Graphite wrote: Keep in mind that until about 4 or 5 years ago, we didn't really have "Monopose plastics". All the good, dynamic, well composed plastic miniatures recently? Monopose.
And people have complained like FURY. "These suck, how am I meant to make each of My Doodz look different"
Multipart plastics are NOT dynamic, unless you as the modeller are really good at posing. Every Ork Boy or Cadian is fundamentally identical, except for changing the angle of the limbs and torso by a couple of degrees.
And that's fine! It's good for rank and file.
But if you want models with character, a sense of movement and dynamism, GW's plastic miniatures only just caught up with what they used to do in metal. And yes, now that they're working with a light material that allows very thin parts and they've cracked chopping up the CAD files in such a way that you can get recessed details and undercuts that the old rubber moulds allowed metals to do, lots of then are utterly beautiful. And they can be a right pain to glue together in order to achieve that.
But the idea that "Old models sucked, newer ones are better 'cos they're newer" is just flat out wrong.
Multipart plastic has nothing to do with the comedic style that GW is still very much obsessed with. I would describe it as heroicly heroic scale.
The old metals were a lot of things, beautiful miniatures in many cases, but dynamic? You're towing a company line so that people will accept mediocre monopose plastic kits as the new normal. Which still can't match the old metals in detail and now they are charging you even more for monpose plastic. Bravo to GW, I guess.
I'm not necessarily meaning dynamic in the sense of "leaping through the air, one toe artfully attached to a Combat Rock (tm)"
I mean dynamic as in the flow of the miniature and the way the musculature etc. can act in semi-realistic ways.
Look at these:
Jumping about? No. Restricted to almost 2d? Yup. Looks like a human (well, space elf) could actually bend that way, with limbs that actually work? Hell yes.
And I'm not toeing any GW line. I'm saying that old metal miniatures were awesome, and if the only way we can get that level of awesome back is plastic miniatures which are really fiddly to put together I guess that's just the way it goes. I'd dispute that new plastic can't match old metal for detail. But I'm absolutely certain it doesn't match it for variety.
GW's current "dynamic" means "jumping off a tactical rock of varying size while somersaulting", so to me it feels forced more times than not, plust it usually makes for some very unbalanced and prone to breaking minis.
Take Lelith, by way of example:
The new one is jumping... and that's mostly it. The old one is just touching the ground after seemingly doing some kind of pirouetting slash with both knives, and you can see it from the way her toes are placed on the "ground" to how their arms are finishing the move and the way the knives are positioned... you can see it all on her body language. To me, it feels much more "dynamic" than the new one, even though she's with both feet on the "ground" and not jumping around willy nilly (it would be as effective without the piece of statuary she's on top of, and it's actually a pretty solid piece of mini, not very prone to breakage). I like the old one much, much more than the new one, that to me feels directionless. It seems it's aping the old model while trying to make her "dynamic", and IMHO, it fails.
But of course, to me a dynamic model is one that tells me a story by how it's modelled.
gak, the old metal minis of Archaon and Belakor are incredible minis, still very much among my favorites, and Archaon particularly is a really big hunk of metal.
Comparatively, the new "centerpiece" Archaon leaves me very, very cold, even before any "how the feth do I transport this gak" considerations.
Kind of similarly... the new Belakor is pretty, but it's simply too big, unwieldy and prone to break for me to take it seriously. And the old one is still impressively good. And I already have it, so the price is right
Then again, the "make it bigger, no, I said BIGGER" trend that GW is in is simply something I'm not at all fond of. I have Epic and Warmaster for that gak.
Albertorius wrote: gak, the old metal minis of Archaon and Belakor are incredible minis, still very much among my favorites, and Archaon particularly is a really big hunk of metal.
Comparatively, the new "centerpiece" Archaon leaves me very, very cold, even before any "how the feth do I transport this gak" considerations.
Kind of similarly... the new Belakor is pretty, but it's simply too big, unwieldy and prone to break for me to take it seriously. And the old one is still impressively good. And I already have it, so the price is right
Then again, the "make it bigger, no, I said BIGGER" trend that GW is in is simply something I'm not at all fond of. I have Epic and Warmaster for that gak.
I had Belakor as a Demon Prince in my World Eaters Army; because I throught that he looks cooler than the CSMDP at that Time..
Albertorius wrote: gak, the old metal minis of Archaon and Belakor are incredible minis, still very much among my favorites, and Archaon particularly is a really big hunk of metal.
Comparatively, the new "centerpiece" Archaon leaves me very, very cold, even before any "how the feth do I transport this gak" considerations.
Kind of similarly... the new Belakor is pretty, but it's simply too big, unwieldy and prone to break for me to take it seriously. And the old one is still impressively good. And I already have it, so the price is right
Then again, the "make it bigger, no, I said BIGGER" trend that GW is in is simply something I'm not at all fond of. I have Epic and Warmaster for that gak.
I had Belakor as a Demon Prince in my World Eaters Army; because I throught that he looks cooler than the CSMDP at that Time..
Which reminds me...
Old metal CSMDP (kind of crap image, didn't find one better painted with a quick search):
New(er) plastic CSMDP:
I mean, the new one was multipart and monopose, which made it much more versatile, but assembled as the "official" CSMDP? The metal one is a much better miniature.
Metal Har Ganeth executioners > plastic executioners.
Same with black guard of naggarond.
Most of the old metal elite regiments are way better than their current plastic versions: Greatswords, Eternal Guard, IronBreakers, Chaos Knights, Stormvermin.....
Graphite wrote: Well, yeah. Exactly. The metal one is better sculpted and has more detail.
Do you have eyes.
Seems to!
Do you realize that about 80-90% of the plastic daemon prince are smooth surfaces with almost no detail, right? I mean, it's right there on the pic.
