I always liked the "secret" in the Old World that everyone was wrong and it was the Lizardmen who were actually the main characters, the true enemy of chaos, quite literally the original creations on the planet.
I think it's been established that AoS was made to sell models and nothing else. Fantasy had its problems, but things mattered. Cities, towns, small villages, individual people big and small mattered. Distance between places, demographics of certain areas, the gods and people who worship them based on who they are and where they live (Ulricans in Middenland or Myrmideans in Tilea), these details matter.
Literally the only thing you need to know about GW in regards to that: for AoS, they were forced, kicking and screaming, to make maps for it. They genuinely thought that maps for their setting and stories were completely unimportant.
AOS when it comes to lore definitely needs to be more fleshed out. Peachy was on a podcast recently and even he said they literally nuked the old world and made aos to maximize copyright material. In that same breath we're less than a decade into it's lifespan and they are working on fleshing it out. Some of the stories/novels would fit into the old world no problem. It's not being given the chance to stand on it's own with the fan base because people are still salty about the old world. I get it, the stories I've been able to read/listen to set in the old world have been amazing and doesn't have the often referred to "superhero" feel as can give off
Like NE said, you can't fully flesh out AoS because its very premise is antethetical to being fleshed out. You can do that with factions all you like but at the end of the day the setting they all share feels like one big vaccuum isolating them from each other.
Also people are still salty because they spent 1000s both in money and in hours on a game that was blown up by the company. AoS still feels too much like 40k with some elves for Old World WHFB people to buy in to any of it. Including the Lore.
Personally, AoS should be an Age of Conan era setting: The great civilisations have fallen, chaos and magic everywhere, infrastructure destroyed and all sense of faction cohesion is out of the wind. You are not playing the part of a great civilisation, but a motly tribe or warband that is left behind and trying to take claim in a broken world. Wizards become sorcerer kings, while barbarian tribes of all races emerge in the wastes and mountains. Warcry does this the best, though: Most chaos tribes you can play are unaware of the true form of the great chaos god they accidentally worship. You can call back to the "world that was", but explore different aspects and different interpretations! Instead of blood-crazed Khornites, you have noble monster-hunters, you only seek bigger prey and challenge! Shaman orks who mistake an aspect of Tzeentch for Mork (or Gork). Undead following Sigmar, trying to regain their former glory and a new chance in life as heroes. The new take on Slaanesh could have been applied to every faction: How do the former followers deal with the loss of their god? Of course, I could play this way and interpret it this way. Put thought into my warband and give it that backstory. But fluff and crunch will conflict the moment models are put on the battlefield. And what little lore there is simply says: Yeah, there are still big cities and stuff, just so big they are unassailable and keep pumping out soldiers and stuff.
Star wars is a perfect example of good soft magic turn to bad soft magic, in the ot it had limitations but was very vague and not explained as it didn't need to be, fast forward thirty years and you have a main character doing anything for the sake of the "plot"
Are you joking, the force was never a hard or soft magic system, firstly the force has always had limitations, a learner like Luke can't instantly deflect blaster bolts or use force powers like force pull, but he does have instincts, and the connection, like using the force to make his one in a million shot, as a universal energy it had no limit, nut the user did, the prequels were consistent with that, and with the novelization at the time proving that there is pushback when you infringe upon the force, it wasn't until rey retard needed girl power did the force start to be consistently bending it's rules and functions, likely so it didn't have to put with her
My metric for soft magic is that it's not a problem if you're able to forget that it even exists by the time it happens again. Like the fairy godmother from Pinocchio.
This year we are trying to make an AoS stand at some nerd convention here in Belarus. My friends asked me to make up some activities for our stand cause my previous work with Fallout and 40k was super cool as they say. I tried to catch the essence of AoS and understood that this is the laziest, lamest piece of writing ever read by me, and believe me, I've seen some stuff, I read Soviet classic fantasy/sci fi dammit. My 12 y.o. son writes Start Wars fanfics better that the GW writes its new lore. I have literally 0 ideas for activities rather than plastic soldiers' battle which is not super popular here. Damn, GW. Why do I have do compose everything for you here?!
I don't think GW is putting much emphasis on AOS. Which makes me doubt that it's selling as well as some say. I have always preferred fantasy to 40k . I mean 40k is just stupid, at least the fantasy setting has some originality to it.
It's pretty obvious from GW's behavior that AoS is a failure, at least from their perspective. It is massively outsold by 40K, and depending on the releases for the month, even gets outsold by MCP and Legion on occasion. GW, however, regards competing as beneath them and would, if they could get away with it, happily delete everything from every game that isn't just Space Marines.
@@Ankhtowe yes because companies tend to put more money into stuff that failed. Thats why we get new (awesome) models regularly and thats why Warhammer Underworlds and Warcry are still a thing, cuase its a failure. "Doesnt sell as well as X" isnt a failure, its a failure if it doesnt make money. And if it didnt make them money/a loss they wouldnt produce it anymore.
@@Zulfrak Ah, so you didn't actually read what I wrote. Thank you for admitting that, please respond once you actually have, particularly the disclaimed "at least from their perspective". Oddly enough, those words were put there for a reason.
@@Ankhtowe Um that isnt true.....AOS sells far better than fantasy ever did - however - i will admit third edition is a fail imo.......we have lost alot of players because of it.
@@theDackjanielz "Um, that isn't true. It sells better than Fantasy did, which proves that GW regards it as a success in their internal metrics and that it is meeting their desired sales goals." Kind of feels like you made a bit of a leap of logic there, bud.
Finding out Manfred Von Douchebag gets brought back in AoS after single handedly f'ing up Warhammer Fantasy... I couldn't be less disinterested in AoS lol
Here's the thing: GW tried to End Times 40K. They had plans. They were going to dump both games, and make 50K and AoS. In so doing, they would free themselves from the lore which GW views as an enemy at best, and could also force people to rebuy their entire armies from scratch. They would make the armies far more generic, aiming for the mass market with as little personality as possible, and they would delete Slaanesh from both settings entirely. Most importantly though, GW knew those dumb idiot customers that they have such contempt for would buy it eagerly, because it would say "Warhammer" on it, and that's all that it takes. Fantasy went first, and boy oh boy did GW half-ass it. As they released rules specifically designed to mock their existing customers and shame them into either quitting entirely or switching to AoS so GW could pretend like Fantasy never existed, they also rules four pages long, no points costs, army construction rules that literally said to just bring every model you own, the more you buy, the more you win, and lore that was a scant few paragraphs long. To say that it failed, would be something of an understatement. Now, GW, to their credit, did actually panic and attempt to course correct. They couldn't do it immediately, and you still saw some elements of what they had planned. The hyper-generic Primaris(tm) Marines. The Ynnari. Slaanesh "vanishing" in AoS. GW had to scrap everything they had planned, keep what bits they could salvage, and reverse course as best they could. There's just a couple minor problems: they still hate their customers, and they still regard the idea of lore or continuity as an obstacle at best and an active threat to be engaged and destroyed at worst. Their writers do not care AT ALL about their settings, and there is SO MUCH MORE they could be doing but they don't want to because what they want, is Marvel. They want Warhammer to be superheroes, to be comic books, to be superpowered uberheroes who win everything forever with zero effort or challenge. GW desperately wants to be rid of their settings and the people that love them, they HATE their settings and lore and want to scrap it all, but their products are so expensive that they can't just completely court a new audience. They NEED their existing customers and so find themselves in a passionless relationship with their own customers and their own products. This bleeds through in so very many different places that even attempting to list them would be the very embodiment of futility. As such you have a company that hates its own product and its own customers and will happily vent those frustrations on them, players that love the games and settings but hate the company that produces them, and a situation wherein absolutely no one is happy.
Honestly I think you are spot on and I couldn't have said any better if I tried. I think it's time for me to either move completely to historicals or grimdark future or xenos rampant and such.
@@bryanvestal3923 Standard cycle of a GW customer: "Wow, this is really cool!" "Um...yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's exactly the same stuff." "STILL nothing new? Oh, no, my mistake, you're making this thing worse and upping all your prices. Again." "Okay, I've had enough, I'm quitting Warhammer." EVERY GW customer goes through the above cycle.
I don’t think maliciousness is the driving force behind any of their actions. It’s a little childish to believe that a corporation does anything out of hatred for its own product or consumers. Their primary objective is to make money, and they have been doing so fairly successful. They canceled fantasy because it wasn’t making as much money as 40k, and was becoming a burden. They replaced it with a fantasy setting that was more marketable. That’s just business. The fact they saw fit to replace it at all is fortunate, and combined sales between two settings that can share models probably plays a role in their decision to resurrect whfb. They probably try to change the lore because it’s littered with contradictions and plot lines that never went anywhere, so they often want to start from scratch so their writers don’t have to read decades of obscure lore to start churning out the books they sell to make a profit.
Plus, haven’t the settings always been full of insanely overpowered people doing crazy things like superheroes? I thought that was a major part of the appeal? What are space marines supposed to be, if not an army of plot-armored action heroes?
@@MatthewNaro-i9v Yeah, people need to understand unless a company is being run by someone like Elon Musk who honestly cares more about feeding his own ego than making money. Then all of the major decisions that a company makes is being done by committees who are just trying to increase profits or come up with plans to do so before the next fiscal quarter. And that any shared universe that has been around for long enough is going to collect a lot of lore that new writers either don't understand or just don't care about. It's why DC comics keeps rebooting itself. So if 40k was to ever stop making money then GW will probably just go "And then the Tyranids eat everyone, the end! But over-here we have a new galaxy with a bunch of toys you can buy!"
I decided to get into the hobby just before AoS 2e. I had been familiar with the old world lore and really wanted to go the undead/vamp counts route. Thought it would be cool having the legions of dead swarming accross the world... worlds? Idk. I was kind of disappointed because Nagash is the main dude and it seemed like any undead characters had little agency to do anything. The world/setting seemed fragmented leaving me confused as to what even is the point? I still love the models, would love a chance to do a path to glory and build my own Death army characters.
AOS is the only game I regularly play because I greatly prefer the models, factions and the game over 40k. With 3rd edition, I really think it's the best tabletop game GW has made yet. I think individual faction lore "flavour" has been good to great and is only getting better. The biggest problem with the lore is indeed the wishy-washy setting of the Mortal Realms. I think GW went this route with the setting so they could expand the model range to their heart's content without having to worry about stepping on established in-world rules and parameters. That all said, I largely agree that this is lazy writing and it does a lot to take away the stakes of the world by making events far less tangible to us in the real world -- a world with states, continents and borders. My hopes are that a new "world" similar to the Old World is created in future editions with the Mortal Realms coalescing into something more grounded. Perhaps this can be done while keeping alternate worlds and dimensions to retain some of the freedom that the wishy-washy AOS world admittedly allows for.
Age of Sigmar needs more time to develop. I didn’t like the miniatures at first but the Lumineth elves and Kharadron dwarves grew on me. Plus, rules wise the game is much more fun to play than current 40k.
