How Did Age of Sigmar save Warhammer 40k?

Thanks to the very successful Warhammer Fest in England last weekend we have been inundated with amazing images and information coming soon to the Games Workshop universe. In addition, to the actual real news revealed, it would be a Warhammer Fest without a ton of rumors to go along. As it has been chronicled here from time to time, rumors have been for the most part pretty weak, as GW still has pretty good rumor control. Instead of getting concrete details, rumors often come in broad release strokes or one week before release White Dwarf image leaks. Under these circumstances it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Warhammer 40k 8th edition rumors started to fly everywhere!

What made this rumors particularly startling is the back and forth between rumormongers. Typically, we get one rumormonger who leaks something, followed up by other rumormongers with no actual hard information, but agreeing. This time though we had a full battle on what was exactly going on. It looks like someone from GW said something at Warhammer Fest, leading to a huge game of rumor Telephone. Whatever the truth one thing seems pretty certain, 40k won’t be getting the Sigmar treatment.

The current failure of Sigmar has saved the 40k from a similar fate. If Sigmar had somehow treaded water or outperformed Fantasy GW would be confident in doing the same to 40k. Now I am not talking about some fluff End Times blow up, but more along the lines of extreme game mechanic changes like no points. I know for a quite a few players, especially the rare 40k/Fantasy crossover player who didn’t want the Sigmaring of 40k, so certain purchasing paralysis set in.

Regardless, if 8th comes this year or the next, GW’s mea culpa on Age of Sigmar with regards to points means the game mechanically will remain mostly intact. The real question is will GW kill the 7th edition bloat or build on 7th and fix things around the edges? The logical brain in me says they will release 7.5 sometime in 2016 with all the new FAQs and some other minor changes, like including the new Flyer rules. The GW brain in me says they will wait until next year to go along with the 30th anniversary of 40k. This change will once again be a reset button, invalidating most of 7th edition supplements and codexes maintaining the never ending edition cycle. GW has shown in the past to care little about consumers who buy products quickly negated by a new edition.

GW could also continue the friendly public relations effort, but I always get the feeling they are one troll comment too many from throwing a tantrum and turtling again. At the moment (that is all we can go on) GW is being a responsible partner to the community again, and if all the global campaign stuff and competitive re-entry we could enter a real Renaissance for the game and company.

Whatever the outcome have no fear the game isn’t being blown because Age of Sigmar’s failure made it possible. Looking on the bright side at least rumormongers still have no clue what is going on.