Whereas most of the old metal is creased and pocked and creased with detail. Plus, the new model suffers in comparison because it's multipart and meant to be used for both 40k and WFB (plus, being multipart, it has to make concessions), so the parts lean on the more generic side of sculpting instead of on being an enlarged and en-demoned CSM, meaning it just have a couple of token parts that kinda remind of a power armor...
As I said, the pic is bad, but maybe... let's see this one:
Graphite wrote: Well, yeah. Exactly. The metal one is better sculpted and has more detail.
Do you have eyes.
Do you realize that about 80-90% of the plastic daemon prince are smooth surfaces with almost no detail, right? I mean, it's right there on the pic.
Whereas most of the old metal is creased and pocked and creased with detail. Plus, the new model suffers in comparison because it's multipart and meant to be used for both 40k and WFB (plus, being multipart, it has to make concessions), so the parts lean on the more generic side of sculpting instead of on being an enlarged and en-demoned CSM, meaning it just have a couple of toke parts that kinda remind of a power armor...
As I said, the pic is bad, but maybe... let's see this one:
I've had both in hand, and the plastic one is much better for versatility and conversion potential, but it's a step down compared with the metal CSMDP as a mini.
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
Plastic is nice that way, that's for sure. Doesn't really have much to do with the quality of the sculpt, though.
As to HMV's comment... heh, next thing you know, someone will say the plastic minotaurs are good minis
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: Variety? Bro two of those are repeats of the same sculpt.
And all their guns are bent.
And the hair doesn't look like hair.
It looks more like hair than the current ones, which look more like snakes.
Also there were 4 banshee sculpts + a banshee exarch, not great but also not a hell of a lot worse than many current GW kits, and this was back in 2nd edition when small armies were the norm.
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: Variety? Bro two of those are repeats of the same sculpt.
And all their guns are bent.
And the hair doesn't look like hair.
It looks more like hair than the current ones, which look more like snakes.
Also there were 4 banshee sculpts + a banshee exarch, not great but also not a hell of a lot worse than many current GW kits, and this was back in 2nd edition when small armies were the norm.
So i suppose snakes looks better than what looks like the end of a really low-quality mop that someone attacked with a machete to make it as rectangular as possible?
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
I'm starting to think you're arguing just for the sake of arguing, everyone knows metal was hard to work with, but it made for nice looking models, that's the point.
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
I'm starting to think you're arguing just for the sake of arguing, everyone knows metal was hard to work with, but it made for nice looking models, that's the point.
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: Variety? Bro two of those are repeats of the same sculpt.
And all their guns are bent.
And the hair doesn't look like hair.
It looks more like hair than the current ones, which look more like snakes.
Also there were 4 banshee sculpts + a banshee exarch, not great but also not a hell of a lot worse than many current GW kits, and this was back in 2nd edition when small armies were the norm.
So i suppose snakes looks better than what looks like the end of a really low-quality mop that someone attacked with a machete to make it as rectangular as possible?
Maybe you don't like the shape, but hair has way more detail and definition than 99% of the hair on plastic models now, including the current banshees where it looks more like ribbons.
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
I'm starting to think you're arguing just for the sake of arguing, everyone knows metal was hard to work with, but it made for nice looking models, that's the point.
It really didn't. With maybe a few exceptions.
It really did. With maybe a few exceptions.
But please, we've given this topic way more time than it deserves, we get it, you don't like the older models, obviously some people do. It has nothing to do with the News and Rumours related to TOW, I can guarantee GW aren't going to be releasing any more metal models so you don't have to hide under your bed crying that the bad metal man will come and get you.
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
Oh, no, never use a soldering iron on metal miniatures. That's just a recipe for disaster.
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
love how it went from "it looks better" to "bUt iTs EaSiEr tO WoRk WiTh"
I cannot ever participate in this kind of discussions because I nearly love all miniatures from 1990 onwards... is the really, really old stuff I cannot like.
But I like the current Plastic Minotaurs so I suppose I have no taste.
For example the plastic demon prince, I bought a creature caster lord of slaugther to use as mine but I don't really dislike GW one even if I can acknowledge is much inferior.
His Master's Voice wrote: This might genuinely be the first time I've seen anyone argue that the plastic Prince is "better sculpted" than the metal one.
There's a nut for every bolt, I guess.
At least i don't need to use a bloody angle grinder, a soldering iron, a drill and thirty layers of paint to get it to look decent-ish and stay in one place.
love how it went from "it looks better" to "bUt iTs EaSiEr tO WoRk WiTh"
It is both. Who would want to have a mini that's not only made out of solid hunk of metal that keep falling apart at the joints unless you bloody drill or solder them togather, that can't actually stay painted for any reasonable time, AND is a squat, t-posing, fugly thing?
Galas wrote: I cannot ever participate in this kind of discussions because I nearly love all miniatures from 1990 onwards... is the really, really old stuff I cannot like.
But I like the current Plastic Minotaurs so I suppose I have no taste.
For example the plastic demon prince, I bought a creature caster lord of slaugther to use as mine but I don't really dislike GW one even if I can acknowledge is much inferior.
Oh, me neither! As I said, the plastic one is nice for what it is, and it's a versatile kit. Also, after you assemble it you have loads of very nice bits for other proyects, which is fabulous.
Metal Har Ganeth executioners > plastic executioners.
Same with black guard of naggarond.
Most of the old metal elite regiments are way better than their current plastic versions: Greatswords, Eternal Guard, IronBreakers, Chaos Knights, Stormvermin.....
The plastic Stormvermin is my favourite Skaven kit ever and the reason I even got any Skaven models back when they came out. I really like them, a lot more than the metals.