AOS lore can be dumb, but it's still more consistent and grounded then 40k, where primarius got pulled out of an ass on Mars and changed the entire imperium overnight, for no good reason no interesting lore or actions have from it, it's been pretty much in universe people saying wow this is cringe then the primarius come and win cause they have a sword that does infinity plus 1 damage and they get loved, Aos on the other hand is just as expansive when it comes to size of the universe, but because they aren't regions in space it makes sense when a small faction can raid and pillage a larger faction in a different realm, not like in 40k where realistically there's no reason a custodes would have ever seen or heard of the tau, kroot or vespid, the scale of sigmar is larger then fantasy, but it's not half as meaningless as 40ks scale, where nothing matters because space marines can absorb infinite casualties due to them not being allowed to be in danger, with guard just getting infinite bodies with no real lose condition beyond the imperium not being able to ship enough bodies to the front
Also an aside (I realize I'm posting several comments but they're very different thoughts), the entire AoS setting is happening in the Warp. All of the good guys lost, Chaos won everything, and the setting's entire purpose is solely to torture all of their souls for all of eternity. It's the playground of the Chaos Gods. That's why it's so inconsistent: the Chaos Gods make whatever they want to happen whenever they want to. The only reason good guys exist at all is because people have to have hope, in order to lose it. Change my mind.
Ironically any attempt to co-opt Age of Sigmar's miniatures and gaming system with a homebrew narrative will just play into them wanting you to write the narrative for them. For the amount of work it would take to turn AoS into a compelling narrative, you might as well just write something from scratch.
If magic has too many rules its not really magic, its technology. LOTR uses a "soft magic system" and its actually more grounded than a lot of settings, I think your real problem with AOS is that there's just too much magic in the setting, witch I'm inclined to agree with.
I kinda come from the opposite end regarding hardness of magic and Sanderson's laws. What gets me is how AoS setting is just an exceptionally lazy rehash of Norse cosmology tied together by magic just because. If you're gona make over the top fantastic worlds because your magic system is made to allow that give me a giant-ass tree, or corpses of titans or moonlight bridge or something that tells me what your world is like. A bunch of spheres to serve as endless battlegrounds is just boring. Also I'm pretty sure Sanderson never said that limitations are what makes magic system interesting, but that limitations are more interesting than powers. Likely because limitations create drama directly. Soft magic systems are a tool that needs to be used with skill, just like Hard magic, but it's a different tool for different pupose. Lord of the Rings is a neat example of both with the more soft magic present in characters like Gandalf, Saruman and Galadriel, while the Ring and it's various powers are more of a hard magic item. Hard magic is useful for gamefying things, and setups and payoffs. But I find that all too often hard magic stops feeling like magic, and more like sci-fi with fantasy paintjob as per Clarke's third law. Warhammer usually balances well on that tightrope with being hard enough for rules, but soft enough for feeling fantastic when it needs to. In 40k this is accentuated further by presence of sufficiently advanced technology taking up many of those hard magic elements.
My problem with AOS is when compared to how cool the old world lore was how could AOS ever stack up? How can it match the dwarves with their hard on for grudgement to the point they become slayers? How could the new goblins compete with Grom the Paunch or Skarsnik? How could AOS match Vlad Von Carstein? Queek the head taker?Settra? Or Karl fucking Franz? Sigmarines were a mistake. The setting was cool because it was normal idiots against the world, super power armored dementia patients just drags the setting down.
Tbh the lore isn't a mess In AOS I really enjoy it, granted it isn't Fantasy Level or 40k intricate but it's good and only starting like it too ages for Fantasy and 40k to get going
the issue is that there are no stakes in the world and the form of the world is fundamentally terrible for any sort of interaction or storytelling. Everyone is a supermagical champion and it isnt even set in 1 world, just very vague "realms". Good for non serious tabletop games, vastly inferior for any kind of story building or lore.
Basicly the last part of the rant about suggestions all basically applys to the karadron overlords, they don't have godly help or magic so more or less on their own. Only with GW didn't go silly with their minis sometimes, like the top hat helm....
Yeah I never played AoS for the lore. Fantasy was way better. I never realised the fact that the realms weren’t permanent. I always assumed they were. And that respawning was just for stormcast, daemons and all of Death. If you run with that then it seems better just lacking in detail on types of units and where they came from.
This is what has ercked me for so long about this "setting". It feels like a nothing burger just as much as 40k. Nothing wars for nothing gains because nothing matters.
What I would do? Kill it and shoveled the models into WF 10ed (hell, I even figured out out how to make Stormcast work in WF as its version of 'Necrons')
Ahh mate, do you know what I did? I scaled down all my Warhammer Fantasy armies to 10mm, and all ranges changed from Inches to Centimeters. I have fantasy again, and an army costs the same to purchase and print as a start collecting box for 40K. And I am talking 4000 points fantasy armies, and I can paint the full army in a weekend. Now to just go find the PDFs to torrent :P
I actually am SOMEWHAT opposite. Why I kinda stick with Battletech and 40K lore pre a certain point. I like a steady progressing timeline/history that leads to a more or less fixed point in time and then let's you play in the sandbox. The plot frequently derails when progressing past a certain point. AOS however had some potential but it never gripped me. It lacked oomf and personality 40K and Fantasy had more off. The pieces are there but the approach feels very corporate and lacking thought.
Honestly, these videos do a great job convincing me to just leave the hobby and do something else. It's all owned by a company that doesn't give a crap and it's becoming more noticable, as the years ago by. Why waste money on a company that doesn't care? Yeah. At least for me, it is time to pack it up, I think.
Standard cycle of a GW customer: "Wow, this is really cool!" "Um...yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's exactly the same stuff." "STILL nothing new? Oh, no, my mistake, you're making this thing worse and upping all your prices. Again." "Okay, I've had enough, I'm quitting Warhammer." EVERY GW customer goes through the above cycle.
@@Ankhtowe I've been through that once. Came back for a friend. Now, I'm feeling indifferent more than anger. I'm rather bored of it all. It's the same feeling I had when I dropped Magic. Best wishes to the rest of you. Enjoy and cheers! Edit: Come to think of it, it's the same feeling I had with OSRS too. It's another thing people said that you don't quit, but take breaks in. Still haven't gone back. You find other things, at some point. Again, cheers.
I initially hated AoS lore because I considered its origins retarded and it shows its marketing roots in those origins. The marketing decisions made sense, but from a literary standpoint, this is NOT how you write a compelling backstory IMO. Later, it started to grow on me as they fleshed it out, even if a lot of the starting backstory was nonsensical to me. I agree with your take on the problems with AoS setting having too many similarities to 40k and not really having any stakes because no matter how shit things get, Sigmar in Azyr will rarely ever be threatened directly, and it just doesn't have the desperate stakes of the Old World and thus, it's less compelling. For contrast, Altdorf in the OW was rife with internal politicking from the various nobles, city states, other nations, constant wars, subversion from within, etc. Meanwhile in AoS, everything is hunky dory in Sigmarland while the badguys are somewhere far away. I know which setting sounds more compelling. And the main selling point for AoS is it's a kitchen sink setting, there is little to no consistency. You've got the cities of sigmar peoples who look like low fantasy Renaissance Europe in contrast to Stormcast Eternals who look like high fantasy 40k. You're right, Coherency in a setting is very important to adding believability. One can argue that this type of setting allows you to put the audiences own mark on the setting and giving GW more space to flesh out the setting. Here's the problem with that, if everything is allowed, nothing is forbidden. If someone wants to port space marines to clean up the mortal realms, the loosely defined nature of AoS lore might allow it, and that is a sign of a weakly made setting. Nothing matters because everything is allowed. This is not a compelling setting because nothing matters. There is no impact on making your personal mark on the setting. One might argue that in the Old World, any impact you made seemed pointless, because you might die and everything is still going to fall to Chaos. However, I would argue that the stakes in the OW are more compelling, because the good guys were defending what they valued and the threat of their loss would be felt and the world felt more precious as more and more of it was lost to the bad guys. Stakes mattered in the OW. That was what made the OW's grimdark tone so compelling. The pointlessness of AoS is that nothing you do matters and nothing you value matters because even if you lose it, nothing will change, and you can pop into another realm if you don't like the one you're in. Why bother fighting? AoS feels like a nobledark kitchensink setting while having little to no narrative impact, and that sort of pointlessness just makes me want to care less about their so-called "setting". Case in point, they're bringing back the Old World. I rest my case.
Oh boi... Age of Sigmar suffers from a complete "nothing changes" fluff you say? This is close to heart in regards to 40k current timeline-lore though.... Anyone remember Vigilus? No? How about Octarius? No? No bloody wonder, because the story at large is dull and made over the top silly, key factions are there without purpose and just hangs about without doing anything. Great conflict zones of interest for so many races, yet how do they constantly end? Stalemate 2.0, nothing never ends nor does anyone ever win or do something extraordinary new at all. By far, I would say that 40k and AoS suffers from the same taint, lazy writers and greedy marketing scheme that only alienates the customerbase further. Hence why people are heading more and more towards third-party companies, Games Workshop is losing touch to its own brands out of the sheer lack of understanding good story-telling which in toe sell thousands of models and invests more interest in the setting at large.
Oh no If Abaddon destroys Cadia he can beline it to Terra and we're doomed. *Cadia is destroyed.* Oh no if Abaddon destroys Vigilus he can beline it to Terra and we're doomed.
@@jamesmacken9501 And they can't even do plot twists like if hive fleets converged on the rift, ruining Abaddon's plans via the shadow in the warp, because that would mean Chaos vs Tyranids and that isn't Primaris Marines.
Yeah basically AOS is the same as both the old world and 40k - its all just as wishy washy as each other frankly.........The old world may of been "more grounded" but if people remember nothing actually ever HAPPENED in that world, in a way it had the opposite problem, it stagnated to death. Same story diff setting, its just ppl dislike the new kid on the block.
As a noob secondary who just got into the Warhammer thing in the last few years via lore videos and Total War, the vibe I get is that CA as a company has become a lot more corporate and soulless than it used to be and AoS is a symptom of that. I hear they are toning down Nurgle gore. Is that true?
Because AoS lore is boring, there are no stakes, the last time I checked the lore, the Sig Marines can't die, they get resurrected, and ol Sigmar can make anyone into a Sig Marine. Meaning, if a interesting and mortal character came along, became a bad ass, and then died, Sigmar or any gods active could resurrect him. Where are the stakes at. The world is boring, and feels like there are no stakes. From what I could gather its a bunch of not planets connected to not warp gates. And then there are thousands of battles with thousands of people fighting constant battles, you Gods able to join them. Where are the stakes at.
Soft magic, when written well, creates a sense of wonder in the reader - and that is nothing to be scoffed at. Hard magic creates interest in how it works/can be used.
