People buy the miniatures (for a big part) because of the game they can play with it. Yes, given the same game and the same price people will go for the better looking model. And people love having great looking armies. But you need to have something to do with those miniatures. It doesn't matter if you are a competitive die hard tournament player or a basement, bear and pretzel player or a fluff campaign player. GW didn't support any of them recently.
But I don't buy that there are only competitive gamers out there (define competitive players) and that they are the ones keeping the hobby alive. When I look at all the different games I play (outside WH), from sports to computer games to tabletop games I play them (and people I know play them) because I like a challenge, I like the competition and mental exercise and because I enjoy the social aspects of having a chat with my opponent and looking back at the game etc. When I play, I play to win. But that doesn't make me a competitive gamer. That just makes me someone who likes playing games.
Back to WH, it is the same thing there. I play because I like playing games. When I play, I play to win. But I would do so in a tournament setting as much as in a fluff campaign style game. If GW would have made a great (and affordable!) game then the players would have come.
Again, there is a very real difference between a tournament player and a player. Yes, people buy the miniatures to play the game. And the more you play the game, the more likely you are to buy more models. But player != tournament player. The first group is vastly more numerous then the second. And just ask yourself, how many competitive tournament players will have bought models like the skycutter, spearmen, lion chariots, tyrion models, griffons, shadow warriors? Or any Beastmen for that matter? Regular players buy all those models, and by extent support the hobby and allowed it to grow as big and diverse as it did. If you looked at just competitive tournament players, you could drop half the army books and half the models from the remaining army books and still sell the same models.silashand wrote:I hear that excuse on the internet a lot, but as I said it does not pan out in real life. A collector may buy one, maybe two of a given model to paint up. People who play the actual game have a reason to buy many more than that.Yes, for some people, tournaments where there reason to play WH and to collect GW miniatures. But I personally think they are in the minority. GW own estimate is that tournament games vs non-tournament ones are in the single digit percentages. And while tournament players are the most vocal online (in general), they are by no means the majority.
Perhaps I should have been more clear in what I meant. My point wasn't that AoS is a great game or a good move. My point was that the fundamental idea behind AoS is not bad. The elevator pitch of AoS if you will. If you explain what it means to achieve then it sounds great. It's a pity that they did such a poor job in the execution.silashand wrote:The only good thing I have seen from AoS is how they treat monsters. They could have fixed them in both WFB and 40K if they had implemented something similar in those systems. JMO though...GW got some of the ideas right that needed to be fixed by AoS, the only problem is that the execution is horrible...
To show what I mean, this would be my elevator pitch for AoS, for instance, to be used to sell a manager on the idea:
"It's an easy entry game, with a limited rules set, which is easy to learn but hard to master. We will add complexity by creating special rules for the different units. And by keeping the game modular in this way, it will be easier to maintain and keep it up to date.
The game itself allows people to field the model they way want and people can already start playing with only a single box worth of miniatures. This way, people can start a new army or add that one model they have always loved to their miniatures collection. The skirmish nature of the game will offer something new and exciting to current warhammer"
Sounds pretty good to me.
Rod