The Age of Sigmar...meeeeeeeeeeeeeh

So I've been thinking a lot about the games I play and all sorts of stuff associated with it.  What games I play, what I like, what I want to accomplish, what I want to get into, etc.  One game that I've been working on has been 9th Age (e.g. Warhammer Fantasy 9th edition) using my GW Dark Elf models to represent the 'Dread Elves.'  Of course once I started thinking about Fantasy I started thinking about Age of Sigmar.

As a disclaimer, I have not played ANY Age of Sigmar (I know it might be a bit late).  I have no interest in it.  So you can take what I say with a grain of salt and disagree, which is fine.  I still have my thoughts on it though :)

So Warhammer Fantasy has been a staple of the Games Workshop line for many years.  I would dare say it was almost synonymous in a way.  A game of epic fantasy battles with your army on the table top, slinging spells and slaying monsters while heroes charge across the field in glorious battle!  There are few sights more impressive than a fully well-painted Warhammer Fantasy army on the table and it has given me plenty of pauses.

That's quite impressive of a force!

Unfortunately the effort you need to put into painting let alone assembling a fantasy army is quite daunting even to veterans.  A unit in 8th edition of basic troopers could number at least 50 models large.  50 models! For some 40k armies that's the approximate numbers for the whole army.  So it's no wonder then that 40k became more popular as time progressed and Fantasy waned in popularity and sales.  Couple that with GW's ever increasing sales you had a formula for people leaving Fantasy in favor for Warhammer 40,000. For example shortly before AoS 10 Witch Elves went up in price to $60 and you need to bring about 30...so $180 for a unit -.-

Number of models and cost of this > average fantasy army

So GW ever being pragmatic and focused on the sales figured the best way to handle this dilemma of not selling models would be to change the game!  Now most of us Vets were skeptical about the change, I mean not only are we resistant to changing things but this is GW we are talking about.  Personally I was interested in seeing how they would change things up, I mean I had hopes.  I had hopes that maybe they would turn the game into something cool or exciting to play.  I had in my head 40k sized games of Fantasy with some cool models/rules and epic battles.  Then I saw some of the models and true to GW they were pretty models.

Me gusta, me gusta mucho

So far they had me interested.  "You can still use all your models!" Oh snap my Dark Elves are still legit! Then the rules came out.  The rules...were 4 pages long.  4 pages.  I can count that on my hand.  The rules were beyond simple.  Now don't get me wrong I don't mind simple rules if they are deep.  Bolt Action rules to me are simple and deep.  These rules were more like "guidelines on how to vaguely play a game with the models, but really just buy the models.  So easy even a tree could play!  Also if you care about lore and have been following it for a long time, WELL TIME TO SAY GOODBYE TO ALL YOU KNOW LULZ."

Why was I even surprised by this turn of events?

I suppose this is what bugs me about AoS.  I feel like GW had a amazing opportunity to do something good with Fantasy but I feel as though they didn't even try.  I could forgive them if they put forth some kind of effort in making it into a cool game but it just feels like they gave it the bare minimum to call it a game.  Not to mention I am already biased against them and have subconscious beliefs that all they do is ultimately to screw us over and take our money.  That and the previous CEO made it known that the believe only about 20% of people who buy their models play and that it's just people who want to paint the models who buy the kits.  With all that you can see why I might think that they wanted to just correct profits in a dying game by making it more like 40k, while giving bare minimum rules for the "20%," and not really think about the ramifications of said actions for the community.

Right.  That's going to work.  Mm-hmm.

So I was pretty bummed.  I mean I had my hopes up by GW after a long time of being dead in my heart to it and I was burned again.  Not to mention I had about 2500 pts estimate in Dark Elves that I was going to assemble for 8th ed Fantasy.  I had thought about giving up hope until I learned about 9th Age.  Basically a group of about 4500+ members got together to modify, tweak, and balance up 8th edition Fantasy into something pretty awesome.  It's starting to garner some attention in Youtube batreps so I checked it out and I have to say I am impressed.  It's all free and every army is available.  So maybe there is hope for Fantasy gaming yet :)

That's all today folks, stay frosty and have some great games out there!