Its also a lot like lego. Back in the day a lego castle would provide endless possibilities and fun, nowadays lego comes in weird one of shapes you can only really use one way but its very bright and colourful and splashed with your favourite pop culture characters. You can crank those sparkly lights up to maximum, you're still dull Sigmar
I'm a total n00b when it comes to Warhammer. Way back in middle school(a decade plus now) I was given the impression that Warhammer fantasy was just Warhammer 40k minus 40k years. Is age of sigmar the same thing?
I loved the old fantasy lore. It was brilliant. The AoS lore just strikes me as being completely daft... looking at you lumineth realmlords and idoneth deepkin (in particular).
good video, but to give a suggestion could you please work on the audio, it's a tad quiet. Age of Sigmar, yeah it does nothing for me. I think every setting needs some "zanniness" to it, but AoS is just too much for me. Fair play to the fans but it isn't for me.
Anyone have much experience with Composite Games? I ordered some models from them a week ago and they haven't even dispatched them yet. I contacted them and they said they will "aim" to post them on Friday. If this is representative of their service, I'd rather just go to my local hobby shop.
Short answer would be no, it has grimdarkness in there but its deffo not the lead design of the world.....AOS has alot of bold heroism going on, a bit like Greek paintings.
Sorry for not being North but I'll tell you that they have been slowly tweaking the tone of AoS to be a little darker with each passing edition. It will never be as dark as 40k as the setting revolves around the Stormcast, who are good by definition. No amount of sidecuts and frowning will ever change that.
AOS is just missing cool characters. There's no real background on main characters in AOS. Just general lore of the mortal realms and factions. So you can't really get invested into it like getting behind a chapter and primarch. I agree with the video. It's missing many details that could help immersion. Like locations or who's even fighting in the damn battles
well no, theyre worlds. Flat planes that are gigantic with their own gravity. The AoS universe doesnt have a sun, the realm of light is the light source for all of the realms and it becomes night when eclipsed by the realm of shadow
If you want the good, specific lore, that’s all pertaining to the individual factions. The delusions of the Flesh Eater Courts, the Idoneth Deepkin, failed creations of Teclis, even the Sons of Behemat have their own lore that they made up for the creation of the world. You’re not gonna see any of it if you’re just discussing “Age of Sigmar Lore.” Which is a shame because that’s usually as far as creators who are not already into AoS tend to go.
I agree with the first part where the end times and the launching of AgeOfSigmar which is complete fucking garbage. I have no idea how they thought doing that was a good idea. But the lore personally I think is pretty good and now eight years later the setting is pretty grounded now, the third edition tabletop is so easy to learn. Its a Dad game with beer and pretzels
I used to play Warhammer because of the Old World lore, despite the games poor rules. In AoS, the lore is vague and woolly and I occasionally play it despite its background. I play games of AoS but in my mind the games are still in the Old World.
Most AoS fans under-appreciate how important storytelling is for emotionally investing people into a setting. I often wonder if AoS players even want there to be a story sometimes.
*PLEASE* fix your audio. Your videos are less than half the volume of any other channel I watch, and making you audible cranks up system sounds to the point that they threaten to blow my speakers out. I want to watch your videos but we're getting close to the unsub point just because their incredibly low volume renders them nearly unintelligible.
The Old World was awesome. The setting felt real. You could drop a person into any location and have a story. Each location had a personality. There were societies and economics. Everyone was trying to get by. It was a realisitc medieval / renaissance setting... with daemons, monsters, elves and dwarfs. How does the average citizen get by in Age of Sigmar? Dont know... Dont care All I have seen are the stupid Sigmarines
Oh... and the stupid f'kin names... Trademarkable names. Its like the new Primaris. I just cant be bothered anymore. Stupid made up names. Im too old for this shit. If you are going to make it hard for me to remember what everything is called, I aint gonna bother.
@@gwell2118 Oh... Did they relist all of the unsold Warhammer Fantasy figures on the GW website? The ones with square bases? So I can see one set... "Galen and Doralia ven Denst" that is new. One new set in 7 or 8 years which is human but not Stormcast Eternals? I would look harder, but I cant be arsed.
@@charly03090309 ok ONE, your question was lore related not model related so dont change the subject, there are tons of novels and stories relating to non-stormcast mortals, though I doubt you would look at those anyway so no point explaining logic to you there. And TWO they are literally coming out with a revamped line for COS at this moment. So I guess your losing another avenue to complain about. Though I’m sure you’ll find another as moving the goal post are you guys only real tactic.
Me watching all of my Age of Sigmar armies that I have builded, painted, made lore of them, worldbuilded my own Free City and surrounding areas that my armies are operating in and motivations be there. All based on the lore and rules of the setting of the Age of Sigmar. Yep what you said is really true. 😊👍
You nailed it with the soft magic vs hard magic. Soft magic is just that, a lazy short cut for the author. Completely ruins any sense of believability.
Thank you for talking about AoS, it gets too much flak from the "muh fantasy" crowd. It's bad enough where neat stuff like the Idoneth Deepkin get completely missed by the rest of the Warhammer community
Finally, hit me up! I'd love to discuss improving the setting or creating a new one from scratch, that sort of thing is right up my alley. (Your Discord link isn't working, BTW)
Age of Sigmar is basically an 80s Saturday morning cartoon. We're gaming in Eternia. Or as I prefer, it's set in the 80s Hercules films. th-cam.com/video/I3czCEgxDDM/w-d-xo.html
I agree that the lack of permanence is the main issue with AoS. A shame, because many of the factions are actually quite interesting, or at least their premise is. There just needs to be something specific to do in stead of general 'kill stuff' or 'be the good guy' motivations. Honestly the story could be about anything (or any place), just have that thing be of value in stead of macguffins that are forgotten as soon as the story ends.
I have a less cynical explanation. I don't like simply dismissing things with "it sucks because they only want money". That argument doesn't make any sense to me and is just a lazy way of ranting. Every company wants to be successful. My 2 cents: I do think Games Workshop made a mistake but that mistake is not greed, rather arrogance. I think they believe they are successful because of them. I doubt that. I think GW is successful because fantasy and science fiction in general are very popular. People read or watch Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones and want more. Then they stumble on GW and see all these cool models and more lore to immerse themselves in. The one follow after the other. Its a game that makes sense in the wider context of the fantasy genre. Now with Age of Sigmar they seem to have turned it completely around: They designed the best game they could and then, almost as an aftertought, created the world and lore in a way that makes sense in the context of the game. Now the mistake here is obvious: People weren't that interested in Games Workshop in the first place, it was just another way to engage in the wider hobby of fantasy. By really placing the game itself front and center they removed that hook and connection many people have with it, they just want Tolkien: The game. Not some game with some background story attached to it.
I like to add Warhammer 3 made Fantasy really popular and got people into fantasy. At the same time End Times and AoS was happening. Creative Assembly did something GW never did (and wondered why fantasy was not as popular as 40K) and promoted Fantasy. Which got a lot of people into Fantasy, and GW as always jumped the gun and end times the setting and gave us AoS..... before realizing how popular Warhammer 3 would be. Now I said it once and will say it again, they could have easily just split AoS and Fantasy into 2 different things, but that would be smart.
@@aaronlaughter6471 Yes exactly. The 90's and 00's were a great time for high fantasy and indeed not only LotR but very much Warcraft 3 (still play it by the way, awesome RTS) and World of Warcraft, and its quite obvious that Warhammer benefited greatly from this cultural phenomenon. Big mistake is that they renamed all the Tolkien races in AoS I think. Aelves, Orruks... Probably for copyright reasons or something, but still rather arrogant. Just an example, but you cant just redefine well established lore in an entire genre like that without alienating potential new customers or old fans of the genre in general. It just sounds weird and kind of cheap.
Why does "the company wants money" not make sense to you? Cause YOUR explanation doesn't make any sense to me. Businesses have been screwing themselves with greed for as long as they've existed, abandoning the niche that built their success in pursuit of a wider market share. Modern fiction of all stripes is flooded with examples of hyper-focusing on the most marketable elements (in this case, the models) at the expense of everything else. It isn't rocket science. There's not always some super-complex hidden cause to root out. GW are doing the same s**t everyone else is doing. Also, "they designed the best game the could"? Do you REALLY believe that's what they did? That AoS is the best they could do? That it isn't just Fantasy but streamlined so a lower common denominator can play it? That GW just has no awareness of how much lore, cool factor, and the fantasy kitchen-sink aspect contribute to the extreme dedication of their customers? It hardly seems less cynical to imply GW are incomprehensibly thick idiots rather than just gambling on losing some old fans in pursuit of more customers overall.
@@samwellcheck562 Because, again, every company wants to make money. Its the puropse of a company. Its saying little more than: The company failed because its a company. Very lazy. Instead, one should ask: Why is the way this company tries to make money not succesful? And then you can proceed to try to determine what succes means. One such way would be a long term plan facilitating growth and quality products, over a short trm cash grab that might bring in a lot on the short term, but damages the brand, and therefore its ability to make money, on the long term. Because that what seems to have happened in my opinion: Extract as much money you can from existing customers but alienating potentially new future customers from the product.
I don't get the non interactive abilities in AoS where you just have to declare that your doing something. "this hero is going to use his ability which gives him +1 attack." ...Okay, shall we just say he has +1 attack in the first place?
I find the lore to hit and miss too. The new Gotrek book are nice but the overall setting doesn't make me feel anything. Narratively I would find it more compelling if Azyr is the only bastion of civilization and anything else is a light in the darkness of orcs, undead, chaos and wild untamed magic. The gods would forced to work together for survival. Some things I would keep like Grimnir and Teclis lore but I would have Morathi to have a chance of heart since she was violated to her very being and know what awaits them all if they fail.
@@GurrenLagann98 I should elaborate. I would like to see the setting as a grimdark fight for survival and not a noblebright setting that it turned into. I would have no golden age of mortal nation states, and no lands of plenty or any advancement in civilization. Only a scattered collection of survivors from the ash heap that was the old world. I find it more compelling if the timeline takes place a few millennium after the old world died so history has yet to be written so anything would be possible.
@@Emidretrauqe Agreed, it also has elements of 40k thrown in - Neither of these things i wanted in AOS and contradicts the original design philosophy of it. These days i simply use 3.0 tomes and play 2nd edition or Age of fantasy instead.
I dunno. I kind of like the idea of the Stormcast Eternals going through the "Dark Souls" thing. But they should really crank the flaw up to eleven. Think of it more as cracks in a dam rather than the death by a thousand cuts approach they are taking now. Every time an Eternal eats it, they should lose large chunks of themselves, not just a small piece. Instead of forgetting the smell of their mother's hair on death, they should forget their mother entirely. And that should REALLY screw with them. The eternals would be so much more tragic, dying and becoming less human every time until they give it all away to protect those below them. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy but perhaps by death 10, they are full on skeletal automatons who know not why they protect humanity... only that they must. And on their 11th death they give way to oblivion. Not to be reborn, not back to the cycle. They are gone, having literally given every bit of themselves in the grand fight.
I think that if there is another time skip, Stormcast should transition to a Destruction army. Devoid of humanity and reason, they heed the call of a God long forgotten. Pushing forward, herded like cattle by forces beyond their grasp. If there is no end to the universe, on a long enough time scale, this fate would be inevitable.
