Age of Sigmar discussion thread

[Roomsky]

Looks like the mods are going to keep up the arbitrary division (like back when xenos book discussion as banned.) If that's the case, can we at least get a separate subforum?

[theSpirea]

I was actually going to suggest that, if we could get just one thread here in the Lore section dedicated to AoS. I appreciate and value all your opinions and it was nice to read people's take on AoS.

[Kelborn]

Don't get me wrong.

I came to love AoS and talking about it.

 

But don't forget that this is a 40K forum, not an AoS one.

[Scribe]

It's relevant to BL and GW marketing. :/

[Kelborn]

Than you can (just like others) discuss this on boards like the Grand Alliance.

 

40K and it's related stuff

 

Not

 

AoS

[Scribe]

I don't know what that is. I talk here, with you folks.

 

Oh well, no worries.

[byrd9999]

Looks like the mods are going to keep up the arbitrary division (like back when xenos book discussion as banned.) If that's the case, can we at least get a separate subforum?

 

The critical analysis of BL's books on The Grand Alliance forum sucks. It's a great site for everything else AoS-related, but strangely not Black Library. Maybe AoS players aren't huge BL readers? Seeing as some of us also read AoS, and it's the same authors, and some AoS fiction, with only a minor facelift, could pass for 40k (Dark Harvest book, and Josh Reynolds's "Darkly Dreaming" audio drama), I would like a place on B&C to discuss it. Please? :) 

[cheywood]

I just wanna be part of the insurrection.

 

 

Seriously though, it would be nice to be able to talk about AOS a little when it relates to the functioning of BL at large. I get that this isn’t the place to post thread after thread on Gotrek, but it’s limiting to discuss Warhammer Horror or the overall direction of Black Library while trying not to mention Age of Sigmar.

 

Also, thanks to Kelborn for putting up with all of this.

 

Edit: sentence structure

Edited October 9, 2020 by cheywood

[Sandlemad]

 

Looks like the mods are going to keep up the arbitrary division (like back when xenos book discussion as banned.) If that's the case, can we at least get a separate subforum?

 

The critical analysis of BL's books on The Grand Alliance forum sucks. It's a great site for everything else AoS-related, but strangely not Black Library. Maybe AoS players aren't huge BL readers? Seeing as some of us also read AoS, and it's the same authors, and some AoS fiction, with only a minor facelift, could pass for 40k (Dark Harvest book, and Josh Reynolds's "Darkly Dreaming" audio drama), I would like a place on B&C to discuss it. Please?

 

 

TGA's a forum for listbuilding and not a great deal more. Sadly anything to do with modelling, painting, background just don't really exist there.

 

And yeah, the hyperparanoid rule against AoS stuff, even in the context of wider discussions of GW and BL, still seems just as arbitrary, shallow and frankly bizarrely insecure as the xenos prohibitions did back in the day. It's bad, smacks of an uncritical and dogmatic adherence to rules for the sake of rules over consideration of how people actually engage with the forum, and bluntly is faintly embarrassing to witness.

[Acebaur]

 

 

 

 

Looks like the mods are going to keep up the arbitrary division (like back when xenos book discussion as banned.) If that's the case, can we at least get a separate subforum?

The critical analysis of BL's books on The Grand Alliance forum sucks. It's a great site for everything else AoS-related, but strangely not Black Library. Maybe AoS players aren't huge BL readers? Seeing as some of us also read AoS, and it's the same authors, and some AoS fiction, with only a minor facelift, could pass for 40k (Dark Harvest book, and Josh Reynolds's "Darkly Dreaming" audio drama), I would like a place on B&C to discuss it. Please?

TGA's a forum for listbuilding and not a great deal more. Sadly anything to do with modelling, painting, background just don't really exist there.

 

And yeah, the hyperparanoid rule against AoS stuff, even in the context of wider discussions of GW and BL, still seems just as arbitrary, shallow and frankly bizarrely insecure as the xenos prohibitions did back in the day. It's bad, smacks of an uncritical and dogmatic adherence to rules for the sake of rules over consideration of how people actually engage with the forum, and bluntly is faintly embarrassing to witness.

We are a 40k forum. End of story. We don't and never will have other game systems not related to 40k be discussed here. AoS is no different than Infinity or Arena Rex.

[Sandlemad]

 

 

 

Looks like the mods are going to keep up the arbitrary division (like back when xenos book discussion as banned.) If that's the case, can we at least get a separate subforum?