Yeah... metal stormvermin better than the plastics? Not buying that. Even on a 1:1 basis that is a bit suspect but full units there's no competition. I can totally get if someone just likes the old metals more though, that's just a personal subjective thing.
Graphite wrote: Keep in mind that until about 4 or 5 years ago, we didn't really have "Monopose plastics".
4th ed, 5th ed, and much of the 6th ed starter(especially since those Arrer Boyz were the only option for the unit until the world ended) sets say hi, as do most of the 4th ed plastic kits. Skull Pass and Island of Blood are rather the exceptions since, aside from the Sea Guard, those models didn't become retail product.
Yes, that's right, it's a citadel dwarf buckling up his trousers after going to the loo.
.
How can you even tell? If your idea of the pinnacle of mininatures sculpting is a largely undefined blob with what appears to be a helmet, a beard, and a chainmail shirt reaching for their crotch area with both hands then I don't know that common ground exists for us to come to an understanding of one anothers viewpoints.
Old metal CSMDP (kind of crap image, didn't find one better painted with a quick search):
This I agree with - and its a hill I will gladly die on. Theres a lot to be desired from that sculpt, but it doesn't look like "Babys First Daemon Prince". I found one of these bad boys NIB at a local store a couple years back and gladly snatched him up for a few bucks. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that half the parts were missing. ;_:
chaos0xomega wrote: If your idea of the pinnacle of mininatures sculpting is a largely undefined blob with what appears to be a helmet, a beard, and a chainmail shirt...
Well, when it comes to Warhammer Dwarfs, it kind of is for me as it is ticking all the necessary boxes
chaos0xomega wrote: If your idea of the pinnacle of mininatures sculpting is a largely undefined blob with what appears to be a helmet, a beard, and a chainmail shirt...
Well, when it comes to Warhammer Dwarfs, it kind of is for me as it is ticking all the necessary boxes
yeah, if only you could bloody make out all those boxes. Instead it's a
"Undefined blob, with several more fugly, undefined detailless blobs one could possibly interpret as a helmet, a beard and a chainmail"
Is that a reliable rumour releaser? These days I see a lot of people grab rumour/wishlists from reddit and hold them up high when its really unproven and honestly often boils down to wishlisting.
Overread wrote: Is that a reliable rumour releaser? These days I see a lot of people grab rumour/wishlists from reddit and hold them up high when its really unproven and honestly often boils down to wishlisting.
It doesn't read like it was written by a native English speaker, which makes me a bit suss given, ya know, GW is based in England.
MobileSuitRandom wrote:I just can't imagine GW selling a book with rules for minis they haven't been selling nor producing for what will have been nearly a decade in 2024?
I can, but only if their intention is to bring those armies back in a short span of time. If you the 4th or 5th army was to be Tomb Kings I could see GW release a rule book at the start with TK rules inside with a view that it will take up those old fans, get them excited, get them talking and active and then create instant hype and attention on the release of the army when they come. And GW can always then add to that roster in the book with their own battlebook or whatever the codex equivalent ends up being.
AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Overread wrote: Is that a reliable rumour releaser? These days I see a lot of people grab rumour/wishlists from reddit and hold them up high when its really unproven and honestly often boils down to wishlisting.
It doesn't read like it was written by a native English speaker, which makes me a bit suss given, ya know, GW is based in England.
Yeah and normally overseas rumours tend to be more just stock being delivered and opened up early by someone in distribution/local stores. So its typically much closer to a release. Not years out
MobileSuitRandom wrote: I just can't imagine GW selling a book with rules for minis they haven't been selling nor producing for what will have been nearly a decade in 2024?
Somehow they have to win back old players... even when they only buy the new Rulebook and that Compendium..
They could expand their old armies when new Stuff comes out.
Follwoing that rumor, this Compendium seems to be for Old Player, who still have an old Army.
Overread wrote: Is that a reliable rumour releaser? These days I see a lot of people grab rumour/wishlists from reddit and hold them up high when its really unproven and honestly often boils down to wishlisting.
Was one of the last Rumor Monger before their decline with the Rumor Engine.
Mikhael - Total rumors: (7 TRUE) / (0 FALSE) / (0 PARTIALLY TRUE/VAGUE) - NO RUMORS OUTSTANDING - Updated 8/7/2017
H.B.M.C. wrote: Gonna be hard to play Tomb Kings without any models out there...
So many of the lines have been gutted of their mainstay units. Obviously not to the extent of the Tomb Kings, but enough that it makes assembling a force impossible using only direct purchases from GW.
Dwarfs lack basic warriors, crossbows, thunderers (the AoS ones do not fit, at all), all of their siege engines, miners, all of their special characters except Gotrek (no Felix, though) and Belegar, no generic lords, no anvil of doom.
But hey, we got dwarfs hanging from balloons like babies in walkers so that's okay, I guess? Who wanted shield walls of stout dwarfs backed up by ranged firepower?
Overread wrote: Is that a reliable rumour releaser? These days I see a lot of people grab rumour/wishlists from reddit and hold them up high when its really unproven and honestly often boils down to wishlisting.
No, its a rando who started a reddit account 6 months ago and only posted about anime waifu gak and never interacted with the 40k/GW community up until 2-3 days ago.
RazorEdge wrote: Follwoing that rumor, this Compendium seems to be for Old Player, who still have an old Army.
Overread wrote: Is that a reliable rumour releaser? These days I see a lot of people grab rumour/wishlists from reddit and hold them up high when its really unproven and honestly often boils down to wishlisting.
Was one of the last Rumor Monger before their decline with the Rumor Engine.
Mikhael - Total rumors: (7 TRUE) / (0 FALSE) / (0 PARTIALLY TRUE/VAGUE) - NO RUMORS OUTSTANDING - Updated 8/7/2017
Where's the connection between these two? They don't come across as written by the same person at all, and I can't see anything to say and especially not verify this new Reddit account is them.