@@jake53105 or maybe have a faction of them that fall to that fate? Have your pretty golden boys and girls, then have those who buck this sort of forced damnation and choose instead to break the chains.
Lol this didn’t age well at all. Aos is coming up big. I like 40K too but it’s played out. It’s the same story 8000 times with small differences retcon galore so literally nothing you read even matters and gw is just edging you till your eyes explode hoping to the god emp himself that something actually big fucking happens. A prim arch maybe? The emp waking up? Who knows and who cares ahaha. Not to mention on tabletop a lot of the models look bleh. Genestealers? Looks like Appalachian trail people on go go glass.
I think a big problem with your looking at AOS is that you have a lot of false equivalents to 40k, like sigmar fighting against chaos and making an empire, he didn't make super soldiers for that, that was with the average joe he used for that, and then named characters and death, yea in AOS your not afraid a named character will die, but you aren't afraid of that in 40k either, GW is barely willing to kill off named character for factions they don't care about with shitty old models no one wants to buy, to the point where there's more space marine special characters then some armies have units, and them you get into the immortal things like necron lords that just become a new necron if you do win, or the chaos champion that managed to make a necron feel pride, and apparently things that the person responsible for making the weapon is responsible for whatever it kills considering that a mine going off made the one guy in the imperium who takes pride in his work as a slave factory workerer that makes mines for 16 hours with a 10 minute lunch, assuming of course that one of your coworkers died near you that day, otherwise you don't get to eat
If I were to fix AoS... have the realms of magic be an artificial pocket dimension like the webway. Have the Warhammer world be an emulation of realspace powered by the realms of magic. The Old Ones made this for designing and testing weapons (lifeforms). The native entities, from before the Old Ones terraformed it, need help fending off chaos encroachment and are using the Old Ones' creations to do it. Sigmar could've been the first to stumble into the realms when he was trying to escape and find his father (make Sigmar the Word Bearers' lost Primarch) and he's what inspired them to bring in more souls to do their fighting. The people of the Old World don't know this, aside from the occasional madman like with the Liber Chaotica. How did civilisations emerge in the realms of magic? Maybe great heroes and doomed populations are being raptured by their gods? Maybe only super factions like Stormcasts are canon in the realms of magic, but the rules let you include anything. I'm sure there are better ideas. But the Old World and realms of magic need the other to survive so the stakes aren't dropped in either. You can have the realms of magic go on forever if the focus is on the few mortal cities/strongholds and strategic places like the all-points. The Old World is a realistic setting invaded by chaos. The realms of magic are a dreamscape setting invaded by chaos.
I loosely agree with your statement but in order for them to make the setting that we have today compelling you would need to set an AMAZING standard of storytelling because the problems that AoS faces sets the wind against and casually told tales by isolating them and keeping them away from any real sense of narrative grounding. So while I don't think it _needs_ retcons, I do think that retcons are the easiest (and most realistic) way of addressing these structural issues.
At the start of this, my very thought was that AoS is a setting for a game only. Later on, you said exactly what I thought. You're totally right. The books suck ass! I love 40k Lore, but the game is shite. The solution for me is playing AoS and listening to 40k Audio books.
Unironically you could just play AoS with nothing but Daemons and say that this is taking place on the ruins of an Imperial world lost to the Great Rift. Hell, you could even use the mortals and say it was a feudal world and those are the survivors.
Ok so, I like Age of Sigmar, I really do, but there are some issues i have with it. The game itself is fun but i’d rather them keep the rank and file system of Fantasy since that style of game fits a fantasy setting more than the 40k looking style. I like the Stormcast Eternals a lot. When I got into the hobby I started with AoS and so I didn’t have the background with the Old World or 40K. So when I saw them I thought Blizzard’s Diablo and not Space Marines. Now that i’ve gotten into 40K and Fantasy as well yes I wish Fantasy didn’t die off and I can see the comparisons to 40K (still think more Diablo though). I get what you’re saying and I can agree so some extent except in specific cases. I think the Stormcast resurrection should be kept but it needs to have more strict parameters on it. It could take a long time before they come back, it’s very risky to bring them back, the emphasis on losing more of themselves and becoming unfeeling automatons of order when they come backC, or something else. Death factions really only the Bonereaoers or possible Nighthaunt could come back but there should be restrictions to that too. Mortal Chaos followers should not be resurrected but can have blessings that make them functionally immortal but still can be killed and if they die that’s it. Everyone else though should have no resurrection. Frankly if I had things my way AoS would take place in the Old World. The End Times would basically be all the major nations being reduced to basically nothing but the would would not be destroyed (the chaos gods wouldn’t want it destroyed because they wouldn’t have any more emotions to feed on). This allows for the smaller skirmish style games as nations can’t muster the same forces they once did. You can also create reasons for how many of these AoS factions came to be in the Old World. There’s a lot more I want to say but this is long enough. As you can see I’m rather passionate about this game
i watched half of the video before i had to stop. if you cant be bothered to read the lore, dont judge it. Presenting false informations makes you look bad.
@@thezurreal a lot of AoS haters seem to believe AoS is the same as it was in the 1st Edition regarding the lore and books. Exile shows it when he is talking about how he would've changed AoS and made Nagash a prominent antagonist who wants to get all the souls and become the greatest of the gods... Except if Exile would've read the lore past the opening of the 1stEdition, he would've known about the Necroquake and the Soul Wars being a thing, and Nagash was basically the main antagonist throughout the 2nd Edition of the game
Crazy to me that 30k/40k has the greatest fictional universe ever written (imo) and yet I'd rather play AoS if I were to play one bc it looks more fun but has shit lore lol. I think they need to just rerelease Old World with AoS tabletop rules and just end AoS.
They need a little rules/lore attention update. In the big scheme of things they’re just another slightly different (and we are talking minutely different )flavour of marines and they’re big draw card isn’t even unique anymore or hasn’t been for over a decade
AoS biggest strentgh its also its biggest weakness. The fact that nothing is set in stone allows to go full force on "your dudes" and there have been fantastic themed armies but at there same time there is nothing to grasp on to get a feel about the world/realms. i think they tried with Hammerhal, wich is a cool concept of a city existing in two realms but its just so shallow. ive been playing AoS since its innitial release and the game is really really good with 3.0 but i lost all interest in any story or characters cause nothing matters, all is constant great wars happening somewhere and changing nothing. I get that the whole setting was rought at the beginning and with the Wars of Live and founding of Hammerhal and start if the Dawnbringers they could really flesh out everything but nah. At least we get great models to play with.
I love AoS lore but can't stand the human part which is main part of most novel they are boring and act like they are in Warcraft goofy universe before snap to over and unnecessary grimdark moment
The some of the Factions are cool and worth listening or reading the lore. I have a problem with understanding the universe and how it works. Seems to vast for me to care. I would like the Storm Cast more if they were actual human paladins and less demigody. It would literally make them cooler than Space Marines if these were just regular humans who went through special Training to use holy amory. Also, I think they should of kept the old world but had these Realm Gates pop up in said old world instead of destroying it. Then that could be a cool way to introduce the other realms, new factions, locations, progress the story and keep the stuff from the old world. You can keep it grounded with the familiar AND through in a vast universe at the same time
I liked when AoS first came out, it looked like Stormcast Eternals were going to be something between Order daemons and Rubric Marines, and not all human. But really they are just Ground Marines.
@@SirBrasstion going that route and having them be more like autonomous walking pieces of armor, it could have been cool that you had armies of these things but they were entrusted to and controlled by one single individual wizard or chosen person. And each Army of the storm cast reflect the personality of that person who is sort of like a Planeswalker of the AoS setting
The lore and AoS 3.0 is just going in the wrong direction. Other systems are frankly just much better; and the lore elsewhere for games like conquest is just incredible.
I always thought of AOS as a marvel-inspired old world where you combine contemporary Mega Movies with classic stuff that just pushes everything to 11, and not in the best way. Also , agreed - I mostly saw the setting as an excuse to make the most outrageous models but honestly , they could’ve fit in the old world ..
How'd I fix AOS? Simple. BIN IT. Ok ok wait let me elaborate... bin the LORE. Keep the models. And just switch it back to The Old World. I'm serious-- there are MORE people out there who are invested in the old world and its lore than AOS, so most people simply wouldn't CARE. Then you attract all the old souls back to the game with the new, shiny models (Heck you can keep the round bases and the rules system. You can even keep the sigmarines; just change up their lore to make them distant amazonian-types who can be called down by Sigmar in times of crisis or whatever. Move the lore forward to accommodate them.) Then you'll not only attract new players with the interesting story and setting, but also KEEP them. Long term vs short term-- --Oh wait. All gee dubs ever thinks about is short term profits. Sssigh. EDITED because I'm exhausted. Love the vid btw :)
I always liked the "secret" in the Old World that everyone was wrong and it was the Lizardmen who were actually the main characters, the true enemy of chaos, quite literally the original creations on the planet.
I think it's been established that AoS was made to sell models and nothing else. Fantasy had its problems, but things mattered. Cities, towns, small villages, individual people big and small mattered. Distance between places, demographics of certain areas, the gods and people who worship them based on who they are and where they live (Ulricans in Middenland or Myrmideans in Tilea), these details matter.
Literally the only thing you need to know about GW in regards to that: for AoS, they were forced, kicking and screaming, to make maps for it. They genuinely thought that maps for their setting and stories were completely unimportant.
AOS when it comes to lore definitely needs to be more fleshed out. Peachy was on a podcast recently and even he said they literally nuked the old world and made aos to maximize copyright material. In that same breath we're less than a decade into it's lifespan and they are working on fleshing it out. Some of the stories/novels would fit into the old world no problem. It's not being given the chance to stand on it's own with the fan base because people are still salty about the old world. I get it, the stories I've been able to read/listen to set in the old world have been amazing and doesn't have the often referred to "superhero" feel as can give off
Like NE said, you can't fully flesh out AoS because its very premise is antethetical to being fleshed out. You can do that with factions all you like but at the end of the day the setting they all share feels like one big vaccuum isolating them from each other.
Also people are still salty because they spent 1000s both in money and in hours on a game that was blown up by the company.
AoS still feels too much like 40k with some elves for Old World WHFB people to buy in to any of it. Including the Lore.
GW made an attempt at a Marvel Universe/Warcraft knockoff. It's shit.
Personally, AoS should be an Age of Conan era setting: The great civilisations have fallen, chaos and magic everywhere, infrastructure destroyed and all sense of faction cohesion is out of the wind. You are not playing the part of a great civilisation, but a motly tribe or warband that is left behind and trying to take claim in a broken world. Wizards become sorcerer kings, while barbarian tribes of all races emerge in the wastes and mountains.
