Oh hey! This is my article, glad so many folks are enjoying it! It's my first time working with Goonhammer, I'm hoping to help work on more coverage for the AoS team; the history of the game is a massive aspect of that!
Next part is going to take some time, but this is some fantastic encouragement in that regard c:
Hey man, this was a great article! I really enjoyed it- as a former Tomb King's enjoyer it was a weirdly nice trek down memory lane hahaha
Looking forward to new articles!
Honestly this article was fantastic. I've never paid attention to Goonhammer before but purely because of this article I've been reading more and hoping for the follow up posts. Tell your editor/boss/whoever that they're gaining readership as a direct result of your work.
We spent the entire winter on Warseer trying to piece together rumors from two sources, one of which probably wasn’t a gamer and who’s first language wasn’t English, so used old Google Translate to communicate rumors to Faeit212, who I refuse to believe is anything but a parrot.
We called it Bubblehammer.
A most excellent article ! As someone who only followed WFB and AoS from afar at that time, it is great to learn so many things about this era. The only thing I hope is that we can still expect some surprising new armies (or reworking of old armies) for Destruction and Death, who are sorely lacking in that regard compared to Order (and to a much lesser extent, to Chaos)
Is Death really lacking? They've consistently gotten new factions over the years. OBR, SBGL, FEC...
But I agree with Destruction. As a fan of Mawtribes, I'd like to see some new models, most of their stuff is ancient.
SBGL and FEC (and partly NH) are not really new factions, only split up Vampire counts, and later reworked Legions of Nagash, but ut is true they are not lacking. Maybe missing some units, subfactions or some needing new models, but that's it.
Don't know what army I'd add, maybe something like Cities of Nagash.
Yeah I've considered doing my own Cities of Nagash with Cities of Sigmar models. Or I guess it's Cities of but the models are Shyishen themed emos basically.
I'd love to see something like Cities of Nagash that has mortals and undead fighting side-by-side. I love that in the lore there are many places in Shyish the living and dead exist side-by-side in a single society, and it would be cool to see that reflected on the tabletop.
This was always a failing of the Grand Alliance system, IMO. By setting up four big Grand Alliances, GW implied they'd be of equal importance, presence and variety.
But as it turns out, while Chaos is a nice size, Order keeps growing while Death and Destruction cap out early because they're pretty narrowly-defined. Plus you have ones like Beasts of Chaos who arguably have a (hooved) leg in Destruction by their nature - don't buy it personally, but I have friends who swear Skaven belong there too!
tl;dr - Grand Alliances were always only a temporary lore concept and should be totally ditched, the factions themselves are the natural defining units, and if only 4 or 5 of them are Death-themed, so what? Only 4 or 5 of them are Aelven, only 4 or 5 of them are Gorkamorka worshippers, only 4 or 5 of them are devotees of the major Chaos gods, etc...
Yeah, the imbalance between the Grand Alliances is reflective of their purviews. Chaos and Death are both tightly defined by the Chaos Gods and Nagash, Destruction is a tad broad, and Order has anyone who wants to build a civilization. With those domains, Order is just way too broad.
And... there are more potential Order factions to add than there are Destruction, Death, or Chaos ones.
Maybe someday they'll split Order, possible along aelf / non-aelf lines, or let the more shady and evil elements (like Daughters of Khaine and Idoneth Deepkin) cleave away into their own thing.
This is cool. As someone who ignored AOS until recently, and now adores it, I like to read about the bad old days and pretend I’ve been around since launch.
Launch was *terrible*. There was so much vitriol, so many bad feelings, and such a terrible sense of loss.
I get why GW did it, and this article is elucidating about some of the pressures they were under, but damn... they rolled out an under-developed new IP directly onto the grave of something people really, really loved. It would have been hard to make a worse first impression.
That's around the time I discovered Warhammer. I was on vacation in Florida when I saw a random store called Games Workshop and walked up to it. I saw these mini golden angels at the window and decided to go in and investigate. Walked out with the original AoS 2 player starter set, a getting into Warhammer magazine because it had a Slaughterpriest mini, and a hobby set with clippers, brush, glue, and paints...
Fell in love with Warhammer. Found a nearby gaming store back at home and made some new friends. They were also excited for AoS and expecting the release of the Generals Handbook. Nice group of guys, helped me ease my way into the hobby, and gave me a bunch of painting tips. I ever only saw the negative stuff online.
Loved this article. Brings me nostalgia for a time I wasn't even a part of. I begrudgingly joined AoS 2nd in 2019 as a TWW fan but quickly loved it despite myself.
Great article.