It's a relatively new reddit account that has barely posted anything or even interacted with the community until these vague, baseless "rumours" (and it's a stretch to call them that) over the past few days, with such fascinating and insightful threads such as:
DKOK - "Death Rider in Plastic will come."
Astra Millitarum - "New Codex in Sep, do not tell anyone..."
As well as one (now deleted) that was along the lines of Warcry "New edition soon" with an answer to someones comment of "Is this an announcement? A rumour? A prediction?" being something that amounted to "Who Knows?"
Not to mention he's now saying there's going to be a full Horus Heresy 'reboot' as such with the new miniatures we've seen apparantly being for a full scale project handled by GW that they'll continue for years as well as this Old World rumour claiming Kislev was shown because of Total War Warhammer 3 (it was marketing for that game) and knows both when models will first be shown for TOW and when the game will release. He's also implying in other comments that TOW was done for TW:W players while at the same time saying they want to just bring old players back with their old miniatures being a big part of the game initially.
So unless this guy just somehow knows about all these different major projects and is involved with/in the know on the miniatures side, rules side and even the business plans and marketing, they're just absurd made-up stuff with no credibility at all.
A Town Called Malus wrote: But hey, we got dwarfs hanging from balloons like babies in walkers so that's okay, I guess? Who wanted shield walls of stout dwarfs backed up by ranged firepower?
I want Wood Elves to get their minis back. Always liked them.
They always said it was a long way off and they were showing us very early preview content (I mean it was just sketch art and a map).
I was fully expecting late 2023-into 24. Just like with anything, more time gives them the best chance at creating something that is actually good and lasts, I'm ok with it.
While I don't trust the source, they certainly could do this. Selling expensive books, having some months with Made to Order stuff and then starting TOW while declaring the army lists 'Warhammer Legends'.
MobileSuitRandom wrote: I just can't imagine GW selling a book with rules for minis they haven't been selling nor producing for what will have been nearly a decade in 2024?
Somehow they have to win back old players... even when they only buy the new Rulebook and that Compendium..
They could expand their old armies when new Stuff comes out.
The whole thing is clearly aimed at the new fanbase of Total warhammer.
This reads as wishlisting.
Games Workshop really is the textbook poster boy for a top heavy, out of touch company that stays dominant due to factors beyond their control.
All these models should have gone to a subcontractor to produce on behalf of GW. Keep them all on the GW website and have the sub make the models. Literally free money for GW. Do you know how many companies would die to be in that sort of situation and GW says "naw, toss em in the bin".
Even if they left the rulebooks at 8th they could have just sold them as ebooks.
The whole situation would be utterly hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic and sad.
in another forum it was said that this is the Reddit account of Mikhael who would be reliable according to dakkas rumour tracker
That assumes that its even the same Mikhael (which is doubtful based on dakka-Mikhaels typing pattern relative to reddit-Mikhael). It could be someone else with the same name or someone who intentionally refers to themselves as Mikhael for the purposes of creating legitimacy by way of people assuming that its the same guy.
in another forum it was said that this is the Reddit account of Mikhael who would be reliable according to dakkas rumour tracker
That assumes that its even the same Mikhael (which is doubtful based on dakka-Mikhaels typing pattern relative to reddit-Mikhael). It could be someone else with the same name or someone who intentionally refers to themselves as Mikhael for the purposes of creating legitimacy by way of people assuming that its the same guy.
You could ask Gary/Nafka/Faeit212 if that Dude uses the Same Mail-Adress than that Mikhael from 2017.
So, dumb question but do we even know if the The Old World will use square bases? I see no reason they could not be round, and GW just sell Sabot style movement trays for the units as an additional sale......
Arbitrator wrote: I'm obviously not an optimist and not a GW fan, but didn't Necromunda release a 'get-by' PDF for the old Gangs when the new edition came out?
And for Blood Bowl, too.
So, dumb question but do we even know if the The Old World will use square bases? I see no reason they could not be round, and GW just sell Sabot style movement trays for the units as an additional sale......
Do we have confirmation of square bases?
Their first posts about it were hyping up the square bases, so presumably that hasn't changed.
Easy E wrote: So, dumb question but do we even know if the The Old World will use square bases? I see no reason they could not be round, and GW just sell Sabot style movement trays for the units as an additional sale......
Do we have confirmation of square bases?
The initial announcement was a square base, so it’s a pretty safe bet.
Easy E wrote: So, dumb question but do we even know if the The Old World will use square bases? I see no reason they could not be round, and GW just sell Sabot style movement trays for the units as an additional sale......
Do we have confirmation of square bases?
Yeah it was one of the first things they ever said about it
Easy E wrote: So, dumb question but do we even know if the The Old World will use square bases? I see no reason they could not be round, and GW just sell Sabot style movement trays for the units as an additional sale......
Do we have confirmation of square bases?
They said there would be square bases, but I think the most sensible interpretation of that statement is that that doesn't necessarily preclude them using round bases in a square sabot tray type thing. In short, I guess, we don't really know though based on what they did say I would assume that yes, traditional square bases are coming back
Was it ever established just what "The Old World" as a term commonly gets used by GW to refer to speciifically?
've seen people say the term just refers to the specific area of the map called "The Old World yet there have been times that seem to apply GW use it to refer to the setting overall too. n one of the original articles they said "If you’re itching to jump into the Old World right now, you can!" when referring to TW:W despite the game encompassing more than that, the Warhammer: Chronicles tagline was something like "Adventure in the Old World" despite not being just that area of the map, and now this article here appears to describe Cathay as "the Old World’s largest empire" .