Warcry does this the best, though: Most chaos tribes you can play are unaware of the true form of the great chaos god they accidentally worship. You can call back to the "world that was", but explore different aspects and different interpretations! Instead of blood-crazed Khornites, you have noble monster-hunters, you only seek bigger prey and challenge! Shaman orks who mistake an aspect of Tzeentch for Mork (or Gork). Undead following Sigmar, trying to regain their former glory and a new chance in life as heroes. The new take on Slaanesh could have been applied to every faction: How do the former followers deal with the loss of their god?
Of course, I could play this way and interpret it this way. Put thought into my warband and give it that backstory. But fluff and crunch will conflict the moment models are put on the battlefield. And what little lore there is simply says: Yeah, there are still big cities and stuff, just so big they are unassailable and keep pumping out soldiers and stuff.
Darn Age of Squidward. He'd much rather play his clarinet than write a proper game background.
Star wars is a perfect example of good soft magic turn to bad soft magic, in the ot it had limitations but was very vague and not explained as it didn't need to be, fast forward thirty years and you have a main character doing anything for the sake of the "plot"
Are you joking, the force was never a hard or soft magic system, firstly the force has always had limitations, a learner like Luke can't instantly deflect blaster bolts or use force powers like force pull, but he does have instincts, and the connection, like using the force to make his one in a million shot, as a universal energy it had no limit, nut the user did, the prequels were consistent with that, and with the novelization at the time proving that there is pushback when you infringe upon the force, it wasn't until rey retard needed girl power did the force start to be consistently bending it's rules and functions, likely so it didn't have to put with her
My metric for soft magic is that it's not a problem if you're able to forget that it even exists by the time it happens again. Like the fairy godmother from Pinocchio.
This year we are trying to make an AoS stand at some nerd convention here in Belarus. My friends asked me to make up some activities for our stand cause my previous work with Fallout and 40k was super cool as they say.
I tried to catch the essence of AoS and understood that this is the laziest, lamest piece of writing ever read by me, and believe me, I've seen some stuff, I read Soviet classic fantasy/sci fi dammit.
My 12 y.o. son writes Start Wars fanfics better that the GW writes its new lore.
I have literally 0 ideas for activities rather than plastic soldiers' battle which is not super popular here. Damn, GW. Why do I have do compose everything for you here?!
I don't think GW is putting much emphasis on AOS. Which makes me doubt that it's selling as well as some say. I have always preferred fantasy to 40k . I mean 40k is just stupid, at least the fantasy setting has some originality to it.
It's pretty obvious from GW's behavior that AoS is a failure, at least from their perspective. It is massively outsold by 40K, and depending on the releases for the month, even gets outsold by MCP and Legion on occasion. GW, however, regards competing as beneath them and would, if they could get away with it, happily delete everything from every game that isn't just Space Marines.
@@Ankhtowe yes because companies tend to put more money into stuff that failed.
Thats why we get new (awesome) models regularly and thats why Warhammer Underworlds and Warcry are still a thing, cuase its a failure.
"Doesnt sell as well as X" isnt a failure, its a failure if it doesnt make money. And if it didnt make them money/a loss they wouldnt produce it anymore.
@@Zulfrak Ah, so you didn't actually read what I wrote. Thank you for admitting that, please respond once you actually have, particularly the disclaimed "at least from their perspective". Oddly enough, those words were put there for a reason.
@@Ankhtowe Um that isnt true.....AOS sells far better than fantasy ever did - however - i will admit third edition is a fail imo.......we have lost alot of players because of it.
@@theDackjanielz "Um, that isn't true. It sells better than Fantasy did, which proves that GW regards it as a success in their internal metrics and that it is meeting their desired sales goals."
Kind of feels like you made a bit of a leap of logic there, bud.
“It was made by a drug addict” 💀💀💀
Made me spit my coffee all over my keyboard
Finding out Manfred Von Douchebag gets brought back in AoS after single handedly f'ing up Warhammer Fantasy... I couldn't be less disinterested in AoS lol
Here's the thing: GW tried to End Times 40K. They had plans. They were going to dump both games, and make 50K and AoS. In so doing, they would free themselves from the lore which GW views as an enemy at best, and could also force people to rebuy their entire armies from scratch. They would make the armies far more generic, aiming for the mass market with as little personality as possible, and they would delete Slaanesh from both settings entirely.
Most importantly though, GW knew those dumb idiot customers that they have such contempt for would buy it eagerly, because it would say "Warhammer" on it, and that's all that it takes.
Fantasy went first, and boy oh boy did GW half-ass it. As they released rules specifically designed to mock their existing customers and shame them into either quitting entirely or switching to AoS so GW could pretend like Fantasy never existed, they also rules four pages long, no points costs, army construction rules that literally said to just bring every model you own, the more you buy, the more you win, and lore that was a scant few paragraphs long.
To say that it failed, would be something of an understatement.
Now, GW, to their credit, did actually panic and attempt to course correct. They couldn't do it immediately, and you still saw some elements of what they had planned. The hyper-generic Primaris(tm) Marines. The Ynnari. Slaanesh "vanishing" in AoS. GW had to scrap everything they had planned, keep what bits they could salvage, and reverse course as best they could.
There's just a couple minor problems: they still hate their customers, and they still regard the idea of lore or continuity as an obstacle at best and an active threat to be engaged and destroyed at worst. Their writers do not care AT ALL about their settings, and there is SO MUCH MORE they could be doing but they don't want to because what they want, is Marvel. They want Warhammer to be superheroes, to be comic books, to be superpowered uberheroes who win everything forever with zero effort or challenge. GW desperately wants to be rid of their settings and the people that love them, they HATE their settings and lore and want to scrap it all, but their products are so expensive that they can't just completely court a new audience. They NEED their existing customers and so find themselves in a passionless relationship with their own customers and their own products.
This bleeds through in so very many different places that even attempting to list them would be the very embodiment of futility.
As such you have a company that hates its own product and its own customers and will happily vent those frustrations on them, players that love the games and settings but hate the company that produces them, and a situation wherein absolutely no one is happy.
Honestly I think you are spot on and I couldn't have said any better if I tried. I think it's time for me to either move completely to historicals or grimdark future or xenos rampant and such.
@@bryanvestal3923 Standard cycle of a GW customer:
"Wow, this is really cool!"
"Um...yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's exactly the same stuff."
"STILL nothing new? Oh, no, my mistake, you're making this thing worse and upping all your prices. Again."
"Okay, I've had enough, I'm quitting Warhammer."
EVERY GW customer goes through the above cycle.
I don’t think maliciousness is the driving force behind any of their actions. It’s a little childish to believe that a corporation does anything out of hatred for its own product or consumers.
Their primary objective is to make money, and they have been doing so fairly successful. They canceled fantasy because it wasn’t making as much money as 40k, and was becoming a burden. They replaced it with a fantasy setting that was more marketable. That’s just business. The fact they saw fit to replace it at all is fortunate, and combined sales between two settings that can share models probably plays a role in their decision to resurrect whfb.
They probably try to change the lore because it’s littered with contradictions and plot lines that never went anywhere, so they often want to start from scratch so their writers don’t have to read decades of obscure lore to start churning out the books they sell to make a profit.
Plus, haven’t the settings always been full of insanely overpowered people doing crazy things like superheroes? I thought that was a major part of the appeal? What are space marines supposed to be, if not an army of plot-armored action heroes?
@@MatthewNaro-i9v Yeah, people need to understand unless a company is being run by someone like Elon Musk who honestly cares more about feeding his own ego than making money. Then all of the major decisions that a company makes is being done by committees who are just trying to increase profits or come up with plans to do so before the next fiscal quarter.
And that any shared universe that has been around for long enough is going to collect a lot of lore that new writers either don't understand or just don't care about. It's why DC comics keeps rebooting itself. So if 40k was to ever stop making money then GW will probably just go "And then the Tyranids eat everyone, the end! But over-here we have a new galaxy with a bunch of toys you can buy!"
I decided to get into the hobby just before AoS 2e. I had been familiar with the old world lore and really wanted to go the undead/vamp counts route. Thought it would be cool having the legions of dead swarming accross the world... worlds? Idk. I was kind of disappointed because Nagash is the main dude and it seemed like any undead characters had little agency to do anything. The world/setting seemed fragmented leaving me confused as to what even is the point? I still love the models, would love a chance to do a path to glory and build my own Death army characters.
AOS is the only game I regularly play because I greatly prefer the models, factions and the game over 40k. With 3rd edition, I really think it's the best tabletop game GW has made yet.
I think individual faction lore "flavour" has been good to great and is only getting better. The biggest problem with the lore is indeed the wishy-washy setting of the Mortal Realms. I think GW went this route with the setting so they could expand the model range to their heart's content without having to worry about stepping on established in-world rules and parameters.
That all said, I largely agree that this is lazy writing and it does a lot to take away the stakes of the world by making events far less tangible to us in the real world -- a world with states, continents and borders. My hopes are that a new "world" similar to the Old World is created in future editions with the Mortal Realms coalescing into something more grounded. Perhaps this can be done while keeping alternate worlds and dimensions to retain some of the freedom that the wishy-washy AOS world admittedly allows for.
Age of Sigmar needs more time to develop. I didn’t like the miniatures at first but the Lumineth elves and Kharadron dwarves grew on me. Plus, rules wise the game is much more fun to play than current 40k.
AOS lore can be dumb, but it's still more consistent and grounded then 40k, where primarius got pulled out of an ass on Mars and changed the entire imperium overnight, for no good reason no interesting lore or actions have from it, it's been pretty much in universe people saying wow this is cringe then the primarius come and win cause they have a sword that does infinity plus 1 damage and they get loved, Aos on the other hand is just as expansive when it comes to size of the universe, but because they aren't regions in space it makes sense when a small faction can raid and pillage a larger faction in a different realm, not like in 40k where realistically there's no reason a custodes would have ever seen or heard of the tau, kroot or vespid, the scale of sigmar is larger then fantasy, but it's not half as meaningless as 40ks scale, where nothing matters because space marines can absorb infinite casualties due to them not being allowed to be in danger, with guard just getting infinite bodies with no real lose condition beyond the imperium not being able to ship enough bodies to the front
Also an aside (I realize I'm posting several comments but they're very different thoughts), the entire AoS setting is happening in the Warp. All of the good guys lost, Chaos won everything, and the setting's entire purpose is solely to torture all of their souls for all of eternity. It's the playground of the Chaos Gods. That's why it's so inconsistent: the Chaos Gods make whatever they want to happen whenever they want to. The only reason good guys exist at all is because people have to have hope, in order to lose it.
Change my mind.
Ironically any attempt to co-opt Age of Sigmar's miniatures and gaming system with a homebrew narrative will just play into them wanting you to write the narrative for them.
For the amount of work it would take to turn AoS into a compelling narrative, you might as well just write something from scratch.
Now you're getting it. 😉
If magic has too many rules its not really magic, its technology. LOTR uses a "soft magic system" and its actually more grounded than a lot of settings, I think your real problem with AOS is that there's just too much magic in the setting, witch I'm inclined to agree with.