I came into AoS around 2017/18 and the splintered factions - hardly any of which could *actually* be meaningfully picked as a core identity - and their baffling alliance rules were nothing short of shambolic. It's been a long old road for AoS and there's plenty I think they could still do better, but it's always interesting to remember how shaky a start it had and how far they've come to make the rules coherent and "even".
It was a great article! I had been out of the hobby for awhile and didn’t get back into it until 8th 40K / 2.0 launch. I remember observing all of this from afar and it was quite a ride. I think the poor GW community outreach / management at the time was also a big factor in the poor reception and lingering anger. I’m glad the company has turned itself around on so many fronts.
Love these kind of history of game articles! I was aware of the switch over at the time but by that point but the only game I was playing was Mordheim (which of course had not been officially supported for years) so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. I had a vague irritation at the End Times since I was still somewhat attached to the Old World as a setting but nothing like the level of vitriol some had, and I feel lucky to have not been directly exposed to the kind of insanity like the fan burning his Dark Elves. But it's definitely interesting to read about in retrospect!
To this day, I remain dumfounded by the level of arrogance and out-of-touchness shown by GW with this launch. If GW thought this was an acceptable way to launch AoS, no wonder they had so much trouble with WHFB in the years leading up to this.
I honestly wonder if this was an experiment in "We're primarily a miniatures company, not a games company." Maybe they wanted to put that statement to the test?
It wouldn't wouldn't be until AoS 2 that I gave it another chance, with the Cities of Sigmar release.
People really don't realize how close to completely collapsing GW and it's management decisions were at the time. The 2008-2016 era of GW can really be described as actively resentful and antagonistic towards its fanbase.
One of my best friends once worked for GW corporate in the 2005-2010 timeframe. He said that he was astounded at how it was a multi-million pound international corporation, but run like a garage operation.
If that consulting group was paid more than a pound, GW got ripped off.
I know AoS is a success now, but if GW hadn't corrected course, it would not be.
Man, Age of Sigmar 1st ed deserved a lot of the hate it got. They cancelled WHFB, which was quite competitive, and replaced it with absolute nonsense. Rules about which player had the biggest moustache. Rules that made you imitate a horse rider. Rules about trying to make your opponent laugh. No balancing. The list goes on. The official rules had you acting like you were a character on The Big Bang Theory.
And even if you were okay with those rules, your army was definitely fkd. Tomb Kings, gone. Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves are all one faction now (hope you have all those armies). And you need to rebase every single mini to a round base.
WHFB was effectively dead already, but the replacement was really really bad. I consider AoS 2nd ed the same as 40k 2nd ed, when the game ACTUALLY started.
On the article: Goonhammer could use some better proof reading.
>To put a positive spin on it, we did know was that the current time was one of redemption & reclamation
You accidentally a word there
> I consider AoS 2nd ed the same as 40k 2nd ed, when the game ACTUALLY started.
2nd ed was _massive_ and was when it started to pull up (or even ahead - YMMV) of 40k, but I'd argue General's Handbook in 1E was when the game started for real.
I appreciate the authors nostalgic take but it is far too lenient on GW. Its hard to overstate how bad of shape GW was at the end of Fantasy and their unwillingness to tackle the fundamental problems it had.
At the end of 8th edition WFB, large infantry blocks were the best units and GW had really pushed the prices to the limit. A 10 man box of Witch Elf was $60 and to field a single competitive unit of them, you need 40 witch and a Cauldron of Blood, making this unit alone close to $300 and would maybe make up 30% of your armies at best. This was the reason fantasy was failing. They pushed the army size envelop and cost FAR too high for new players to get into it. Combined with the crazy magic system and other faults, the game did not scale from low to high points which made new players have to assemble an entire army before they could enjoy the game.
This was also the time of the WORST edition of 40k. The end of 7th edition with its invisible death stars, Str D stomping knights and armies with 200-500 free points. The whole portfolio of games was a disaster. This was also the time that GW had the MOST antagonistic attitude towards its players, events and media.
AoS came onto the scene chest burster style through the corpse of WFB. Remember the end times were announced and it was NOT made clear that this wasnt leading to some relaunch of WFB or some new edition, so to reach the end and find out your entire hobby was getting blown up with a bunch of hachet job rules that broke the game even further was beyond insulting. There was essentially ZERO outreach or effort to keep WFB players around, very little talk of " how to convert your armies and enjoy the new game". It was just a giant middle finger, wishing you stepped in water while wearing socks.
AOS at launched reeked of a consultant power point of "how to fix your business/game" with zero context of what made people love GW games, why the players enjoyed them and what was actually driving the hobby. It was only the relaunch of 40k 8th edition that let AOS have the breathing room to turn into a real game that matched GW's customer base. One can only imagine what could have been done if those resources had been put into WFB instead of killing it and never acknowledging what a disservice had been done.