The critical analysis of BL's books on The Grand Alliance forum sucks. It's a great site for everything else AoS-related, but strangely not Black Library. Maybe AoS players aren't huge BL readers? Seeing as some of us also read AoS, and it's the same authors, and some AoS fiction, with only a minor facelift, could pass for 40k (Dark Harvest book, and Josh Reynolds's "Darkly Dreaming" audio drama), I would like a place on B&C to discuss it. Please?

TGA's a forum for listbuilding and not a great deal more. Sadly anything to do with modelling, painting, background just don't really exist there.

 

And yeah, the hyperparanoid rule against AoS stuff, even in the context of wider discussions of GW and BL, still seems just as arbitrary, shallow and frankly bizarrely insecure as the xenos prohibitions did back in the day. It's bad, smacks of an uncritical and dogmatic adherence to rules for the sake of rules over consideration of how people actually engage with the forum, and bluntly is faintly embarrassing to witness.

We are a 40k forum. End of story. We don't and never will have other game systems not related to 40k be discussed here. AoS is no different than Infinity or Arena Rex.

 

 

This is exactly what I mean by "smacks of an uncritical and dogmatic adherence to rules for the sake of rules over consideration of how people actually engage with the forum". Why? Because we are. Why just marines? Because we are. Like, there's obviously not even a pretence of justification here for enforcing this kind of weird purity on what are already relatively low traffic parts of the forum.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Sandlemad

[Nomus Sardauk]

This is exactly what I mean by "smacks of an uncritical and dogmatic adherence to rules for the sake of rules over consideration of how people actually engage with the forum". Why? Because we are. Why just marines? Because we are. Like, there's obviously not even a pretence of justification here for enforcing this kind of weird purity on what are already relatively low traffic parts of the forum.

Oh for the love of... The mod has told you no and you're still arguing? Are you serious or just trolling?

BaC focuses on 40k only because A; it's the one the overwhelming majority of users care about, and B; if it opened up to other games like AoS the site would rapidly balloon into a bloated, messy nightmare, not to mention how it might impact the yearly server maintenance cost. There are likely other reasons that the mods are privy to but ultimately it's irrelevant, when a mod says no, you drop it.

 

Bottom line, BaC is a board specifically for 40k, you knew that when you signed up, you've no leg to stand on complaining that other games aren't allowed here, especially given Kel courteously gave you an alternative solution with TGA and you turned your nose up at it because you couldn't be bothered to go somewhere else.. You don't walk into an Ramen shop and then get to complain that they don't sell Pizza, nor do you get to whine about a 40k board not covering other games. Simple as that, end of story, get over it or go elsewhere.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Nomus Sardauk

[Scribe]

 

This is exactly what I mean by "smacks of an uncritical and dogmatic adherence to rules for the sake of rules over consideration of how people actually engage with the forum". Why? Because we are. Why just marines? Because we are. Like, there's obviously not even a pretence of justification here for enforcing this kind of weird purity on what are already relatively low traffic parts of the forum.

Oh for the love of... The mod has told you no and you're still arguing? Are you serious or just trolling?

 

 

Yes, though I wouldnt call it trolling.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Scribe

[Brother Tyler]

Regardless of what you call it, it needs to end. The Bolter & Chainsword is about the Warhammer 40,000 setting. The Age of Sigmar isn't in that setting, so the fiction related to that setting isn't relevant here. There are other forums for discussing the Age of Sigmar. End of discussion.

 

Let's get this discussion back on topic - the official new/upcoming Warhammer 40,000 setting fiction.

[Scribe]

So the discussion on Black Library practices is not permitted either?

 

Meh, it is what its always been here.

Edited October 10, 2020 by Scribe

[DarkChaplain]

Thinking back, I think the peak-silliness of this whole policy shenanigans on the Black Library subforum was when you'd have a Black Library Advent Calendar subscription for the *entire* calendar of 24 stories (ebooks and audios), but would have to censor every other day / title.

it'd leave gaps in discussions because you couldn't even mention that Short Story 13, of the WHFB/AoS flavor, was pretty nifty. It's one publisher-based event with an all-in-one subscription, yet half of it might just as well not exist for all that it was allowed to be referenced as part of the bundle.