I kinda come from the opposite end regarding hardness of magic and Sanderson's laws. What gets me is how AoS setting is just an exceptionally lazy rehash of Norse cosmology tied together by magic just because. If you're gona make over the top fantastic worlds because your magic system is made to allow that give me a giant-ass tree, or corpses of titans or moonlight bridge or something that tells me what your world is like. A bunch of spheres to serve as endless battlegrounds is just boring.
Also I'm pretty sure Sanderson never said that limitations are what makes magic system interesting, but that limitations are more interesting than powers. Likely because limitations create drama directly. Soft magic systems are a tool that needs to be used with skill, just like Hard magic, but it's a different tool for different pupose. Lord of the Rings is a neat example of both with the more soft magic present in characters like Gandalf, Saruman and Galadriel, while the Ring and it's various powers are more of a hard magic item.
Hard magic is useful for gamefying things, and setups and payoffs. But I find that all too often hard magic stops feeling like magic, and more like sci-fi with fantasy paintjob as per Clarke's third law. Warhammer usually balances well on that tightrope with being hard enough for rules, but soft enough for feeling fantastic when it needs to. In 40k this is accentuated further by presence of sufficiently advanced technology taking up many of those hard magic elements.
My problem with AOS is when compared to how cool the old world lore was how could AOS ever stack up? How can it match the dwarves with their hard on for grudgement to the point they become slayers? How could the new goblins compete with Grom the Paunch or Skarsnik? How could AOS match Vlad Von Carstein? Queek the head taker?Settra? Or Karl fucking Franz?
Sigmarines were a mistake. The setting was cool because it was normal idiots against the world, super power armored dementia patients just drags the setting down.
Tbh the lore isn't a mess In AOS I really enjoy it, granted it isn't Fantasy Level or 40k intricate but it's good and only starting like it too ages for Fantasy and 40k to get going
"It's magic, I aint gotta explain $#!%" is the premise for the entire setting. That alone is enough to make it a mess for a lot of people.
the issue is that there are no stakes in the world and the form of the world is fundamentally terrible for any sort of interaction or storytelling. Everyone is a supermagical champion and it isnt even set in 1 world, just very vague "realms". Good for non serious tabletop games, vastly inferior for any kind of story building or lore.
Basicly the last part of the rant about suggestions all basically applys to the karadron overlords, they don't have godly help or magic so more or less on their own. Only with GW didn't go silly with their minis sometimes, like the top hat helm....
Volume is all the way up; still can't hear it.
Yeah I never played AoS for the lore. Fantasy was way better. I never realised the fact that the realms weren’t permanent. I always assumed they were. And that respawning was just for stormcast, daemons and all of Death. If you run with that then it seems better just lacking in detail on types of units and where they came from.
This is what has ercked me for so long about this "setting". It feels like a nothing burger just as much as 40k. Nothing wars for nothing gains because nothing matters.
What I would do? Kill it and shoveled the models into WF 10ed (hell, I even figured out out how to make Stormcast work in WF as its version of 'Necrons')
Ahh mate, do you know what I did? I scaled down all my Warhammer Fantasy armies to 10mm, and all ranges changed from Inches to Centimeters. I have fantasy again, and an army costs the same to purchase and print as a start collecting box for 40K. And I am talking 4000 points fantasy armies, and I can paint the full army in a weekend. Now to just go find the PDFs to torrent :P
Getting rid of the old type of stat blocks was also a huge mistake.
I actually am SOMEWHAT opposite. Why I kinda stick with Battletech and 40K lore pre a certain point.
I like a steady progressing timeline/history that leads to a more or less fixed point in time and then let's you play in the sandbox. The plot frequently derails when progressing past a certain point.
AOS however had some potential but it never gripped me. It lacked oomf and personality 40K and Fantasy had more off.
The pieces are there but the approach feels very corporate and lacking thought.
You read three AoS novels.
What's name of those novels?
Honestly, these videos do a great job convincing me to just leave the hobby and do something else. It's all owned by a company that doesn't give a crap and it's becoming more noticable, as the years ago by. Why waste money on a company that doesn't care? Yeah. At least for me, it is time to pack it up, I think.
Standard cycle of a GW customer:
"Wow, this is really cool!"
"Um...yeah, it's pretty cool, but it's exactly the same stuff."
"STILL nothing new? Oh, no, my mistake, you're making this thing worse and upping all your prices. Again."
"Okay, I've had enough, I'm quitting Warhammer."
EVERY GW customer goes through the above cycle.
Get a 3D printer.
The War of the Ring board game is better than anything GW has got going on right now lol
@@Ankhtowe I've been through that once. Came back for a friend. Now, I'm feeling indifferent more than anger. I'm rather bored of it all. It's the same feeling I had when I dropped Magic. Best wishes to the rest of you. Enjoy and cheers!
Edit: Come to think of it, it's the same feeling I had with OSRS too. It's another thing people said that you don't quit, but take breaks in. Still haven't gone back. You find other things, at some point. Again, cheers.
I initially hated AoS lore because I considered its origins retarded and it shows its marketing roots in those origins. The marketing decisions made sense, but from a literary standpoint, this is NOT how you write a compelling backstory IMO.
Later, it started to grow on me as they fleshed it out, even if a lot of the starting backstory was nonsensical to me.
I agree with your take on the problems with AoS setting having too many similarities to 40k and not really having any stakes because no matter how shit things get, Sigmar in Azyr will rarely ever be threatened directly, and it just doesn't have the desperate stakes of the Old World and thus, it's less compelling. For contrast, Altdorf in the OW was rife with internal politicking from the various nobles, city states, other nations, constant wars, subversion from within, etc. Meanwhile in AoS, everything is hunky dory in Sigmarland while the badguys are somewhere far away. I know which setting sounds more compelling.
And the main selling point for AoS is it's a kitchen sink setting, there is little to no consistency. You've got the cities of sigmar peoples who look like low fantasy Renaissance Europe in contrast to Stormcast Eternals who look like high fantasy 40k. You're right, Coherency in a setting is very important to adding believability. One can argue that this type of setting allows you to put the audiences own mark on the setting and giving GW more space to flesh out the setting. Here's the problem with that, if everything is allowed, nothing is forbidden. If someone wants to port space marines to clean up the mortal realms, the loosely defined nature of AoS lore might allow it, and that is a sign of a weakly made setting. Nothing matters because everything is allowed. This is not a compelling setting because nothing matters. There is no impact on making your personal mark on the setting.
One might argue that in the Old World, any impact you made seemed pointless, because you might die and everything is still going to fall to Chaos. However, I would argue that the stakes in the OW are more compelling, because the good guys were defending what they valued and the threat of their loss would be felt and the world felt more precious as more and more of it was lost to the bad guys. Stakes mattered in the OW. That was what made the OW's grimdark tone so compelling. The pointlessness of AoS is that nothing you do matters and nothing you value matters because even if you lose it, nothing will change, and you can pop into another realm if you don't like the one you're in. Why bother fighting? AoS feels like a nobledark kitchensink setting while having little to no narrative impact, and that sort of pointlessness just makes me want to care less about their so-called "setting".
Case in point, they're bringing back the Old World. I rest my case.
Oh boi... Age of Sigmar suffers from a complete "nothing changes" fluff you say?
This is close to heart in regards to 40k current timeline-lore though....
Anyone remember Vigilus? No?
How about Octarius? No?
No bloody wonder, because the story at large is dull and made over the top silly, key factions are there without purpose and just hangs about without doing anything.
Great conflict zones of interest for so many races, yet how do they constantly end?
Stalemate 2.0, nothing never ends nor does anyone ever win or do something extraordinary new at all.
By far, I would say that 40k and AoS suffers from the same taint, lazy writers and greedy marketing scheme that only alienates the customerbase further.
Hence why people are heading more and more towards third-party companies, Games Workshop is losing touch to its own brands out of the sheer lack of understanding good story-telling which in toe sell thousands of models and invests more interest in the setting at large.
Oh no If Abaddon destroys Cadia he can beline it to Terra and we're doomed. *Cadia is destroyed.* Oh no if Abaddon destroys Vigilus he can beline it to Terra and we're doomed.
@@jamesmacken9501 And they can't even do plot twists like if hive fleets converged on the rift, ruining Abaddon's plans via the shadow in the warp, because that would mean Chaos vs Tyranids and that isn't Primaris Marines.
Yeah basically AOS is the same as both the old world and 40k - its all just as wishy washy as each other frankly.........The old world may of been "more grounded" but if people remember nothing actually ever HAPPENED in that world, in a way it had the opposite problem, it stagnated to death.
Same story diff setting, its just ppl dislike the new kid on the block.
@@theDackjanielzok AoS fanboy.
As a noob secondary who just got into the Warhammer thing in the last few years via lore videos and Total War, the vibe I get is that CA as a company has become a lot more corporate and soulless than it used to be and AoS is a symptom of that. I hear they are toning down Nurgle gore. Is that true?
Because AoS lore is boring, there are no stakes, the last time I checked the lore, the Sig Marines can't die, they get resurrected, and ol Sigmar can make anyone into a Sig Marine. Meaning, if a interesting and mortal character came along, became a bad ass, and then died, Sigmar or any gods active could resurrect him. Where are the stakes at.
The world is boring, and feels like there are no stakes. From what I could gather its a bunch of not planets connected to not warp gates. And then there are thousands of battles with thousands of people fighting constant battles, you Gods able to join them. Where are the stakes at.
They can permanently die now, and have been able to for a few years now. Seethe
Soft magic, when written well, creates a sense of wonder in the reader - and that is nothing to be scoffed at. Hard magic creates interest in how it works/can be used.
LotR is an example of soft magic written well. It was also a low fantasy setting where you usually forget that it even exists.
Its also a lot like lego. Back in the day a lego castle would provide endless possibilities and fun, nowadays lego comes in weird one of shapes you can only really use one way but its very bright and colourful and splashed with your favourite pop culture characters. You can crank those sparkly lights up to maximum, you're still dull Sigmar
I'm a total n00b when it comes to Warhammer. Way back in middle school(a decade plus now) I was given the impression that Warhammer fantasy was just Warhammer 40k minus 40k years. Is age of sigmar the same thing?
Hmmmmm probably more so yes
I loved the old fantasy lore. It was brilliant.
The AoS lore just strikes me as being completely daft... looking at you lumineth realmlords and idoneth deepkin (in particular).
Aye, daft and fun!
Would love to a video on the salamanders.
good video, but to give a suggestion could you please work on the audio, it's a tad quiet. Age of Sigmar, yeah it does nothing for me. I think every setting needs some "zanniness" to it, but AoS is just too much for me. Fair play to the fans but it isn't for me.
Anyone have much experience with Composite Games? I ordered some models from them a week ago and they haven't even dispatched them yet. I contacted them and they said they will "aim" to post them on Friday. If this is representative of their service, I'd rather just go to my local hobby shop.
Howdy North, ok here is a question is AOS, grim dark like 40k?
