Oh yes the polls are always just about our little community.
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The polls are telling nonetheless, the majority of folks here are in the “No” category for everything except Bull Centaurs, which only got a middling ‘probably eventually buy’ of 31%, while there was a 26% no.
Can’t say I blame anyone in the various ‘no’ categories, the current GW offering is NOT better than what has been available from smaller companies and 3D print sites for several years. The bar was already set pretty high and I don’t think GW nailed it on many (if any) counts - at least not for the core fan community. In fact, I’d say they missed the mark on a broad range of counts -
- the identity crisis of Chaos Dwarfs not conveying chaos or demon-harnessing at all and just looking like generic bad dwarf models from a second rate company
- weird jewels on the hats/crowns that are just distracting
- the ‘I just graduated from art college doing uninspired 3D design and landed a job at GW making things I don’t care about’ great taurus
- the oddly slender-bodied war machines that don’t convey chaos or dwarfs and if you took the crew away they’re just 'meh
- those pot-bellied taurus tubs
- spears and swords as opposed to wicked axes everywhere (damn-it I wanted to see the kinds of axes that the Chaos Chosen get to wield… after all, doesn’t most of the armour and weapons still come from the Chaos Dwarfs anyway???)
- the list goes on…
All negative points aside, I WILL still be getting two of everything, probably more… The plan is to have one of each variant assembled as intended by the studio, plus have some extras for conversions, etc. The availability of Hobgoblins again means I can finally amass a truly sizable Hobgoblin army!!
~N
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This is probably the funniest possible response - a list of six things you hate and a pledge to buy multiples - I feel like the data is consistent with certain key factors, to wit;
- The Bull Centaurs, foot wizard(s) and Hobgoblins are all clutch. If you consider “probably” a form of “yes”, then you’re looking at three quarters of users so far wanting the BCs and almost two thirds wanting the daemonsmith and vandals. That’s consistent with what people were saying around reveal time.
- The launch box units, especially the Despot, are all interestingly in the relative flop category. Of those products, only the Cohort has a 51-49 split in favour, everything else is above 50% nos, and that’s with the offset for launch box buyers. I think that’s quite telling.
Ultimately, in future the spearhead will rotate (i’m guessing the next one will be bull centaurs and razers led by a daemonsmith) and with it will come cheap purchasing price for many of these minis. - I think the big AOS wave of users that skewed the previous poll so large have reverted to their natural ADHD habitat of Discord. If we get up to the 150ish votes we got for the reveal poll, we’ll probably see more actual AOS gamers represented. They’re currently making up their minds about what roster to use based on the launch tomes, but many of them are talking about buying multiple sets of BCs.
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Little observation for you Ken - I’m looking on eBay currently because I was wondering what the box breakers were trying to shift, and it’s 95% battletomes and that war despot - he seems unpopular.
Hard to say whether the battletomes are predominantly down to players buying multiple boxes or people buying the minis for other systems tho.
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And in full disclosure… I’m foremost a collector, gamer second, and painter/converter somewhere in a very distant 3rd.
When I was looking at the poll numbers I was also disregarding any non-committal response of ‘probably’ as neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’ and did not count them. Also, thinking from GWs perspective of upcoming sales from our core community here who are responding (which represent some sort of biased self-selected cross section of the community), I also ignored the ‘already have this model from the launch box’ responses as that’s a ‘no’ of sorts, but a ‘yes’ in the past… which was too confusing for my brain to sort out.
Anyway, summing all of the ‘Yes’ and other variants of ‘yes’ (‘Yes, multiple’, etc), I interpreted the polls as:
in which the Hob’s also win in the ‘yes’ category (by a single percent) putting them in the lofty territory of the Bull Centaurs.
I guess you all better get your Bull Centaurs in your carts quickly on Saturday 
- you can also see from the series of responses for Infernals, Dominator Engine, Deathshrieker/Tormentor, Despot, and Book, they’re all very low ‘yes’ responses, reflecting the loss of ‘yes’ counts from those who purchased the launch box, otherwise we’d see an increase overall in each of these model categories. For reference, the average response for any non-launch box model was 33% ± 9% Yes, whereas the launch box models had 9% ± 3% Yes. We can’t say that 24% of respondents had the launch box and that’s where the difference in responses went, but the average response to that question was 26%… although a whopping 59% of book responses was that people already owned it, but only 15% of respondents said they already owned models. We shouldn’t think too hard about it
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Interesting. I was interpreting this another way and assuming that people were buying up the infantry to grow out the ranks, but folks trying to do that wouldn’t need as many war despots and they’d be the last models to go. Same thing for the book… maybe??
