Cool, thanks for all the help. Mordheim looks like a good way to scratch the itch while I see how AoS pans out.

I've got a set of the Island of Blood Skaven as well as a few boxes of Empire including Free Company, seems like I could get a couple of warbands painted up with just what I have laying around then build what I want later.

The Empire Free Company were originally made for Mordheim

Couple of resources for Mordheim, I'm sure you can track them down

Empire in Flames is the official supplement
Border Town Burning is a fan-made supplement

Both have new scenarios, warbands and rules.

If you're looking for a quick start to the mass-battles game, 6th edition had a little pamphlet published for it called "Ravening Hordes", with short "get you by" lists for all the armies.  They actually work pretty well agains each other.  

6th also includes a skirmish version of the game, and there are some resources for smaller games that may be useful alongside Mordheim:

Warhammer Skirmish is an eclectic booklet of scenarios for skirmish games in 6th edition;
Path to Glory is a mini-game centring around raising your chaos warband to power;
Warhammer Warbands has suggestions for playing small-ish mass-battle games up to 500 points.

Ravening Hordes and the 6th edition rulebook are still freely available on eBay, and pretty cheap if you want to test the waters before investing in the codices.  As always though, it's finding the players...

I owned and played first edition a little but only as a "mass combat roleplaying" game.  I'm still in love with that concept but nobody has ever really delivered on it.  We didn't have any army lists and I've only seen one copy of the supplement that had them.  Nor did we have anywhere nearly enough miniatures.

The next time I ever heard anything about Warhammer was third edition.

I didn't really get into it until fifth edition where I played Lizardmen and Empire.  Empire was a really weak list in fifth that had to rely heavily on volley guns.

Sixth kept me in the game.  Seventh was okay but tended to be a little blander than sixth as it continued the trend towards a balanced game.  Kings of War is a natural extension of the thinking that lead to Warmaster.  It's sleak and lean and pretty well balanced but can feel dry and soulless.

Eighth is where I left Warhammer.  I appreciate the turn back towards a gonzo fantasy universe but it seemed like every time they fixed or cleaned something up they introduced two things that slowed the game down or made a mess of the sequence.  Warhammer had always suffered from a nitpicky sequence where an inexperienced player could lose the game by "frothing" missing vital steps in the convoluted sequence of play.  And eighth is where it peaked.  Did you roll to see how the terrain your troops entered killed them?  Did your wizards cast their spells in the right order to maximize the effective application of their power dice?

I'm not saying you didn't have fun, but I sure didn't.

While I strongly believe the game needed a clean-up that turfed existing army books to level the playing field again and I think a shake up of the setting could have been a good thing.  Age of Sigmar won't bring me back.  I recognize that the competition is at GW's heels but I'm guessing this will be a tremendous flop that people will pick up years later and say "hey, this wasn't so bad as its own thing and now that the standard gaming scale is 1:12 it doesn't seem like such a ridiculous leap anyhow."

Quote from: TristramEvans;842094Unlike, say, the OSR, Oldhammer is more focused on pretty pictures of painted lead and guys getting together for beers and some light-hearted entertainment while they reminisce about the 80s.

There's an element of that... but then there are folks like me and mine, who never played Warhammer 'back in the day'. 3rd edition is a brand new thing to me (and I've never played the later ones).
To my eyes it's like the OSR in that it's a much more DIY approach to the game. Use what miniatures you have, build up lots of cool terrain, design fun scenarios... much less competitive. It's seems more of a full-on hobby than mainstream Warhammer is nowadays.
Of course, it's not going to appeal to the masses... a dead game that involves creating a lot of your own components and scenarios and plays much slower than is popular these days.

I'm actually kind of surprised that AoS didn't introduce pre-painted miniatures... I guess GW is still making good dough off their paint sales.

So, how is Age of Sigmar doing out there in the wild?

I was listening to a recent GarageHammer podcast episode where the host (pro-AOS) read a very sobering email from a former fan taking him to task for "forcing himself" to enjoy a dying game while it is "clear to everyone else" that fantasy is dead.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876043So, how is Age of Sigmar doing out there in the wild?

I was listening to a recent GarageHammer podcast episode where the host (pro-AOS) read a very sobering email from a former fan taking him to task for "forcing himself" to enjoy a dying game while it is "clear to everyone else" that fantasy is dead.

It looks pretty fucking horrible.  None of the folks at the LGS in my area are playing it, they all moved on to something else.