Short answer would be no, it has grimdarkness in there but its deffo not the lead design of the world.....AOS has alot of bold heroism going on, a bit like Greek paintings.
Sorry for not being North but I'll tell you that they have been slowly tweaking the tone of AoS to be a little darker with each passing edition. It will never be as dark as 40k as the setting revolves around the Stormcast, who are good by definition. No amount of sidecuts and frowning will ever change that.
AOS is just missing cool characters. There's no real background on main characters in AOS. Just general lore of the mortal realms and factions. So you can't really get invested into it like getting behind a chapter and primarch.
I agree with the video. It's missing many details that could help immersion. Like locations or who's even fighting in the damn battles
Hmmm... how do we make space marines that are not space marines..... GROUND MARINES!
5:34 it’s kind of like the D&D planes they aren’t exactly worlds, they are more like separate universes
well no, theyre worlds. Flat planes that are gigantic with their own gravity. The AoS universe doesnt have a sun, the realm of light is the light source for all of the realms and it becomes night when eclipsed by the realm of shadow
If you want the good, specific lore, that’s all pertaining to the individual factions. The delusions of the Flesh Eater Courts, the Idoneth Deepkin, failed creations of Teclis, even the Sons of Behemat have their own lore that they made up for the creation of the world.
You’re not gonna see any of it if you’re just discussing “Age of Sigmar Lore.” Which is a shame because that’s usually as far as creators who are not already into AoS tend to go.
I agree with the first part where the end times and the launching of AgeOfSigmar which is complete fucking garbage.
I have no idea how they thought doing that was a good idea.
But the lore personally I think is pretty good and now eight years later the setting is pretty grounded now, the third edition tabletop is so easy to learn. Its a Dad game with beer and pretzels
I used to play Warhammer because of the Old World lore, despite the games poor rules. In AoS, the lore is vague and woolly and I occasionally play it despite its background. I play games of AoS but in my mind the games are still in the Old World.
Most AoS fans under-appreciate how important storytelling is for emotionally investing people into a setting. I often wonder if AoS players even want there to be a story sometimes.
@@Emidretrauqe Nope, we don't! 😄 We want to create our own lore. 🆒
*PLEASE* fix your audio. Your videos are less than half the volume of any other channel I watch, and making you audible cranks up system sounds to the point that they threaten to blow my speakers out. I want to watch your videos but we're getting close to the unsub point just because their incredibly low volume renders them nearly unintelligible.
The Old World was awesome. The setting felt real. You could drop a person into any location and have a story. Each location had a personality. There were societies and economics. Everyone was trying to get by. It was a realisitc medieval / renaissance setting... with daemons, monsters, elves and dwarfs.
How does the average citizen get by in Age of Sigmar? Dont know... Dont care
All I have seen are the stupid Sigmarines
This! 👆
Oh... and the stupid f'kin names... Trademarkable names.
Its like the new Primaris. I just cant be bothered anymore. Stupid made up names. Im too old for this shit. If you are going to make it hard for me to remember what everything is called, I aint gonna bother.
If that is all you have seen than you obviously haven't been looking very hared TBH.
@@gwell2118 Oh... Did they relist all of the unsold Warhammer Fantasy figures on the GW website? The ones with square bases?
So I can see one set... "Galen and Doralia ven Denst" that is new. One new set in 7 or 8 years which is human but not Stormcast Eternals?
I would look harder, but I cant be arsed.
@@charly03090309 ok ONE, your question was lore related not model related so dont change the subject, there are tons of novels and stories relating to non-stormcast mortals, though I doubt you would look at those anyway so no point explaining logic to you there. And TWO they are literally coming out with a revamped line for COS at this moment. So I guess your losing another avenue to complain about. Though I’m sure you’ll find another as moving the goal post are you guys only real tactic.
I love the "Age of Sigmar" lore. It's wide open and empty, so I can make up my own lore. 🤩
Me watching all of my Age of Sigmar armies that I have builded, painted, made lore of them, worldbuilded my own Free City and surrounding areas that my armies are operating in and motivations be there. All based on the lore and rules of the setting of the Age of Sigmar.
Yep what you said is really true.
😊👍
Oh trust me Northern, you don't want to know what I want to do with AoS.
You nailed it with the soft magic vs hard magic. Soft magic is just that, a lazy short cut for the author. Completely ruins any sense of believability.
4:26 WHAT DID HE JUST SAY
Thank you for talking about AoS, it gets too much flak from the "muh fantasy" crowd. It's bad enough where neat stuff like the Idoneth Deepkin get completely missed by the rest of the Warhammer community
Lol it's shit, pure and simple.
Finally, hit me up! I'd love to discuss improving the setting or creating a new one from scratch, that sort of thing is right up my alley. (Your Discord link isn't working, BTW)
Dude you could’ve actually read the lore, and not been completely ignorant when it comes to the lore.
could not have said it better myself 100% agree
good gameplay - shallow uninspired lore sadly
Compromise, the last stand of a fan
bro the pillars of eternity reference was brilliant, love that game and the concept too
3:24
No. In AoS gods can't just create a land.
And that's a clear sign that you don't even know what you're even ranting about.
Age of Sigmar is basically an 80s Saturday morning cartoon. We're gaming in Eternia.
Or as I prefer, it's set in the 80s Hercules films. th-cam.com/video/I3czCEgxDDM/w-d-xo.html
I'd have so much respect for GW if they made AoS look like that from day 1.
I agree that the lack of permanence is the main issue with AoS. A shame, because many of the factions are actually quite interesting, or at least their premise is. There just needs to be something specific to do in stead of general 'kill stuff' or 'be the good guy' motivations. Honestly the story could be about anything (or any place), just have that thing be of value in stead of macguffins that are forgotten as soon as the story ends.
I have a less cynical explanation. I don't like simply dismissing things with "it sucks because they only want money". That argument doesn't make any sense to me and is just a lazy way of ranting. Every company wants to be successful.
My 2 cents: I do think Games Workshop made a mistake but that mistake is not greed, rather arrogance. I think they believe they are successful because of them. I doubt that. I think GW is successful because fantasy and science fiction in general are very popular. People read or watch Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones and want more. Then they stumble on GW and see all these cool models and more lore to immerse themselves in. The one follow after the other. Its a game that makes sense in the wider context of the fantasy genre.
Now with Age of Sigmar they seem to have turned it completely around: They designed the best game they could and then, almost as an aftertought, created the world and lore in a way that makes sense in the context of the game. Now the mistake here is obvious: People weren't that interested in Games Workshop in the first place, it was just another way to engage in the wider hobby of fantasy. By really placing the game itself front and center they removed that hook and connection many people have with it, they just want Tolkien: The game. Not some game with some background story attached to it.
I like to add Warhammer 3 made Fantasy really popular and got people into fantasy. At the same time End Times and AoS was happening. Creative Assembly did something GW never did (and wondered why fantasy was not as popular as 40K) and promoted Fantasy. Which got a lot of people into Fantasy, and GW as always jumped the gun and end times the setting and gave us AoS..... before realizing how popular Warhammer 3 would be.
Now I said it once and will say it again, they could have easily just split AoS and Fantasy into 2 different things, but that would be smart.
@@aaronlaughter6471 Yes exactly. The 90's and 00's were a great time for high fantasy and indeed not only LotR but very much Warcraft 3 (still play it by the way, awesome RTS) and World of Warcraft, and its quite obvious that Warhammer benefited greatly from this cultural phenomenon. Big mistake is that they renamed all the Tolkien races in AoS I think. Aelves, Orruks... Probably for copyright reasons or something, but still rather arrogant. Just an example, but you cant just redefine well established lore in an entire genre like that without alienating potential new customers or old fans of the genre in general. It just sounds weird and kind of cheap.
Why does "the company wants money" not make sense to you? Cause YOUR explanation doesn't make any sense to me. Businesses have been screwing themselves with greed for as long as they've existed, abandoning the niche that built their success in pursuit of a wider market share. Modern fiction of all stripes is flooded with examples of hyper-focusing on the most marketable elements (in this case, the models) at the expense of everything else. It isn't rocket science. There's not always some super-complex hidden cause to root out. GW are doing the same s**t everyone else is doing.
Also, "they designed the best game the could"? Do you REALLY believe that's what they did? That AoS is the best they could do? That it isn't just Fantasy but streamlined so a lower common denominator can play it? That GW just has no awareness of how much lore, cool factor, and the fantasy kitchen-sink aspect contribute to the extreme dedication of their customers? It hardly seems less cynical to imply GW are incomprehensibly thick idiots rather than just gambling on losing some old fans in pursuit of more customers overall.
@@samwellcheck562 Because, again, every company wants to make money. Its the puropse of a company. Its saying little more than: The company failed because its a company. Very lazy. Instead, one should ask: Why is the way this company tries to make money not succesful? And then you can proceed to try to determine what succes means. One such way would be a long term plan facilitating growth and quality products, over a short trm cash grab that might bring in a lot on the short term, but damages the brand, and therefore its ability to make money, on the long term. Because that what seems to have happened in my opinion: Extract as much money you can from existing customers but alienating potentially new future customers from the product.
I don't get the non interactive abilities in AoS where you just have to declare that your doing something. "this hero is going to use his ability which gives him +1 attack." ...Okay, shall we just say he has +1 attack in the first place?
I find the lore to hit and miss too. The new Gotrek book are nice but the overall setting doesn't make me feel anything.
Narratively I would find it more compelling if Azyr is the only bastion of civilization and anything else is a light in the darkness of orcs, undead, chaos and wild untamed magic. The gods would forced to work together for survival. Some things I would keep like Grimnir and Teclis lore but I would have Morathi to have a chance of heart since she was violated to her very being and know what awaits them all if they fail.
All of that is pretty much true btw lol
Yeah all of that has happened. Azyr was the only place of civilization in 90% of 1st edition, with the cities coming in during the end of 1st.
@@GurrenLagann98 I should elaborate. I would like to see the setting as a grimdark fight for survival and not a noblebright setting that it turned into. I would have no golden age of mortal nation states, and no lands of plenty or any advancement in civilization. Only a scattered collection of survivors from the ash heap that was the old world. I find it more compelling if the timeline takes place a few millennium after the old world died so history has yet to be written so anything would be possible.
3rd edition didn't seem to sell as well.
You're not wrong, some claim its the best version ever and it simply isnt.
@@theDackjanielz It's turned into a proper round-base Fantasy Battles game at this point.
@@Emidretrauqe Agreed, it also has elements of 40k thrown in - Neither of these things i wanted in AOS and contradicts the original design philosophy of it.
These days i simply use 3.0 tomes and play 2nd edition or Age of fantasy instead.
I dunno. I kind of like the idea of the Stormcast Eternals going through the "Dark Souls" thing. But they should really crank the flaw up to eleven. Think of it more as cracks in a dam rather than the death by a thousand cuts approach they are taking now. Every time an Eternal eats it, they should lose large chunks of themselves, not just a small piece. Instead of forgetting the smell of their mother's hair on death, they should forget their mother entirely. And that should REALLY screw with them. The eternals would be so much more tragic, dying and becoming less human every time until they give it all away to protect those below them. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy but perhaps by death 10, they are full on skeletal automatons who know not why they protect humanity... only that they must. And on their 11th death they give way to oblivion. Not to be reborn, not back to the cycle. They are gone, having literally given every bit of themselves in the grand fight.
