20 hours ago, DesignXception said:

GW canned their initial flagship game Warhammer Fantasy because its current sales were in the toilet.

Tangent here: no they didn't. GW don't release sales details, so 'Fantasy didn't sell' is just a rumour from GW fanboys. The real reason was copyright. GW got its *** kicked in the courts multiple times after repeatedly trying to sue small businesses/individuals over copyrights it didn't own (such as claiming it owned the term 'space marine', despite the fact they originally stole it from Starship Troopers, and trying to sue over models that didn't exist). Because of this GW has become obsessive over its IP and getting everything copyrighted. Hence all the ridiculous name changes in 40K, changing non-copyrightable names (eg space marines) to ones they can (eg Adeptus Astartes ).

Fantasy, however, was a kitchen sink setting, taking inspiration from LotR, D&D, every fantasy novel ever etc. Most of the stuff you can't copyright, so they scrapped the entire setting and made AoS, which has been combed over by lawyers so *everything* can be claimed as GW's original IP. You can't copyright 'dwarven engineer', but you can copyright 'duradin endrinriggers'. And why Empire/TK got canned, but the Skaven were untouched.

tl;dr AoS exists because GW wanted more leverage in bullying small businesses after the courts kept ruling against them.

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Speaking of 'veteran gamers', I think every RW player in my FLGS is one, although more on the casual side. I think because RW straddles the line between traditional wargame and 'pick up and play' (eg Heroclix, Attack Wing etc) both types of players can be wary of giving it a go. I think it helps that the store we game at is very open to pick up and play games, so it just encourages people to get out of their particular gaming bubble and have the confidence to try something else.

I've found once people start playing RW they really enjoy it, it's just getting them to take that initial plunge.