Rage of Sigmarines!

Discussion on Age of Sigmar has been wildfire in the Warhammer community lately. This is not merely in the way the conversation spreads, but also in the landscape that is left behind. Like many in the miniature wargaming hobby. I have opinions concerning Age of Sigmar. Seeing as how this is my blog this seemed like the sensible place for me to share those opinions rather than try to inject a little bit here and there. For those of you not into the miniature wargaming hobby, and probably many that are, this will be long, dry, and boring.

For those interested in a little personal history, I was introduced to the world of Warhammer Fantasy through the tabletop game WarhammerQuest. Then was Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition. Following that was the original HeroQuest. Personal history, not print history. Mordheim came some time after that. We finally tried Warhammer Fantasy shortly on the tail of picking up Mordheim because we already had multiple armies from collecting for WarhammerQuest. The timing for my gaming group getting into Warhammer Fantasy Battles was while the game was transitioning from fifth to sixth edition. Blood Bowl was attempted somewhere in there, but it was spread out and I can't remember exactly when I played my first game as I played a lot of games back then.

When I think of the world in which Warhammer is set I tend to think dark and gritty due to the high casualty rates for early adventurers in WarhammerQuest and the setting as it was presented in the early editions of the roleplaying game. The RPG borders on a slightly fantastical Call of Cthulhu game in a Fantasy setting. Mordheim is also a bit more dark than the wargame, but nowhere near the darkity dark darkness of the RPG. This puts my world view slightly out of kilter with many players that started with Warhammer Fantasy Battles. If a named character gets a scratch on their leg in the RPG then they have to watch out for a normal infection. If they do get an infection then their best bet for survival might just be to find a town of moderate size and have the local barber amputate the leg before the infection can take hold in the rest of the body. In the wargame, magical infections can kill in minutes unless there is someone on hand to offer a prayer to remove the disease just as quickly with no lingering troubles. Madness was also a constant threat in the RPG. Depending on the game in question, the Warhammer world was two different worlds for me that shared similar geography and political climates.

The Warhammer Fantasy Battles community has known for about a year that something big was coming. Games Workshop has been running their End Times campaign which promised to move the story of the world forward. This was not the first time they had done this. They ran an End Times campaign years ago, but were not happy with the results the games played around the world yielded to them so froze the story. This End Times pushed the clock back a little, completely ignored the old End Times campaign, and produced a lot more printed materials and models. The campaign books run US$400 alongside at least one army book that I know of and multiple new model kits over the course of the campaign. In articles published by the company in the past we had been informed that most major box sets with new rules are typically planned out eighteen months to two years in advance, if not longer. Single army books might be six months or less, but sometimes longer due to needing to line up book releases with model releases. This means the company almost always has at least a rough estimate of what the game will look like two or more years before the public sees anything. If we want to compare release schedules between the start of eighth edition and the end of eighth edition, it was either eight or nine months (I forget which exactly) between the release of the rules for eighth edition and the first army book to follow, where this past year had seen release after release when both Games Workshop and Warhammer Fantasy players knew big changes were coming. All this is to demonstrate that Games Workshop likely had the Age of Sigmar at least in the planning stages before they started writing the End Times Campaign, and there were clues sprinkled in since the beginning to hint at such a drastic change in the setting if nothing else.

All this past year many game stores have been stuck with product they can not move. I believe this is partially due to Games Workshop policy of not communicating with their customer base nor the people that carry their product. Players that might have bought new models either put money aside to buy big after the End Times were over so they could know that purchases would be usable, or more likely used that money to buy other things. I know store owners that are contemplating dropping Games Workshop products because they see no turnover on the games. One has told me that the only Games Workshop product their customers buy are hobby tools and paint where I know another that has trouble selling those. This problem with stock rotation is not one limited to the past year and End Times, but it has been exacerbated this year as the hobby was pretty much put on hold by most outside of buying some books and limited release models.