I think that if there is another time skip, Stormcast should transition to a Destruction army. Devoid of humanity and reason, they heed the call of a God long forgotten. Pushing forward, herded like cattle by forces beyond their grasp.
If there is no end to the universe, on a long enough time scale, this fate would be inevitable.
@@jake53105 or maybe have a faction of them that fall to that fate? Have your pretty golden boys and girls, then have those who buck this sort of forced damnation and choose instead to break the chains.
Oh boy I have waited for this! *grabs popcorn*
Lol this didn’t age well at all. Aos is coming up big. I like 40K too but it’s played out. It’s the same story 8000 times with small differences retcon galore so literally nothing you read even matters and gw is just edging you till your eyes explode hoping to the god emp himself that something actually big fucking happens. A prim arch maybe? The emp waking up? Who knows and who cares ahaha. Not to mention on tabletop a lot of the models look bleh. Genestealers? Looks like Appalachian trail people on go go glass.
14:46 - 15:30
Exile... What the f#$% are you talking about? 🤨
I think a big problem with your looking at AOS is that you have a lot of false equivalents to 40k, like sigmar fighting against chaos and making an empire, he didn't make super soldiers for that, that was with the average joe he used for that, and then named characters and death, yea in AOS your not afraid a named character will die, but you aren't afraid of that in 40k either, GW is barely willing to kill off named character for factions they don't care about with shitty old models no one wants to buy, to the point where there's more space marine special characters then some armies have units, and them you get into the immortal things like necron lords that just become a new necron if you do win, or the chaos champion that managed to make a necron feel pride, and apparently things that the person responsible for making the weapon is responsible for whatever it kills considering that a mine going off made the one guy in the imperium who takes pride in his work as a slave factory workerer that makes mines for 16 hours with a 10 minute lunch, assuming of course that one of your coworkers died near you that day, otherwise you don't get to eat
👉 AOS lore is truly non-existant or, at least, totally superficial
If I were to fix AoS... have the realms of magic be an artificial pocket dimension like the webway. Have the Warhammer world be an emulation of realspace powered by the realms of magic. The Old Ones made this for designing and testing weapons (lifeforms). The native entities, from before the Old Ones terraformed it, need help fending off chaos encroachment and are using the Old Ones' creations to do it. Sigmar could've been the first to stumble into the realms when he was trying to escape and find his father (make Sigmar the Word Bearers' lost Primarch) and he's what inspired them to bring in more souls to do their fighting. The people of the Old World don't know this, aside from the occasional madman like with the Liber Chaotica. How did civilisations emerge in the realms of magic? Maybe great heroes and doomed populations are being raptured by their gods? Maybe only super factions like Stormcasts are canon in the realms of magic, but the rules let you include anything. I'm sure there are better ideas. But the Old World and realms of magic need the other to survive so the stakes aren't dropped in either. You can have the realms of magic go on forever if the focus is on the few mortal cities/strongholds and strategic places like the all-points. The Old World is a realistic setting invaded by chaos. The realms of magic are a dreamscape setting invaded by chaos.
i do believe AoS will become interesting some day, the issues it has are completely fixable with minimal retcons
Agreed it really wouldn't be that hard to smooth it out in places.
I loosely agree with your statement but in order for them to make the setting that we have today compelling you would need to set an AMAZING standard of storytelling because the problems that AoS faces sets the wind against and casually told tales by isolating them and keeping them away from any real sense of narrative grounding.
So while I don't think it _needs_ retcons, I do think that retcons are the easiest (and most realistic) way of addressing these structural issues.
At the start of this, my very thought was that AoS is a setting for a game only. Later on, you said exactly what I thought. You're totally right. The books suck ass!
I love 40k Lore, but the game is shite. The solution for me is playing AoS and listening to 40k Audio books.
Unironically you could just play AoS with nothing but Daemons and say that this is taking place on the ruins of an Imperial world lost to the Great Rift. Hell, you could even use the mortals and say it was a feudal world and those are the survivors.
Ok so, I like Age of Sigmar, I really do, but there are some issues i have with it.
The game itself is fun but i’d rather them keep the rank and file system of Fantasy since that style of game fits a fantasy setting more than the 40k looking style.
I like the Stormcast Eternals a lot. When I got into the hobby I started with AoS and so I didn’t have the background with the Old World or 40K. So when I saw them I thought Blizzard’s Diablo and not Space Marines. Now that i’ve gotten into 40K and Fantasy as well yes I wish Fantasy didn’t die off and I can see the comparisons to 40K (still think more Diablo though).
I get what you’re saying and I can agree so some extent except in specific cases. I think the Stormcast resurrection should be kept but it needs to have more strict parameters on it. It could take a long time before they come back, it’s very risky to bring them back, the emphasis on losing more of themselves and becoming unfeeling automatons of order when they come backC, or something else. Death factions really only the Bonereaoers or possible Nighthaunt could come back but there should be restrictions to that too. Mortal Chaos followers should not be resurrected but can have blessings that make them functionally immortal but still can be killed and if they die that’s it. Everyone else though should have no resurrection.
Frankly if I had things my way AoS would take place in the Old World. The End Times would basically be all the major nations being reduced to basically nothing but the would would not be destroyed (the chaos gods wouldn’t want it destroyed because they wouldn’t have any more emotions to feed on). This allows for the smaller skirmish style games as nations can’t muster the same forces they once did. You can also create reasons for how many of these AoS factions came to be in the Old World.
There’s a lot more I want to say but this is long enough. As you can see I’m rather passionate about this game
I think lore wise AOS needs to be more fleshed out but I really like the armies and rules
It's designed to resist being fleshed out. That's the problem.
What are your thoughts on the Kislev and Cathay lore made for Total War?
i watched half of the video before i had to stop. if you cant be bothered to read the lore, dont judge it. Presenting false informations makes you look bad.
He's referring to first party lore. The stuff produced directly by GW, that dictate the basic narrative. There's barely any of that.
did you try reading the books GW releases?
@@thezurreal a lot of AoS haters seem to believe AoS is the same as it was in the 1st Edition regarding the lore and books. Exile shows it when he is talking about how he would've changed AoS and made Nagash a prominent antagonist who wants to get all the souls and become the greatest of the gods... Except if Exile would've read the lore past the opening of the 1stEdition, he would've known about the Necroquake and the Soul Wars being a thing, and Nagash was basically the main antagonist throughout the 2nd Edition of the game
Age of sigmar is fine.
Swear your videos keep getting quieter mate
"no one ever loses." Grand alliance death got defeated pretty hard in 3rd ed.
Crazy to me that 30k/40k has the greatest fictional universe ever written (imo) and yet I'd rather play AoS if I were to play one bc it looks more fun but has shit lore lol.
I think they need to just rerelease Old World with AoS tabletop rules and just end AoS.
I think mortal realms need a 9th realm as battlefield bigger and strong in all winds of magic. Where all minor races should live.
The setting and the original armies they have released for AOS are bloody awful.
They should consider joining the games so you could play both sort of like warmahodes
Each realm has actual maps.
So Age of Sigmar is GW's version of Fortnite? 😉😁
Mann iron hands need some love even more than eldar
They need a little rules/lore attention update. In the big scheme of things they’re just another slightly different (and we are talking minutely different )flavour of marines and they’re big draw card isn’t even unique anymore or hasn’t been for over a decade
@@CTA12356 yeah because there is mechanicus and other tech factions out there to replace them like iron hands are last place
AoS biggest strentgh its also its biggest weakness.
The fact that nothing is set in stone allows to go full force on "your dudes" and there have been fantastic themed armies but at there same time there is nothing to grasp on to get a feel about the world/realms.
i think they tried with Hammerhal, wich is a cool concept of a city existing in two realms but its just so shallow.
ive been playing AoS since its innitial release and the game is really really good with 3.0 but i lost all interest in any story or characters cause nothing matters, all is constant great wars happening somewhere and changing nothing.
I get that the whole setting was rought at the beginning and with the Wars of Live and founding of Hammerhal and start if the Dawnbringers they could really flesh out everything but nah.
At least we get great models to play with.
Warhammer fantasy for life. 6th edition for the win. AOS is to get kids involved in the hobby.
They are fixing all of these. I can't wait to see 4th ed.
I love AoS lore but can't stand the human part which is main part of most novel they are boring and act like they are in Warcraft goofy universe before snap to over and unnecessary grimdark moment
some charactor even act like they live in 2020 America
The some of the Factions are cool and worth listening or reading the lore. I have a problem with understanding the universe and how it works. Seems to vast for me to care.
I would like the Storm Cast more if they were actual human paladins and less demigody. It would literally make them cooler than Space Marines if these were just regular humans who went through special Training to use holy amory.
Also, I think they should of kept the old world but had these Realm Gates pop up in said old world instead of destroying it. Then that could be a cool way to introduce the other realms, new factions, locations, progress the story and keep the stuff from the old world. You can keep it grounded with the familiar AND through in a vast universe at the same time
I liked when AoS first came out, it looked like Stormcast Eternals were going to be something between Order daemons and Rubric Marines, and not all human. But really they are just Ground Marines.
@@SirBrasstion going that route and having them be more like autonomous walking pieces of armor, it could have been cool that you had armies of these things but they were entrusted to and controlled by one single individual wizard or chosen person. And each Army of the storm cast reflect the personality of that person who is sort of like a Planeswalker of the AoS setting
do more about AOS
:D its refreshing having some other content inbetween
thanks in advance
The lore and AoS 3.0 is just going in the wrong direction. Other systems are frankly just much better; and the lore elsewhere for games like conquest is just incredible.
I always thought of AOS as a marvel-inspired old world where you combine contemporary Mega Movies with classic stuff that just pushes everything to 11, and not in the best way.
Also , agreed - I mostly saw the setting as an excuse to make the most outrageous models but honestly , they could’ve fit in the old world ..
The old worlders would never accept half of what AOS does, its one of the main reasons they blew it up.
How'd I fix AOS? Simple. BIN IT. Ok ok wait let me elaborate... bin the LORE. Keep the models. And just switch it back to The Old World. I'm serious-- there are MORE people out there who are invested in the old world and its lore than AOS, so most people simply wouldn't CARE. Then you attract all the old souls back to the game with the new, shiny models (Heck you can keep the round bases and the rules system. You can even keep the sigmarines; just change up their lore to make them distant amazonian-types who can be called down by Sigmar in times of crisis or whatever. Move the lore forward to accommodate them.) Then you'll not only attract new players with the interesting story and setting, but also KEEP them. Long term vs short term--
--Oh wait. All gee dubs ever thinks about is short term profits. Sssigh. EDITED because I'm exhausted.
Love the vid btw :)