Couldn’t stand garage music as a kid. Now I’m suddenly nostalgic for it. It’s a thing 
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And let us not forget that big hats didn’t sell very well. A friend of mine who was a redshirt in the mid to late 90s tells of them not being able to shift any stock and when they went oop struggling to actually give them away! Obvs there was a hardcore fan base (represented by some of the more veteran members of this group) but on the whole they were not massively well received or well supported past release. (Always a chicken and egg argument with reception of an army/ support an army gets I know)
So the nostalgia we see for this range is really fuelled by 30yr nostalgia cycles as much as anything else. I know for me it is. The big hat range , to me, just LOOK like a certain era of the hobby and my childhood that I have a real fond memory of and nostalgia for.
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Chaos dwarfs were pretty expensive at the time. About £1 a model! Then there were centaurs, flyers, i also wanted a lot of hobbos. What stopped me collecting them back then was the warhammer boxed set. I had 64 gobbos. Bought 5 boar riders, 5 wolf riders. 2 gobbo command groups and a doomdiver. I had an army for a fraction of the price.
Plastic prices made the difference
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The lure of the Chaos Dwarfs for many of us was their status as a lost and forbidden range, marginalised almost as soon as they were created and dismissed not long after.
But it’s also their unique and profound conceptual roots and aesthetics. You can tell they were a unique creative labour and a take on a concept - pre-Islamic Mesopotamia - that is itself both unique and esoteric.
If I can accuse Mantic of one thing, it’s failing to impart such passion to their take, which feels very much like just - a take.
AOS also struggles somewhat to the eyes of many veterans because it is clearly strip-mining WHFB’s artist-led legacy for saleable products that are disconnected from history and recontextualised into, being generous, a… high fantasy world of imagination aligned with modern mass market tastes and values.
It hurts me to type such a sentence but I hope you can see what I am saying.
Kudos to AOS studio for looking at the 94 range and deciding it was fitting of their rework. Interested to read the Battletome and see what they make of it all. What they do is different, and so it will be. So long as GW leave Fabz, Brawn and all the neo-vintage makers alone…
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Hahah! I will definetly admit AoS is “Marmite”, despite that I’ve grown to like it.
It’s mythological high fantasy indeed. With gods interacting with mortals, like it’s some cross between Norse/Greek myths and He-man.
With what little we have heard so far I’m surprised how intriguing the lore seems to be…
They’ve really been drip-feeding readers lore about the other ancestor gods in AoS, and they have built up some mysterious past events with them. Hope they shine some light on Hashut’s involvement and relationship to Grungni and Grimnir.
One of the best qualities AoS has had since its release is the writers leaving stuff open and ambiguous to give themselves room to write interesting things into the setting. It’s something they’ve taken from 40k to allow for “room” for players to hobby in as well.
I understand that the uncharted and open nature of AoS is a big turn-off for the people who love how documented WHFB’s world is though.
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Just on that last point.
I think you’d be surprised.
I have been part of many AOS hate train discussions, and party to even more.
At least in these parts, it really does not boil down to “oh it’s all undefined”. It boils down to stylistic choices. The critique is usually one ir more of the following:
- AOS isn’t grounded in fantasy takes on real-world places or peoples in the same way WHFB was.
- In AOS, things happen because the writer says that there was enough magic for them to happen. This is completely arbitrary.
- AOS uses such a volume of generic tropes that its’ status as a product is too apparent.
- The gameplay of AOS is simplified to the point where the tabletop experience lacks nuance.
- [I am no longer 11 and my appetite of childlike wonder has had no time to bond with this setting]
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This is such a massive thing. I was “hooked” at a certain age by a certain setting and the new setting will always be compared to it.
Also yea, having played AOS v1,2 and 3 a bit over the years, it’s a fun game but not a “wargame” in my view. It’s a tactical skirmish game about buffs, debuffs and combos etc but not a medieval or ancient battle simulator.
You can glance at a fantasy board and know what’s happening. You can’t do that with AOS or 40k age of Gulliman
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I will completely concede on point 5, and in general AoS is definitely a “product designed to sell more product”.
But I will argue this is what WHFB and 40K is as well, they are just products of their time.
This is kind of off-topic, so I’ll spoiler it as to not take up thread-space.
Summary
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- This is just true as well, though I think that is a subjective hook on WHFB’s setting. It will make WHFB easier to intuitively understand and get into, so it could be viewed as a weakness of AoS.