 

Likewise with Warhammer Horror anthologies. Some stories actually are very tricky to even realize going in whether they're 40k or AoS - heck, I'm reading The Nothings from Maledictions right now, and until about halfway through, I'd have thought it to be a fantasy AoS story, until it vaguely referenced the Aquila. (Truth be told, I was a bit disappointed at that moment). I wonder what the point really is when we can discuss an anthology like Inferno! or the Warhammer Horror ones in particular, where the line is as blurred as it's ever gonna get, yet censor half the table of contents even if everybody discussing the book holds it in hands / on their eReader, and might gleefully gush over some of the best new talent writing for BL..... just isn't allowed to make anything but roundabout references.

 

Heck, Track of Words and similar interview-heavy sites show time and again that authors like Guy Haley aren't debuting in Crime with Flesh and Steel, but actually had a scifi crime duology on the market as his debut novels - not being allowed to bring those up in discussions has stymied constructive reviews and looking under the hood of works we enjoy more than a number of times.

 

And ohhhhhh boy oh boy, the amount of discussion we've had on here about BL's publishing policies, pricing discussions, limited edition strategies, website design, the new and old Coming Soon sections, authors leaving and what not? None of those are 40k specific, even if they have 40k examples. Nevermind all the wider GW discussions on other subforums.... If we were solely allowed to discuss official 40k fiction on this subforum, there'd have needed to be some major nukes on publisher-related discussions over the past 5+ years alone.

 

What bugs me the most about this stubborn policy on a subforum discussing book releases that are already spread out more than usually this year (and still have AoS releases happening in-between 40k weeks a lot of the time) is that it quite clearly dismisses the authors that split their time between both settings as pretty much irrelevant, because even if they've written a dozen novels for WHFB/AoS before joining the 40k family, we cannot even look back fondly on their works up to that point and discuss with examples what they're good at. Black Library has never been a monolith, and neither were many of their most prominent or up and coming authors. It's a pity that we have to treat it as such anyway.

 

Most bizarrely, the discussion that was had on here this time was focused very heavily on BL as a publisher of books, and their behavior in marketing, planning and commissioning. It went a long way towards highlighting why 40k is booming as a fictional setting right now, while their other setting is floundering. There was no big, disruptive discussion of AoS fluff, merely namedrops, examples and comparisons to 40k. But instead of just letting it run its course in the peaceful manner it was held in, the reaction to it spawned a major disagreement within the community - which is most assuredly more disruptive to how things usually go on this subforum.

Frankly, at this point I cannot help asking: Was it really worth it blasting everyone with a giant fire extinguisher, foaming the entire place up, when nothing really was burning in the first place? Of course, now there is a mess... but an entirely avoidable one.

 

Oh well. Time for another coffee to drink while finishing Maledictions' The Nothings...

 

As for Upcoming releases.... Yeah, The Infinite and the Divine is out today. What's next... The Lion Primarchs book in two weeks. Old hat, discussed almost to death. Beyond that? Uh.. Limited Editions of old stuff and reprints of previously limited books. Exciting.

Edited October 10, 2020 by DarkChaplain

[mc warhammer]

i for one look forward to more discussions about how gav thorpe's prose is boring, but he really surprised us with "lorgar"

[DarkChaplain]

I don't know, man, I think I'm due another round of Praise Be to AD-B with a sprinkle of 10 Reasons How Master of Mankind ruined the Heresy. It seems like that kind of time of the month.

[Scribe]

i for one look forward to more discussions about how gav thorpe's prose is boring, but he really surprised us with "lorgar"

 

You jest, but while I love Lorgar and the Word Bearers, and I hear good things around here about this, I wont risk it. :p

[aa.logan]

I’m *desperate* to read how different fraters rank BL authors into tiers, and would adore it if this practice could be expanded to those writing for a setting I have no interest in reading about.

 

This is a lovely corner of a lovely forum, but some folk play pretty hard and fast with the rules- far too much discussion of plots of books outside of spoiler tags for my liking- no AoS discussion may seem like an arbitrary rule, but it’s an easy one to follow.

[Red_Shift]

I’m *desperate* to read how different fraters rank BL authors into tiers, and would adore it if this practice could be expanded to those writing for a setting I have no interest in reading about.

This is a lovely corner of a lovely forum, but some folk play pretty hard and fast with the rules- far too much discussion of plots of books outside of spoiler tags for my liking- no AoS discussion may seem like an arbitrary rule, but it’s an easy one to follow.