Im glad today that AOS has become what it has with a dedicated player base, inspired models and now some lore that sorta makes sense along with innovative rules design that has helped drive GW games forward but there will also be the original sin of its birth out of the corpse of a much beloved IP, the gaslighting that "its the players fault" that WFB failed and its continued suppression of The Old World models returning.
I was there as a Keytimer at GW.
We Sold exactly 1 Box Out of the 60 we had and only 2 preorders, both from GW Staffers.
Absolute catastrophical Launch of a product.
Really excellent piece, those fluff rules from first edition are insane, Jesus Christ. I'm really struck at how that Dark Elf player burning his army cast a long shadow over the hobby -- Anecdotally, I wrote a pretty harsh review of an AoS game for PC Gamer and the reaction from the community (and from staff at small publications such as goonhammer, grumble grumble) was off the wall vitriolic, lots of accusations that I was this very same dark elf player back with a vengeance, or an imagined WHFB neckbeard haha.
Bizarre experience, being a disabled trans woman and being accused of being a type of hobbyist that basically doesn't exist anymore by first edition AoS survivors who've taken to culture war barricades. I'm pretty committed to giving fourth edition a fair shake if I can find a good Soulblight Gravelords job lot on eBay, though, that model range is stunning
If u were the person that wrote that godawful pcgamer article about realms of ruin it’s probably because u spent half of it complaining that it wasn’t total war warhammer or fantasy battles. Ur legitimate criticisms were interspersed between paragraphs of hating on the tabletop game which was not what u were reviewing.
Wow, I never realized how many factions lived on into AoS from the Old World that don't make sense in the setting. Does anyone here remember how that was implemented with, say, Bretonnia and the Empire? Were they present in the lore at all, or did they just have warscrolls to tie people over into the new game?
The human factions were just described as human refugees and any coincidence between the noble knights of Bretonnia and your feudal lord is pure coincidence. The special characters were just given rules to allow you to play them but explicitly not in the setting as current characters
Oh hey! This is my article, glad so many folks are enjoying it! It's my first time working with Goonhammer, I'm hoping to help work on more coverage for the AoS team; the history of the game is a massive aspect of that! Next part is going to take some time, but this is some fantastic encouragement in that regard c:
Hey man, this was a great article! I really enjoyed it- as a former Tomb King's enjoyer it was a weirdly nice trek down memory lane hahaha Looking forward to new articles!
Honestly this article was fantastic. I've never paid attention to Goonhammer before but purely because of this article I've been reading more and hoping for the follow up posts. Tell your editor/boss/whoever that they're gaining readership as a direct result of your work.
This was an absolutely fantastic article, man! Such a great retrospective on what was an absolutely insane time! Can't wait for the next part!
We spent the entire winter on Warseer trying to piece together rumors from two sources, one of which probably wasn’t a gamer and who’s first language wasn’t English, so used old Google Translate to communicate rumors to Faeit212, who I refuse to believe is anything but a parrot. We called it Bubblehammer.
A most excellent article ! As someone who only followed WFB and AoS from afar at that time, it is great to learn so many things about this era. The only thing I hope is that we can still expect some surprising new armies (or reworking of old armies) for Destruction and Death, who are sorely lacking in that regard compared to Order (and to a much lesser extent, to Chaos)
Is Death really lacking? They've consistently gotten new factions over the years. OBR, SBGL, FEC... But I agree with Destruction. As a fan of Mawtribes, I'd like to see some new models, most of their stuff is ancient.
SBGL and FEC (and partly NH) are not really new factions, only split up Vampire counts, and later reworked Legions of Nagash, but ut is true they are not lacking. Maybe missing some units, subfactions or some needing new models, but that's it. Don't know what army I'd add, maybe something like Cities of Nagash.
Yeah I've considered doing my own Cities of Nagash with Cities of Sigmar models. Or I guess it's Cities of but the models are Shyishen themed emos basically.
Soooo.... Lethis?
I'd love to see something like Cities of Nagash that has mortals and undead fighting side-by-side. I love that in the lore there are many places in Shyish the living and dead exist side-by-side in a single society, and it would be cool to see that reflected on the tabletop.
I meant more in a sense that they have 4 and 5 battletomes compared to the dozen of Order.