Its going pretty strong at one of the FLGS in town

Quote from: TristramEvans;876055Its going pretty strong at one of the FLGS in town

"5e D&D ascending" strong or "4e D&D doesn't know it's already dead" strong?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876061"5e D&D ascending" strong or "4e D&D doesn't know it's already dead" strong?

Fuck if I know, but they've had weekly AoS nights that are just as busy as the Xwing nights and they have a paid entry AoS tournament every month that sells out. But there's another game store in town where everyone either still plays 8th or have switched to KoW so I can't really extrapolate beyond that. GWs half year financials from last month indicated they've made good sales but lost a hefty percentage of market share.

I still don't understand how it wouldn't have been more profitable to support both systems, have AoS for entry level gamers and casual players who want a narrative skirmish game and keep 8th in print for the hardcore fans. They only needed to do, what, 3 more army books for a complete edition?

What they've done is fracture the community. Some are sticking with 8th, some are going with the fan-based 85, some with 9th Age, and quite a few with Kings of War, and some have just fucked off to various Skirmish games. I think AoS was indicative of something they needed -a low cost entry level game like Mordheim or Heroquest before it. But AoS isn't an entry to anything more now.

GW has also issued a profit warning after some disappointing Christmas sales.

QuoteShares in Games Workshop, the high street store selling fantasy model games such as Lord of the Rings and Warhammer, fell 12 per cent in early trading on Friday, after the company warned that full-year profits would drop after disappointing Christmas sales.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a707e928-b5f2-11e5-b147-e5e5bba42e51.html

If GW thought Age of Sigmar was going to return Warhammer Fantasy to prominence and undo the years of falling sales, they must certainly be disappointed by it.  It hasn't done anything to stop GW's revenues from continuing to decline.  Well, perhaps it caused them to fall more slowly.

Also released during the last reporting period was a Warhammer 30k/Horus Heresy game and a Codex: Space Marine release.  Space Marines are GW's most popular products and even making a new army book and related kits for them didn't generate any new business or result in growth.  It also wasn't too long ago that they released a new version of 40k and revenue was still down for that period.

GW is frankly a bizarre company, that's all I can say. Everything they do is counter to common wisdom on good ways to run a business, and they aren't ignorant of that, they take pride in it and pat themselves on the back for it. No marketing, no consumer research, the hostilty to retailers of their products, destroying an entire line of revenue with online sellers, and the overall "burning bridges" approach to throwing away all fan loyalty in the hope of constantly capturing a new audience. And that new audience is 1000x more likely to buy a licensed videogame based on their properties than one of their own products. I watch their antics with a complete sense of beffudled wonder.

Then, out of left field, they come out with something like this:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2016/01/bombshell-gw-moving-into-toymodel-stores.html

Could be that they are flailing at this point.  That they are going to start doing a variety of strange things to see what sticks.  This is the company that destroyed Warhammer.  A brand that was profitable for them for decades.  So they could replace it with Age of Sigmar.

They're going to flail about trying things like pushing model kits into toy stores and expanding video game revenue all while continuing to do the exact same thing with Age of Sigmar and 40k that caused Warhammer Fantasy to be no longer viable as a product.  Worse rules, higher prices, taking their customers for granted.

I don't know WTF Games Workshop doesn't put out actual toys.

Fuck this paint shit. Put out action figs for kids. 40k Legos. Chaos Barbie.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876061"5e D&D ascending" strong or "4e D&D doesn't know it's already dead" strong?

LOL! Edition wars strong is the strongy-est!

AoS is getting some play at my FLGS, but that FLGS has been a heavily 40k hub since forever, so I can't compare how AoS is doing at a fantasy heavy store. The fantasy players at that FLGS play Warmachine mostly, also since forever.

Quote from: Spinachcat;876308LOL! Edition wars strong is the strongy-est!

I played 4e D&D avidly for most of its brief life and enjoyed it, so don't accuse me of edition warring. I'm simply realistic and honest in assessing its run in hindsight.

Two of my Local FLGS carry GW products. At one of them it's a mixed bag, some folks playing AoS other sticking to 8th or bugging off to 40k. At the other AoS has been really popular and the game is getting a lot of people who had put fantasy down to pick it back up.

Rules wise I like what I see of AoS so far, and I like the focus on scenario driven play. However I don't care for the aesthetic of the new miniatures as much, it looks to close to 40k.