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- This is the case for WHFB, 40k and TOW as well. Did you know elfs can become vampires after all? Did you know Kemmler can raise dwarfs into undeath if the plot benefits from it? Did you know Cathey was super involved in the “Great War against Chaos”? Miao Ying even shows up and controlled Marineburg for a while. Did you know Kislev can manifest huge elemental ice bears despite this supposedly being super hard to do in WHFB? They can because it’s cool, and it will probably sell a big miniature. There are always enough elfs to fight cataclysmic battles between the high and dark elfs, and have them still be a dying race. Did you know Caliban was actually a huge old one’s engine that can teleport around the warp and make webways?
Bla bla bla, I am yapping, you see my point.
- This is the case for WHFB, 40k and TOW as well. Did you know elfs can become vampires after all? Did you know Kemmler can raise dwarfs into undeath if the plot benefits from it? Did you know Cathey was super involved in the “Great War against Chaos”? Miao Ying even shows up and controlled Marineburg for a while. Did you know Kislev can manifest huge elemental ice bears despite this supposedly being super hard to do in WHFB? They can because it’s cool, and it will probably sell a big miniature. There are always enough elfs to fight cataclysmic battles between the high and dark elfs, and have them still be a dying race. Did you know Caliban was actually a huge old one’s engine that can teleport around the warp and make webways?
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- WHFB is also DROWNING in the most generic fantasy tropes. But you could argue there is a way to do this tastefully, or as a love letter to those tropes. There is nothing wrong with liking franchises with tropes, and the pulpy classic tropes in WHFB is part of why I love it.
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- While I don’t have that many TOW games under my belt I have played my fair share of 8th ed WHFB (it’s the worst edition, I know). TOW and WHFB both have great depth in the choices you take in the list building. But as far as the actual gameplay of these systems go; I will not concede AoS being simpler to where it has less nuance than rank & flank wargames. During some editions I would say AoS’ gameplay had more nuance than I ever got from TOW or WHFB.
I will however concede that it is not a wargame, and you will not get that sort of gameplay experience from it.
- While I don’t have that many TOW games under my belt I have played my fair share of 8th ed WHFB (it’s the worst edition, I know). TOW and WHFB both have great depth in the choices you take in the list building. But as far as the actual gameplay of these systems go; I will not concede AoS being simpler to where it has less nuance than rank & flank wargames. During some editions I would say AoS’ gameplay had more nuance than I ever got from TOW or WHFB.
In general; WHFB, TOW, 40K and AoS were never as inspired as we fans might like to think. Listen to any of the GW old timers and they will tell you it was always just business & trying to sell a product.
Just like AoS was built on all the old fantasy minis, WHFB was just built on trying to sell generic fantasy race minis to wargame with.
I definitely understand AoS being unpalatable as a “manufactured” setting, made to be a product. You won’t catch me defending s̶i̶g̶m̶a̶r̶i̶n̶e̶s̶ stormcast for example, they’re still boring despite their new miniatures.
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I have a vague memory from decades past. Not sure if it was in a white dwarf, or a photo someone put on a forum. Of a large skip (metal container often used on building sites for rubbish) which GW had filled up with metal models. Because they had lead in I think they just sold the lot as scrap.
This was around the time of the big hats, I’m guessing they produced a lot less in white metal (which was what all metal models since then are made from).
So a lot of CD were dumped and melted.
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I’m just explaining the lines people take, it’s not an argument per se, so I’m not going to refute any of the intellectually valid things you’ve said. It’s about what shapes tastes and how those tastes manifest in turn. AOS will always be welcome on CDO, doubly so now that there’s a range that cleaves so close to things we all like - and that has stayed conceptually loyal in so many ways. Bull centaurs! Proper enslaved hobgoblins! Hashut himself, largely aesthetically intact - this is why the range has been a hit with almost 2/3rds of our community, 86% of which like at least some of it.
My next poll will be about buying intentions, but we need prices before we can do that.
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Speaking of that scene
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Can’t be, I started in 96 and remember the switch to White Metal.
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I’ve got money put aside ready to go.
Not sure if it could be included but would also be interesting to know if people are buying them for AoS, ToW or just to collect
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My guess would be the same price as most of the spearhead boxes.
£87.50 GBP
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Nah the launch box will include the special edition codex and is more likely to be the price of the gloomspite launch box, £116 from Wayland so £145 retail.
There will subsequently be a Spearhead.
I utilized my significant excel skills to analyse the data in the poll
Playing fast and loose with “analyse” here. And “significant”. And “skills”.
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It’s consistently been 38/62 split. But if you consider that the orange slice still have several items they like - bull centaurs and hobgobs seem to be the most popular - then this bodes well for the commercial success of the range.
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I’d say ironically, the currently active CD hobbyists are not the main intended audience at all. They would presume to sell the vast majority to people who don’t currently own CD models, but have been in the hobby a long time.
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I am glad most people are happy even though they are not for me.
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