[Archive] GW's official stance on AoS

Heavygear:

This popped up on BoLS. For those who don’t know BoLS is Bell of Lost Souls.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/07/age-of-sigmar-gw-turns-a-new-leaf.html

I know some of you were at Forge World Open Day, does any of this sound true?

If you like the AoS  system, like the quirky rules and/or look forward to buying a new army, then the future is bright.

If you like your old models with the old aesthetic, enjoy competitive level play, and find the quirky funny rules to be just stupid then I would put some duct tape on that battered 8th edition rulebook, seriously look at another system or wholesale your stuff on ebay.

"GW had a guy camped out at the Forge World open day whos entire job was to answer questions and talk to people about Age of Sigmar. His entire job is to go to shows and talk to people about the new game. For the first time I think ever they�?Tre taking Age of Sigmar to Gencon, Comic Con, all the major wargames conventions in Europe etc. They�?Tre throwing a considerable amount of money at putting this in front of new audiences who have never played fantasy before. He was also brutally honest and didn�?Tt dodge any questions and answered everything he could. I�?Tll start with the negative stuff first.

This is it. There categorically will not be a �?~9th�?T edition of fantasy. Age of Sigmar is the only thing fantasy related GW will do for the considerable future.

He acknowledges that the �?~funny�?T rules are rather silly and don�?Tt make for a great intro to the system for new people. His response was that the armies in the box set don�?Tt have the silly rules. They�?Tre there as kind of a celebration and final send off of the old warhammer armies, and he said you might notice the new armies don�?Tt have the stupid noises or imaginary friends. This is deliberate, its designed that you�?Tll only generally play the old stuff with your mates since it�?Ts a bit embarassing to play in a public place.

The new races will look different to the old ones. Ooruks will not look the same as the orcs we currently have. As such, when they get round to releasing Ooruks, the old models will cease production. He did say that you can still use your old models as ooruks, but you won�?Tt be able to buy normal orc boys again.

There will never be points values.

On to the slightly positive stuff then.

They are going to fully support all modes of play, and will be releasing rules to balance armies against each other. There will be narrative campaigns where your forces are picked for you for specific missions, and there will be a system for tournament players to balance lists that isn�?Tt based on model count. He did not know the specifics of this, but said it is definitely coming.

The rules will always be free. He said that they are very very aware that fantasy had a massive buy in for someone to get started, as such the game was designed with the ability to play it with one box of models. There will be army books, but every rule in them will be available, for free, online. The books will just have extra background info and scenarios.

GW really are trying harder than they ever have before to make this work. If you�?Tre at one of the shows go and talk to them. They want to talk to you about this, but especially they want your feedback on it. As he said, this is totally uncharted territory for them and they are totally open to rules revisions as they go.�?�

Xander:

Always a good idea to link to your source! :slight_smile:

Thanks for posting.

Timothy Archer:

I honestly think the bad jokes thing, will never get verified in any way. Of course if you ask GW they will not answer. It was probably the GW dude sense of humor …

Vex:

GW obviously don’t want us fielding WHB forced in AoS. They want us to use the new models. And that has me wondering, how drastic are the changes going to be? I know that they’ve up scaled the minis but I hope the orcs or orruks will still look like warhammer orcs.

Grimstonefire:

Reading that makes me think they’re planning to stop selling entirely every (non AoS) model…

Doombeard:

I think they will do, give it 5 yrs and the whole range will be gone. I also think its worth stocking up on a load of bnib stuff to either sell in 10yrs time or keep to paint.

Vex:

Gonna have to get myself 3 of Nagash then. One for whfb, one to use as some kind of greater daemon/c’tan shard and the other to have nicely sealed in the basement until it’s sell’n time.

Bitterman:

I was at the FW Open Day, didn’t notice one guy wandering around fielding people’s questions about AoS, but if it was just one guy I might easily have missed him. I have zero interest in it so wasn’t asking about it myself (and had a barrage of swear words primed and ready if someone tried selling it to me).

In any case, one guy at an event is no substitute for them actually communicating with people. “Trying harder than ever before”, somehow I think not.