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I couldn’t say, I have no idea how the army works in AoS - is the despot a 0-1 type choice?
I tend to assume that not too many collectors are buying multiple boxes, given that everything is coming out separately and unless you get a decent price selling off the spare battletomes, you won’t be saving any money by grabbing more than one box, you’re just paying more to get everything a month earlier.
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I think running multi-despot is something AOS players are exploring but they ultimately don’t know. The hero seems promising, because he buffs infantry, so someone buying two starter boxes and wanting to run both despots is a real possibility, but it’s all untested. There’s even talk of sticking a despot behind Hobgrots.
There are AOS guys who’ve bought four boxes already.
Of course for the Spearhead you only need one.
The fact is, there’s no clear army composition to roll with, and the despot is an inflexible kit that’s been unappealing for kitbashers so far.
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the book question is an excellent proxy for “are you going to use these for the old world?”
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The question was a bit loaded in that it both didn’t commit to a purchase or a timeframe, while the alternatives committed to both. I’d say I’m a Yes on the Bull Centaurs for sure, but I’m quite content to wait until they’re on the secondary market for less and continue my multitude of other projects in the meantime.
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“ASAP” to me was designed to capture the firmness of the intention while avoiding the individual’s financial circumstances. What “possible” means is up to the individual and can therefore capture the need to save up or wait for a personal annual windfall like a bonus payment, birthday or red packet. “Probably, eventually” is intended to capture a weaker state. As you’ll note from previous surveys I like to avoid undecided categories to force the consumer into the open. Ultimately if we introduce too many options the signal is somewhat lost, but that requires certain trade-offs; perfectly calibrated data requires a survey of such bewildering optionality as to make a casual poll a bit too much like a paid focus group.
More important for me about the survey as a whole is the reversion to a voting base of c.50 instead of the c.150 we had at the reveal. I think that’s pretty telling.
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The categories felt a little more leading than I felt I could vote for in some cases. I didn’t feel like I could select the ASAP because I wasn’t going to get them that soon, likely in the new year or for xmas rather than at release, which it felt like it was the choice for. Maybe something more like Definitely/Likely/Already_have_enough/Unlikely/No.
I guess it doesn’t really matter, it’s not like it is legally binding 
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that discomfort is something I’m shooting for, precisely to counteract response concepts like “unlikely”. From a sales perspective, not yes means no; in that context, we have those strong No signals you shared in the sub-chart you made. People with weak intentions tend not to convert, so I’m uninterested in quantifying that data - it emerges clearly from qualitative discussion.
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These just need to go through the full @Jasko stages of buying lifecycle. Excitement → resistance → denial → weakening → inevitability → add it to the BATG
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I’m dying 
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The closer we get to Saturday, the more I am second guessing my ability to actually purchase the Heroes. Not sure I can stomach it!
I was prepared to make an exception to my general “never buy on single model heroes” rule, but now I’m not sure! 
Right now I’m thinking:
1x Blunderbuss, 1x Cohort, 1x Bombard, 2x Bull Centaurs, 1x Hobgrots
And then, maybe a Daemonsmith. 
I think the Taurus can wait.
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With my extreme slowness in painting heroes are all I can actually see as purchase in general
I saw only now the poll, and I would have fallen into the 
on almost everything but a “might” on bulls, hobbos, and that stupid fucker of 
dude, but only because my mind would see how I could shave all those crappy jewels, dumb weapon and awful hat, in favour of swapping it for something proper
Considering all of this I’m quite positive gw won’t see a dime from me on this matter, and although I known the reasons behind the many NO votes, gotta say, I’m happy to see such percentage although it’s just internal in our community hsuahauahhs
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Stay strong brother Brian, your euros are better spent on something that’s not a hate purchase.
I’m a no on everything except a perhaps eventually on the daemonsmith for his walking familiar reading night stand.
My primary reactions when scrolling down.
“No, ew, absolutely not”
Or “No, ew, how is this even more expensive that satyr studios”
Or “No, meh, I’ve got a better version of this in my pile of shame or on my shelf” (bull centaurs and cohort)
Or “lol, no, those are Necron dice”
Or “lol, no, I haven’t bought a book from GW since LotR siege of Gondor and I won’t start now”
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The daemonsmith is so clutch that I can barely restrain myself frfr
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One hundred pounds would get you four War Despots.
Four…
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