Warhammer Fantasy had some problems. I am not talking from a gameplay point of view right now, but from the business perspective. There are many players still using models from a decade or two ago. Some players have armies that sport models that they bought more than three decades ago. The tactic in the past to get players to expand their armies was a combination of making newer releases better than older ones, and increasing the number of models required to play.

The game had an absurdly high barrier of entry assuming you can find people to play with. Getting started with established players would cost hundreds of dollars if not pushing into four figures if paying retail with a desire to play games of the same scale as more experienced players. Escalation leagues which are set up with the express purpose of getting new players involved in their local community still requires hundreds of dollars to get rolling. It's an up front commitment to buy a full army, but paces it out so the initial purchase is not quite as steep, but still pretty hefty for most people I know. You also had to buy all your basics before your toys, and as you bought more toys the game required more basics. For those not in the hobby, this meant having to buy line troops before a cool monster or a cannon for instance. If you wanted another monster then you needed more basic troops. It's a tax that not only cost money, but meant people had to buy things they might not want and were often time consuming to paint. Speaking of painting, there was the time for assembly and painting all the models. Unlike many other non-historical games you also had ranking up of files of models which has become increasingly harder as the models on those bases have grown in size with more dynamic poses over the years. The scale of historical figures usually makes ranking models or stands of models much easier than doing the same in Warhammer Fantasy.

I mentioned the difficulty in finding groups. I can't speak for other locations in the world, but in many areas in the USA people have moved their games of Warhammer Fantasy Battle out of public venues and into their homes. This is not all areas here, but most from what I can gather. Sometimes you might have a group that will reach out to gather in new players, but then they tend to pull back into their homes after they're done with their recruitment drive. Most players to enter the hobby over the past five years or so in the USA are likely to be relatives of existing players that were introduced to the hobby at a young age so were able to overcome some of the cost and time issues as some of that was already done for them and never had to go looking for people to play with. 40K is starting to face these same issues as it is the customers that sell the product for the company so each time a customer leaves the hobby, which is inevitable as life is a state of flux, Games Workshop also loses a sales person.

I am not purposely avoiding the discussion on the rules of the two games themselves. The truth is, Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar are two completely different games. The only real link is a tenuous one where some named characters in the old setting have been elevated to the position of gods in the new setting. The old world is completely gone and some of the names barely resemble their previous incarnations. Games Workshop has provided rules for playing with Warhammer Fantasy Battle models for now as they expand the rules for the new game. I can see this being phased out as the new line expands. For sports enthusiasts, it's sort of like Football officials declaring goals will be replaced with elevated baskets, and players will use their hands to play instead of their feet, but may only hold the ball for brief moments. This does not mean the new game can not be fun. If you want to play Football then having to learn the rules for Basketball might not be your cup of tea however.

I can't really give my impression on the Age of Sigmar as a game yet. There are too many unknowns as we currently have an incomplete picture. We're tangling with a snake because we can't see yet if we are in fact holding a snake, or the tail of a larger creature. There are some interesting ideas to be found in the rules. Nothing truly original, but they do represent new ground for Games Workshop. A lot can be inferred by looking at the updated rules using older models, but these same rules are easy for Games Workshop to drop as the game grows. Games Workshop needed to keep their current players invested in this new game. As time passes however they can shed these old units and ignore these temporary rules.

The biggest deterrent for me is the game lacks structure. Games Workshop or the players have to give the game structure. I can see the game collapsing completely if there is not some form of structure injected into list construction or a scenario system that will work for random games with strangers or tournament play within the next nine months. Six or fewer months would be better, but after nine months I feel the game will reach a point of no return if it fails to be playable without discussing what models to put in your case before leaving the house. The rules as they stand right now encourages people to play only with people that are already on the same wavelength they themselves are on. This could serve to have people even less likely to play with strangers than they were with the old game.

