool, but he'd rather play his Playstation.

[Fidelis von Sigmaringen]

Without wanting to bash AoS, it would seem that that game suffers from all of the above, except 3 & 6 (well, it is too early to judge 6). 

[Darknight]

I don't see that is accurate, or can be said with certainty;

1) We haven't seen anything but three weeks of releases so far.
2) The game can be played with fewer models - "inexpensive" is a debateable term, but it is certainly less expensive than WFB.
3) TBH, I don't know that AoS is really pitched at younger people - those models are NOT clip together and the rules, while simple, aren't quite as simple as people pretend.
4) We don't know what they are going to do - and their strategy might stay exactly the same (probably will). Yet, AoS is a little immune to those - you buy a model with the warscroll. There is no restriction on what you can field. If they release an army, someone could add a little bit of this and that to their force and there would never be an invalidation of it - because Warscrolls are free. And the tone (set in the Compendiums) seems to be "just use count as". And, of course, the Warscrolls are so simple and have no points, so you can pretty much invent whatever you might desire.
5) AoS has no balance mechanism except the players. It is completely immune to power creep ... or it is inherent to the system. Take your pick
6) There are four pages of rules. They seem very clear to me, because they are so simple.

[Syn Ace]

I find the book situation annoying. I thought about buying the latest book, but it's $75 U.S. I downloaded the free sample for my android and the fluff writing is just meh. I really don't want to shell out a boat load of cash for a bloated hardback when I'd primarily be interested in a few scenarios and warscrolls. I could get the Android book version for my phone for $50 or $60 for a tablet version and the only thing holding me back is--well, they cost $50 and $60! I mean, holy shit, are there other companies out there hawking e-books for that much? I couldn't even be certain that when I moved to a new phone that I'd be able to download it again -- by the way, does anyone know if that's how GW does it? They're so backwards in so many ways I can't trust them. I know with Kindle, once I buy a book, I can view it on my other non-Kindle devices and they transfer to my new Kindle when I upgrade.

[Darknight]

$75 does seem rather a lot for the book.

The novel at 128 pages seemed expensive to me, too.

[GamesPoet]

I'll use my imagination, based off of foundational Averland fluff before, if ever, buying that book.