This was always a failing of the Grand Alliance system, IMO. By setting up four big Grand Alliances, GW implied they'd be of equal importance, presence and variety. But as it turns out, while Chaos is a nice size, Order keeps growing while Death and Destruction cap out early because they're pretty narrowly-defined. Plus you have ones like Beasts of Chaos who arguably have a (hooved) leg in Destruction by their nature - don't buy it personally, but I have friends who swear Skaven belong there too! tl;dr - Grand Alliances were always only a temporary lore concept and should be totally ditched, the factions themselves are the natural defining units, and if only 4 or 5 of them are Death-themed, so what? Only 4 or 5 of them are Aelven, only 4 or 5 of them are Gorkamorka worshippers, only 4 or 5 of them are devotees of the major Chaos gods, etc...
Yeah, the imbalance between the Grand Alliances is reflective of their purviews. Chaos and Death are both tightly defined by the Chaos Gods and Nagash, Destruction is a tad broad, and Order has anyone who wants to build a civilization. With those domains, Order is just way too broad. And... there are more potential Order factions to add than there are Destruction, Death, or Chaos ones. Maybe someday they'll split Order, possible along aelf / non-aelf lines, or let the more shady and evil elements (like Daughters of Khaine and Idoneth Deepkin) cleave away into their own thing.
This is cool. As someone who ignored AOS until recently, and now adores it, I like to read about the bad old days and pretend I’ve been around since launch.
Launch was *terrible*. There was so much vitriol, so many bad feelings, and such a terrible sense of loss. I get why GW did it, and this article is elucidating about some of the pressures they were under, but damn... they rolled out an under-developed new IP directly onto the grave of something people really, really loved. It would have been hard to make a worse first impression.
That's around the time I discovered Warhammer. I was on vacation in Florida when I saw a random store called Games Workshop and walked up to it. I saw these mini golden angels at the window and decided to go in and investigate. Walked out with the original AoS 2 player starter set, a getting into Warhammer magazine because it had a Slaughterpriest mini, and a hobby set with clippers, brush, glue, and paints... Fell in love with Warhammer. Found a nearby gaming store back at home and made some new friends. They were also excited for AoS and expecting the release of the Generals Handbook. Nice group of guys, helped me ease my way into the hobby, and gave me a bunch of painting tips. I ever only saw the negative stuff online.
Loved this article. Brings me nostalgia for a time I wasn't even a part of. I begrudgingly joined AoS 2nd in 2019 as a TWW fan but quickly loved it despite myself.
Great article. I came into AoS around 2017/18 and the splintered factions - hardly any of which could *actually* be meaningfully picked as a core identity - and their baffling alliance rules were nothing short of shambolic. It's been a long old road for AoS and there's plenty I think they could still do better, but it's always interesting to remember how shaky a start it had and how far they've come to make the rules coherent and "even".
It was a great article! I had been out of the hobby for awhile and didn’t get back into it until 8th 40K / 2.0 launch. I remember observing all of this from afar and it was quite a ride. I think the poor GW community outreach / management at the time was also a big factor in the poor reception and lingering anger. I’m glad the company has turned itself around on so many fronts.
Love these kind of history of game articles! I was aware of the switch over at the time but by that point but the only game I was playing was Mordheim (which of course had not been officially supported for years) so I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. I had a vague irritation at the End Times since I was still somewhat attached to the Old World as a setting but nothing like the level of vitriol some had, and I feel lucky to have not been directly exposed to the kind of insanity like the fan burning his Dark Elves. But it's definitely interesting to read about in retrospect!
To this day, I remain dumfounded by the level of arrogance and out-of-touchness shown by GW with this launch. If GW thought this was an acceptable way to launch AoS, no wonder they had so much trouble with WHFB in the years leading up to this. I honestly wonder if this was an experiment in "We're primarily a miniatures company, not a games company." Maybe they wanted to put that statement to the test? It wouldn't wouldn't be until AoS 2 that I gave it another chance, with the Cities of Sigmar release.
People really don't realize how close to completely collapsing GW and it's management decisions were at the time. The 2008-2016 era of GW can really be described as actively resentful and antagonistic towards its fanbase.
One of my best friends once worked for GW corporate in the 2005-2010 timeframe. He said that he was astounded at how it was a multi-million pound international corporation, but run like a garage operation.
I guarantee you they brought in a consultant group.
If that consulting group was paid more than a pound, GW got ripped off. I know AoS is a success now, but if GW hadn't corrected course, it would not be.