I will just say that I always buy books by Guy Haley, Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell

 

I'm a big fan of Chris Wraight and CL Werner

 

I don't rate Thorpe and I won't read anything by Kyme

 

I tend to buy based on subject matter rather than author but there are a couple of authors who are too good to miss out on and a couple I just try to avoid after bad reading experience.

Edited October 10, 2020 by Red_Shift

[Sandlemad]

@Nomus Sardauk: we’ve been told to drop it but I wanted to note that I’m not dumping on TGA and quite like a lot about it. I’m a member there too and merely mentioning its unfortunate limitations, specifically what B&C is good at and it’s unlikely to be able to emulate. I’m serious and think it’s unfortunate that you immediately interpreted someone disagreeing with mods or not seeing every aspect of a site as an unalloyed positive as trolling. TGA’s fine. So’s B&C. I wish they were better. Edited October 10, 2020 by Sandlemad

[DukeLeto69]

Blimey you go away for a few hours and all hell breaks loose!

 

My two pence worth on the AoS issue:

 

1) I have zero interest in AoS as a setting.

2) I had a passing interest in the old warhammer setting.

3) I would hate to see threads about AoS books or lore in this BL sub forum

 

However

 

4) I am interested in BL authors

5) I am interested in BL business practices

 

So surely a degree of common sense can be applied?

 

I would say that often the mods do let some of that flow happen exactly for reasons 4&5 above.

 

So while I personally don’t want to see in depth reviews and discussion on AoS books, I cannot see the harm in, for example, discussing BL policy re balance in output or which books get LE release.

 

@DC is right - it is odd to discuss Advent/Inferno/Horror anthologies while totally ignoring half the content.

 

So surely any post that includes commentary on AoS should be ok as long as it is firmly in the context of the output by an author or BL practices?

 

And for the most part I think the mods do allow that. I am sure I have seen posts about author X new book and a mention that AoS/WHF novel was better!

 

The balance for B&C in the BL sub forum should indeed be 95% 40k related but it would simply close down many interesting (to me) discussions if we have a 100% blanket ban?

 

And community is about discussion right?

 

On a side point and a slightly different bugbear of mine...

 

Why are fraters allowed to discuss new book releases in the News forum? That should be game related. The BL sub forum is about the fiction and lore.

 

Just saying!

 

Edit - grammar!

Edited October 10, 2020 by DukeLeto69

[Knockagh]

We all need to love Thorpe more. It would do is some good!

But Annandale and Kyme.......

Edited October 10, 2020 by Knockagh

[Petitioner's City]

Id like some inclusion of AoS or old fantasy lit, partly as I think as franchises - 40k, fantasy, AoS - there isn't too much seperation and especially as it would be helpful if one asks 'i really like Josh Reynolds/David Guymer/etc, which of his other warhammmsr should I read'. He's published 200 stories - I'd love to know what I should read from that.

 

But you can also consider the non-warhammer lit - e.g. we all talk heavily about Abnett, Reynolds, etc - but there is no good place on the internet where I can compare, for example, Abnett's work on Sinester Dexter, Riders of the Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy and Gaunt's Ghosts - and that does suck as some of these authors are sooo good, but not well analysed or critiqued. Same with other writers with varied corpuses. This can be done without being ott or too off-topic as the topic would be a given author or a given comparison?

 

Equally much Warhammer lit is written by active participants in reading and using other genres - it would be nice to be able to bring these in (historical fiction, crime, horror, etc) without it getting deleted/hidden or proclaimed as not relevant to the board.

 

I think it's possible to do that, within rules, which means keeping a focus but also having a better-informed and better-constructed view of *authors* and *genres* and *bodies of work* and practices of assimilation?

 

You can even have threads like this - https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/ot-non-trek-tie-ins-discussion-thread.284087/ or https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/spider-man-books.139347/ - which are quite nice discussions of authors common to a franchise's wider work, signposted as off topic but clearly not irrelevant to a franchise fiction forum in a larger franchise -specific forum (namely TrekBBS).

 

This is a wee plea, since I think it would only add to our discussions in what is the only place on the internet where this really happens - and would further add to the strengths of B&C. I'd suggest asking the lit mod on TrekBBS, Trample Damage, how they ensure a positive but focused environment there - it's light touch and works so well, plus has lots of author involvement, which I think is something we'd all want, right?

Edited October 10, 2020 by Petitioner's City