"The Old World" ist the middle Continent (the Europe) of the Warhammer World (the Planet has no Name). The Old World is the Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev, Norsca, ect....
What RazorEdge said is/was the officially understood answer. Its possible that GW is using the term differently now, but if they have they haven't been clear on that topic. IMO, the fact that CA is referring to Cathay as "the Old World's largest empire" would imply to me that GW now views "the Old World" to be synonymous with "the world that was", as I would have to imagine that CA sent that to GW for review before posting it (my girlfriend works for another company in the industry that has lots of licensed properties, licensors comb through all the articles, press releases, etc. for the most seemingly inconsequential minute details. Something like that is something I would expect GW to have noticed).
chaos0xomega wrote: What RazorEdge said is/was the officially understood answer. Its possible that GW is using the term differently now, but if they have they haven't been clear on that topic. IMO, the fact that CA is referring to Cathay as "the Old World's largest empire" would imply to me that GW now views "the Old World" to be synonymous with "the world that was", as I would have to imagine that CA sent that to GW for review before posting it (my girlfriend works for another company in the industry that has lots of licensed properties, licensors comb through all the articles, press releases, etc. for the most seemingly inconsequential minute details. Something like that is something I would expect GW to have noticed).
Found another somewhat more obvious example. The product description for the audio Novel "Realmslayer" clearly talks about the "The Old World" in a way synonymous with "the world that was" twice.
Fabled hero of the Warhammer Old World, Gotrek Gurnisson is reborn and cast into the Age of Sigmar for a brand-new, feature-length audio adventure. With Gotrek being voiced by the world famous Brian Blessed!!
Now Gotrek has returned, having outlived the old gods and the Old World.
Easy E wrote: So, dumb question but do we even know if the The Old World will use square bases? I see no reason they could not be round, and GW just sell Sabot style movement trays for the units as an additional sale......
Do we have confirmation of square bases?
They said there would be square bases, but I think the most sensible interpretation of that statement is that that doesn't necessarily preclude them using round bases in a square sabot tray type thing. In short, I guess, we don't really know though based on what they did say I would assume that yes, traditional square bases are coming back
I'm working on a couple of older armies, and I'm purposely not finishing the bases yet just in case I need to rip them off again. Round bases with trays wouldn't be the worst thing, because it would let me play AoS if I ever want to play that. It would also give the sculptors a bit more freedom, and potentially bring costs down if there is less model density in units. A good olive branch between the two choices might be to also make square base equivalent movement trays, where everyone is basically in skirmish stance, so the footprint is the same. I guess there's also nothing stopping players from putting the square bases into the round slots, it will just be a bit uglier.
I'm really pumped for this game. I have a feeling that this will finally be my chance to get that Chaos Dwarf Army I've always wanted.
I'm glad with all the answers, specially the scale one. Old armies coming back is a great thing. Warhammer Fantasy with all the things they have learned, the new mission design (instead of just 3000 points, no named characters, pitched battle! all the time), and regular faqs, erratas, etc... can be a blast.
Kanluwen wrote: It's the one thing heavily implied, via cheeky wording, since day one. Having 100% confirmation is a different story.
They kept insinuating that this was not an attempt to "fragment" the player base. This is going to fragment it, hard.
There's still a chance for LotR style square tray converters for round bases, although I'd be surprised if GW went with KoW levels of abstraction needed when the bases are 32mm and you only fit like 5 dudes on a Regiment tray.
But I was very confident in there being a scale change, so clearly I have no clue where GW is going with this project.
Those who have studied the previous map updates will no doubt have discerned that the Empire is riven by civil war, with no one Emperor or Empress uniting the elector states, and so the Kislevites’ role is even more vital to the defence of the entire* Old World.
That would seem to imply "The Old World" is referring to the continent.
On the question of scale:
What? No! What madness is that?! The scale will remain the same as it ever was. We want people to be able to use their old armies if they wish, or to start new ones, or to add new miniatures to old armies – whatever they want.
Boo. Hiss. What if my old army was 10mm scale? DO the nubs at WarCom even know about Warmaster?
I'm so glad they clarified the scale and square bases. We knew that it was going to be like and yet a shocking amount of people in this very thread were trying to say it was smaller scale.
I'd like to momentarily take this opportunity to say haha .
It's a slow moving hype train but I'm still on it, especially this added statement about using old armies. They know fine well I'll piss money up the wall at this and I'm fine with it.
There's still a chance for LotR style square tray converters for round bases, although I'd be surprised if GW went with KoW levels of abstraction needed when the bases are 32mm and you only fit like 5 dudes on a Regiment tray.
I really hope there will be some way to play with round bases. Having to base models differently for AOS and Old World seems like a terrible idea to me; a lot of people rebased their old armies for AOS, and might not be thrilled to do that again. And of course people will want to use some models in both system. Square movement trays for round bases seems like a fine idea to me.
There's still a chance for LotR style square tray converters for round bases, although I'd be surprised if GW went with KoW levels of abstraction needed when the bases are 32mm and you only fit like 5 dudes on a Regiment tray.
I really hope there will be some way to play with round bases. Having to base models differently for AOS and Old World seems like a terrible idea to me; a lot of people rebased their old armies for AOS, and might not be thrilled to do that again. And of course people will want to use some models in both system. Square movement trays for round bases seems like a fine idea to me.
Yeah. This seems to be a misplay by GW, unless they are planning on excluding some of those armies from coming back (example, Ogre Kingdoms are staying Ogors in AoS, will not be in army in TOW though you might be able to take a unit of Ogre mercs).
Kanluwen wrote: It's the one thing heavily implied, via cheeky wording, since day one. Having 100% confirmation is a different story.
They kept insinuating that this was not an attempt to "fragment" the player base. This is going to fragment it, hard.