There are some positives that we are already beginning to see. First among these is that people outside of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles community are talking about the game. I know people that had been intimidated by Warhammer Fantasy Battle that are giving Age of Sigmar a try. There are also people that have left the old game in the past that are checking out the new game. Modeling is a lot easier now that we don't need to worry about making certain all the models line up in neat little rows. Sometimes this was never a problem, but I personally quit the hobby for a few months over this very issue. I wanted to work on some models when seventh edition was pretty heavily rumoured so took a lot of time to rank up some Orc archers in units four wide only to get the seventh edition book where rank bonus only counted if the unit was at least five models wide. Games Workshop is also starting to have limited interaction with the public. This just starting this month and may be a one and done sort of deal purely around the starter set for Age of Sigmar, but it's something.

Overall, I don't really care about the game itself right now. There simply is not enough information there to build long term plans on. I can make a lot of guesses that follow what we have seen, but they are currently still guesses. I am however interested in where the setting is going and where the game itself might be a year from now. I can not make assumptions with any substantial certainty about what shape of Age of Sigmar will take over the next year. We currently have a starter set along with some rules to appease older players on a short term basis as the starter set is not enough to carry itself. Games Workshop appears to have a somewhat steady stream of content planned for the next few months. We still do not know all of what that contains although the next big release is a campaign book that goes over a couple of locations in the setting and expands on the models from the starter set. The questions I have right now are where is the story going, where is the game going, how does the game relate to Warhammer Fantasy (which we mostly know), how does the game relate to 40K (Thunder Warriors!), and what will be done to ensure players show up to a game at least in the same chapter even if they are not on the same exact page before talking to each other. Also, is it possibly to use these rules for a campaign skirmish game akin to Mordheim and Necromunda, or would it be better to use the LotR/Hobbit SBG with campaign rules a la Legends of the Old West.

Eighth was an army game and Age of Sigmar is a skirmish game we don't know the true scale of yet. I have no desire to use skirmish rules to play an army scale game so if that is the direction the game goes then I am out. I do not play a lot of 40K because I find it physically exhausting. Using movement trays to move models in bulk is a lot easier for me than moving a large number of models individually. I usually park sideways at game tables as my wheelchair does not fit under most tables. I tend to play with only one hand as the other arm is busy holding up my impressive bulk as I am twisted sideways and can not hold myself erect unassisted. This may be something that purely affects only those with physical disabilities, but I imagine it would also test the endurance of tournament players so I can see many tournament players either sticking with eighth edition if the option is there for them, or going with a different system such as 40K or Warmachine as the tournament scene for either is already fairly well established.

I opened by comparing Age of Sigmar to wildfire. It sure spreads like it. I personally would rather show up at my local game store to play eighth edition than Age of Sigmar. The thing is, it is a game that depends on playing with strangers if it wants to grow. This was barely happening before, and is less likely to happen now that any new releases will not see rules for eighth. Wildfire destroys what it passes over. On the other hand, fire may also reintroduce nutrients to the soil. Many cultures have burnt their crops after they were done bearing fruit so the soil would be better for the next season's crops. Eighth edition was a full three piece suit with a matching tie and cuff links that had been warping the hanger it was on as it was unable to support the weight. Age of Sigmar is a new hanger with no clothes on it yet. It will be interesting to see what Games workshop tries to burden it with.

Edit: I realized I neglected to mention intellectual property as one of the problems Warhammer Fantasy was facing. During the trial against Chapter House Studios for copyright infringement two thirds of the initial grievances were dismissed immediately. Two thirds of the remainder were thrown out over the course of the trial. That means only in nine of Games Workshops original claims to originality during that case stood up in court. The majority of the aspects they lost on were specifically for things pertaining to the Warhammer Fantasy setting. If nothing else, Age of Sigmar will permit Games Workshop to clear out the things they can not claim complete ownership of to focus on content which they can win court cases over when it comes to ownership.