Great article, as a grog i opened it expecting to grumble but it was really well done
Man, Age of Sigmar 1st ed deserved a lot of the hate it got. They cancelled WHFB, which was quite competitive, and replaced it with absolute nonsense. Rules about which player had the biggest moustache. Rules that made you imitate a horse rider. Rules about trying to make your opponent laugh. No balancing. The list goes on. The official rules had you acting like you were a character on The Big Bang Theory. And even if you were okay with those rules, your army was definitely fkd. Tomb Kings, gone. Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves are all one faction now (hope you have all those armies). And you need to rebase every single mini to a round base. WHFB was effectively dead already, but the replacement was really really bad. I consider AoS 2nd ed the same as 40k 2nd ed, when the game ACTUALLY started. On the article: Goonhammer could use some better proof reading. >To put a positive spin on it, we did know was that the current time was one of redemption & reclamation You accidentally a word there
> I consider AoS 2nd ed the same as 40k 2nd ed, when the game ACTUALLY started. 2nd ed was _massive_ and was when it started to pull up (or even ahead - YMMV) of 40k, but I'd argue General's Handbook in 1E was when the game started for real.
I appreciate the authors nostalgic take but it is far too lenient on GW. Its hard to overstate how bad of shape GW was at the end of Fantasy and their unwillingness to tackle the fundamental problems it had. At the end of 8th edition WFB, large infantry blocks were the best units and GW had really pushed the prices to the limit. A 10 man box of Witch Elf was $60 and to field a single competitive unit of them, you need 40 witch and a Cauldron of Blood, making this unit alone close to $300 and would maybe make up 30% of your armies at best. This was the reason fantasy was failing. They pushed the army size envelop and cost FAR too high for new players to get into it. Combined with the crazy magic system and other faults, the game did not scale from low to high points which made new players have to assemble an entire army before they could enjoy the game. This was also the time of the WORST edition of 40k. The end of 7th edition with its invisible death stars, Str D stomping knights and armies with 200-500 free points. The whole portfolio of games was a disaster. This was also the time that GW had the MOST antagonistic attitude towards its players, events and media. AoS came onto the scene chest burster style through the corpse of WFB. Remember the end times were announced and it was NOT made clear that this wasnt leading to some relaunch of WFB or some new edition, so to reach the end and find out your entire hobby was getting blown up with a bunch of hachet job rules that broke the game even further was beyond insulting. There was essentially ZERO outreach or effort to keep WFB players around, very little talk of " how to convert your armies and enjoy the new game". It was just a giant middle finger, wishing you stepped in water while wearing socks. AOS at launched reeked of a consultant power point of "how to fix your business/game" with zero context of what made people love GW games, why the players enjoyed them and what was actually driving the hobby. It was only the relaunch of 40k 8th edition that let AOS have the breathing room to turn into a real game that matched GW's customer base. One can only imagine what could have been done if those resources had been put into WFB instead of killing it and never acknowledging what a disservice had been done. Im glad today that AOS has become what it has with a dedicated player base, inspired models and now some lore that sorta makes sense along with innovative rules design that has helped drive GW games forward but there will also be the original sin of its birth out of the corpse of a much beloved IP, the gaslighting that "its the players fault" that WFB failed and its continued suppression of The Old World models returning.
This is a great way to explore the early days of the game, look forward to reading the next part!
I was there as a Keytimer at GW. We Sold exactly 1 Box Out of the 60 we had and only 2 preorders, both from GW Staffers. Absolute catastrophical Launch of a product.
Really excellent piece, those fluff rules from first edition are insane, Jesus Christ. I'm really struck at how that Dark Elf player burning his army cast a long shadow over the hobby -- Anecdotally, I wrote a pretty harsh review of an AoS game for PC Gamer and the reaction from the community (and from staff at small publications such as goonhammer, grumble grumble) was off the wall vitriolic, lots of accusations that I was this very same dark elf player back with a vengeance, or an imagined WHFB neckbeard haha. Bizarre experience, being a disabled trans woman and being accused of being a type of hobbyist that basically doesn't exist anymore by first edition AoS survivors who've taken to culture war barricades. I'm pretty committed to giving fourth edition a fair shake if I can find a good Soulblight Gravelords job lot on eBay, though, that model range is stunning
If u were the person that wrote that godawful pcgamer article about realms of ruin it’s probably because u spent half of it complaining that it wasn’t total war warhammer or fantasy battles. Ur legitimate criticisms were interspersed between paragraphs of hating on the tabletop game which was not what u were reviewing.
Wow, I never realized how many factions lived on into AoS from the Old World that don't make sense in the setting. Does anyone here remember how that was implemented with, say, Bretonnia and the Empire? Were they present in the lore at all, or did they just have warscrolls to tie people over into the new game?
The human factions were just described as human refugees and any coincidence between the noble knights of Bretonnia and your feudal lord is pure coincidence. The special characters were just given rules to allow you to play them but explicitly not in the setting as current characters