There's still a chance for LotR style square tray converters for round bases, although I'd be surprised if GW went with KoW levels of abstraction needed when the bases are 32mm and you only fit like 5 dudes on a Regiment tray.
But I was very confident in there being a scale change, so clearly I have no clue where GW is going with this project.
The scale change will probably be the usual subtle upscaling. A lot of WHFB stuff was/is 25mm, so anything new is probably going to look enormous by comparison, be that State Troops or High Elf Spearmen. I'd be surprised if the scale on the new stuff isn't closer to 32mm.
10mm scale was Warmaster I guess. 15mm...GW never did that, right?
I am intrigued by the mention of 'Half Orcs' whatever those might be. I wonder how that would work though, don't WHFB Orcs reproduce through spores as well, kinda like that 40k counterparts?
Malika2 wrote: 10mm scale was Warmaster I guess. 15mm...GW never did that, right?
I am intrigued by the mention of 'Half Orcs' whatever those might be. I wonder how that would work though, don't WHFB Orcs reproduce through spores as well, kinda like that 40k counterparts?
Correct on all counts AFAIK. Re half orcs maybe older lore they didn't sporify?
I don't think it was ever expressly stated for WHFB, by the time Gorkamorka came about with spores 40k and Fantasy were separate universes except for fn theories of warp connecting them.
Kanluwen wrote: And I'm out. No interest in going back to square bases.
Uh... what... what did you think this was going to be? That was literally the one thing we knew from day 1.
Yeah it was their very first marketing photo with a square base on it
And their answers are spot on what I expected from them - same scale, same bases etc.... Of course "scale creep" might well still happen but it means GW is still aiming for that 28-35mm bracket
I would guess 2 launch armies - Empire and other Empire. Compendiums or something for legacy armies releases a couple weeks later, and then Kislev 3 months later.
If they are emulating Horus Heresy at all then the launch box is going to be two opposing armies of the same race/faction
Is that a first reference to them since the very early editions of whfb?
I raised my eyebrow at that. Orcs are fungi so how would that work? Or is that just a 40K thing and fatasy orcs are normal mammals?
I don't think the spore thing was ever used in whfb
It was briefly mentioned in the 8th ed BRB, iirc. Talked about how the Old Ones brought Greenskin spores to the world by accident on their starships. I think it was also mentioned in the 7th ed book but I'm not sure. I do know 8th ed talked about it though.
And their answers are spot on what I expected from them - same scale, same bases etc.... Of course "scale creep" might well still happen but it means GW is still aiming for that 28-35mm bracket
yeah, if some of the recent AoS releases are anything to go by then the new minis will be visually incomapatible with the old ones, but I also know that theres a bunch of grogs out there that will show up with their freshly dusted off 6th edition army and insist on using them as is, even if their empire humans are dwarf-sized by comparison.
What? No! What madness is that?! The scale will remain the same as it ever was. We want people to be able to use their old armies if they wish, or to start new ones, or to add new miniatures to old armies – whatever they want.
Boo. Hiss. What if my old army was 10mm scale? DO the nubs at WarCom even know about Warmaster?
so keeping 28mm for new models or standard AoS 32mm models for new releases, or even going back to 3rd Edi 25mm?
Cronch wrote: I don't think it was ever expressly stated for WHFB, by the time Gorkamorka came about with spores 40k and Fantasy were separate universes except for fn theories of warp connecting them.
Indeed this, I have never seen a mention anywhere of spores from fantasy lore. Just conversation bringing it from 40k.
So safe bet it’s not the case.
Bases and scale exactly as I thought. I know everyone had their theories but I still hold by there was no way it was ever not going to be brought back to be a new thing but also cater to the old Fantasy players.
Glad it’s confirmed so we don’t need to discuss anymore. Normal scale. Normal square bases.
As to people saying I wonder if rounds can be used. Even if not GW, others will make the movement trays that can rank up rounds well I’d assume.
This feels like a slow hype train leading to an eventual cliff of low sales. Then idiots on Youtube can talk about why The Old World failed for six months.
I'm just not seeing the mass appeal of Warcrafted/video gamey new Warhammer models in a setting they long ago Flanderized to death. The cost will be prohibitively expensive, the rules will still be years behind other options, and Total War players probably aren't going to see the appeal of going from a $60 game to a $600 army. I'm just not seeing this working out right now.
The appeal is there, nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool.
My prediction, now that we know it's on squared bases, same scale, no silly names, and so on: TOW will eclipse AoS in terms of popularity and sales. Easily.
Also you can use round bases in rank and file games - you just need round slots on your movement tray. So you can 100% use armies for both if you want, just base them on round and then use a movement tray. Basically anything that isn't a monster will be on a movement tray any way and monsters you can make some little customer round to square bases for them as well.
A few people did them in the old days with Chaos Demons since they appeared in 40K (round) and Old World (Square)
What? No! What madness is that?! The scale will remain the same as it ever was. We want people to be able to use their old armies if they wish, or to start new ones, or to add new miniatures to old armies – whatever they want.
Boo. Hiss. What if my old army was 10mm scale? DO the nubs at WarCom even know about Warmaster?
so keeping 28mm for new models or standard AoS 32mm models for new releases, or even going back to 3rd Edi 25mm?
lol, the scale debate continues, just within a different range of values
I can't seem them *not* producing the minis in AoS scale (32 or whatever it is). I would be surprised if it was old school 25/28mm, though a literal read of their answer implies that it would be - of course thats do to the fact that GW doesn't officially acknowledge that the scale has ever changed.
This isn't Lord of the Rings and WHFB is not meat.
My prediction, now that we know it's on squared bases, same scale, no silly names, and so on: TOW will eclipse AoS in terms of popularity and sales. Easily.
#doubt.
Indications are that TOW is getting the same support as Adeptus Titanicus and Necromunda. For TOW to eclipse AoS in popularity and sales would require TOW to have enough a large enough product range and frequent enough releases for people to spend their money at that same frequency and volume, and that just does not seem to be in the cards.
I dont know why people thought the game would be 10mm-15mm to begin with anyway. GW will not produce a wargame like this without the ability to potentially have minis cross over, if not as whole units, but as potential conversion. having their minis the same scale across all games mean more sales.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I dont know why people thought the game would be 10mm-15mm to begin with anyway. GW will not produce a wargame like this without the ability to potentially have minis cross over, if not as whole units, but as potential conversion. having their minis the same scale across all games mean more sales.
*Stares at you in Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis.*
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I dont know why people thought the game would be 10mm-15mm to begin with anyway. GW will not produce a wargame like this without the ability to potentially have minis cross over, if not as whole units, but as potential conversion. having their minis the same scale across all games mean more sales.
*Stares at you in Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis.*
Oh let's open that can of worms shall we?
The Titanicus and Aeronautica models seem to be "1/4th of 40k" (whatever that might be). But looking at the models they seem to work just fine with 6mm scaled humans. Note that the original Titans and aircraft were closer to 3mm scale. The Forgeworld aircraft were more akin to "1/5th of 40k" whilst tanks generally were all over the place.
Malika2 wrote: 10mm scale was Warmaster I guess. 15mm...GW never did that, right?
I am intrigued by the mention of 'Half Orcs' whatever those might be. I wonder how that would work though, don't WHFB Orcs reproduce through spores as well, kinda like that 40k counterparts?
I really hope they do keep Steadfast because it was a wonderful rule that allowed infantry to actually survive being charged without having to have unbreakable or stubborn.
My prediction, now that we know it's on squared bases, same scale, no silly names, and so on: TOW will eclipse AoS in terms of popularity and sales. Easily.
That depends on how whipped the Betrayed, Offened and Never-Again ex-fantasy players are. I suspect at least some of them will come crawling back, but hopefully not that many.
Having both square and round bases to use in both WHF and AoS is really easy. Conquest is doing it since its beginnings so you can play rank&file and a skirmish with the same minis.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I dont know why people thought the game would be 10mm-15mm to begin with anyway. GW will not produce a wargame like this without the ability to potentially have minis cross over, if not as whole units, but as potential conversion. having their minis the same scale across all games mean more sales.
*Stares at you in Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis.*
Oh let's open that can of worms shall we?
The Titanicus and Aeronautica models seem to be "1/4th of 40k" (whatever that might be). But looking at the models they seem to work just fine with 6mm scaled humans. Note that the original Titans and aircraft were closer to 3mm scale. The Forgeworld aircraft were more akin to "1/5th of 40k" whilst tanks generally were all over the place.
Err, the point was more that GW produced miniature titans and flyers in plastic that do not cross over with 40k proper, rather than relation to legacy games. On that note though, the scale for GWs aeronautica Imperialis is smaller than the scale of Forgeworlds by a good amount, whereas the new Adeptus Titanicus titans are - as you noted - noticeably larger than the old Epic ones (while the infantry and tanks are probably fine in relation, its a moot point because as of yet those cannot be fielded in new AT whatsoever).
My prediction, now that we know it's on squared bases, same scale, no silly names, and so on: TOW will eclipse AoS in terms of popularity and sales. Easily.
That depends on how whipped the Betrayed, Offened and Never-Again ex-fantasy players are. I suspect at least some of them will come crawling back, but hopefully not that many.
I fear too many. Todays news was like a clarion call for all of them to emerge from the woodwork and throw a party based on the social media activity I've been seeing. Many are already predicting AoS imminent demise lol
My prediction, now that we know it's on squared bases, same scale, no silly names, and so on: TOW will eclipse AoS in terms of popularity and sales. Easily.
That depends on how whipped the Betrayed, Offened and Never-Again ex-fantasy players are. I suspect at least some of them will come crawling back, but hopefully not that many.
I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
I also can't wait to see "square base adapters" becoming a thing.
If they're pulling ideas from all editions, I hope they dump some of the ideas that led to massive armies in 8th, and dump the random charge distance.
Other than that, looking forward to it!
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Dudeface wrote: I also can't wait to see "square base adapters" becoming a thing.
Problem is that if they use the old base sizes, you can't really make adapters because the diagonal of the square base is bigger than a circular base, but a circular base is bigger than the short edge of a square base.
You pretty much need to magnetise the feet and just have 2 separate bases.
I just hope that they use the army building rules from 3rd edition. Including monstrous hosts, allied/mercenary contingents with their own "army lists", etc.
Wow. I didn't believe that this would be some warmaster reboot or only have a basic semblance to WHFB like some did, but it's still awesome to have confirmation of square bases, the same scale *and* It'll be pretty much classic WHFB gameplay.
The sticking to WHFB faction names is a bit of a surprise, too.
Once again though....there's more uncertainty over just what the term "The Old World" is actually referring to when GW uses it. Considering they said "Da boyz woz called Orcs in da Old World" surely that means they're using the term to refer to the setting overall, not just the continent?
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
However, the thing is that at least in 40K that expensive ten model box will give you a functioning unit. In FB you need three or so of such boxes for one unit.
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
The prices are what they are, but if they want the game to do well they'll make it so you don't need a couple of dozen boxes as a minimum. It's the not the prices I had issue with but the quantity expected.
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
However, the thing is that at least in 40K that expensive ten model box will give you a functioning unit. In FB you need three or so of such boxes for one unit.
Yes, and? You *can* run a 10-strong regiment in Fantasy. It'd be awful, but you can do it, the box gives you a valid unit.
It was only 8th with its stupid extra rank fighting and steadfast that got crazy with the number of models in an infantry unit, it was 40+ or don’t bother. In earlier editions outside of horde type exceptions like gobbos, 20 ish was the norm. With the article saying they took mechanics from 3rd through to 8th, we’ve got a 5/6ths chance of not having that horror show!
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
However, the thing is that at least in 40K that expensive ten model box will give you a functioning unit. In FB you need three or so of such boxes for one unit.
Yes, and? You *can* run a 10-strong regiment in Fantasy. It'd be awful, but you can do it, the box gives you a valid unit.
And that's the exact train of thought that would put me off going back into fantasy. A large volume of people will be entering the game from scratch, including existing GW customers given their uptick over the last few years. Being told you need 3+ troops and each will cost you £100 whilst only being collectively 20% of your army in some cases (looking at you skaven etc) is a hard sell. WHFB didn't exactly fit into the scaling game size as well as 40k/sigmar do either.
Dudeface wrote: The prices are what they are, but if they want the game to do well they'll make it so you don't need a couple of dozen boxes as a minimum. It's the not the prices I had issue with but the quantity expected.
Earlier editions of both 40k and wfb required far less models and then over time, points values dropped and army sizes increased to where we are today. GW knows what they're doing with this.
I sound cynical, but when you look at their track record, it's just being realistic.
My prediction, now that we know it's on squared bases, same scale, no silly names, and so on: TOW will eclipse AoS in terms of popularity and sales. Easily.
That depends on how whipped the Betrayed, Offened and Never-Again ex-fantasy players are. I suspect at least some of them will come crawling back, but hopefully not that many.
I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
I also can't wait to see "square base adapters" becoming a thing.
TBH, I'm hoping that it ends up like 6th edition. At 28-35mm scale I want a game where its 2-3 units of 10-15 infantrymen each, 1-2 units of 5-10 cavalry, a hero or two, and an artillery piece/warmachine/monster. Bigger than a "skirmish" game but a lot smaller than what WHFB ended up as in 7th/8th edition. If its a "specialist" type game then theres a good chance thats the way it goes since they probably won't be pumping out massive miniatures ranges and tons of huge monsters and the like for this (at least not right off the bat).
Assuming it uses the new smaller table sizes that all GW games seem to be moving towards, I don't really see any other option here, to be frank. It was already challenging enough to maneuver 7th/8th ed WHFB armies on 6x4 tables with almost no terrain (typical for us was usually like 3-4 pieces of terrain total, not including things like walls/barricades and low gentle-sloped hills), the new table sizes reduce the table area by around 25% IIRC which just makes it that much harder - you wouldn't be able to have any terrain on the table at all at that point.
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Problem is that if they use the old base sizes, you can't really make adapters because the diagonal of the square base is bigger than a circular base, but a circular base is bigger than the short edge of a square base.
You pretty much need to magnetise the feet and just have 2 separate bases.
This could explain why GW has started doing 28.5 and 30mm rounds. You can fit 20mm and 25mm squares in them.
I actually hope they ditch 20mm squares except maybe for tiny things like goblins. Ranking human-sized models on 20mm bases was always an utter pain. Make 25mm the basic human-sized infantry base size.
I really hope they do keep Steadfast because it was a wonderful rule that allowed infantry to actually survive being charged without having to have unbreakable or stubborn.
Only at the expense of flank charges, monsters and elite infantry. It threw tactics out the window and reduced armies to fielding one massive block of infantry with a couple of other units, usually monsters.
I wasn't a fan.
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
Yeah I'm really worried that GW will just do what they did to WHFB, see no one is buying the Old World and then cancel it because they can't bloody learn.
Malika2 wrote: 10mm scale was Warmaster I guess. 15mm...GW never did that, right?
I am intrigued by the mention of 'Half Orcs' whatever those might be. I wonder how that would work though, don't WHFB Orcs reproduce through spores as well, kinda like that 40k counterparts?
Wasn't battle of five armies 15mm?
It was 10mm. GW made 15mm models though, at least for Traveller. They even made 20mm for Dark Future.
I see dwarf icons and Norse dwarfs on the map. I hope that's a good sign that we'll get old school dwarfs. We still have iron breakers, hammerers, long beards, etc. But we could use troll slayers, miners, warriors, quarrelers, and cannons agian.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Edit: Also, the article mentions some things in passing, hobgoblins, centaurs, etc.
But what about half-orcs? Were those ever really mentioned in Warhammer? Would they be like kruleboyz?
I'm excited. I'd like a proper wargame in the vein of what drew me into wargaming in the first place.
Super hero marvel madness (AOS) is great but is not a classic wargame and does not appeal to people that want a classic wargame that all sodded off to kings of war and 9th age.
This is a perfect way to get them and people like me back to the Ivory Tower.
If one enjoy super hero marvel madness style games that AOS 100% embraces, keep playing that.
And now people like me can have a game finally after what will be 7 or 8 years.
The playerbase will remain as fragmented as it is today, I dont see it becoming more fragmented. Other than the "GW Ride or Die" guys that want to play warhammer but wont play anything not GW.
If you hate square bases, just do what I had to do. Put them on movement trays. Kings of War has plenty of round bases as does 9th age. They use adapters or movement trays.
GaroRobe wrote: I see dwarf icons and Norse dwarfs on the map. I hope that's a good sign that we'll get old school dwarfs. We still have iron breakers, hammerers, long beards, etc. But we could use troll slayers, miners, warriors, quarrelers, and cannons agian.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Edit: Also, the article mentions some things in passing, hobgoblins, centaurs, etc.
But what about half-orcs? Were those ever really mentioned in Warhammer? Would they be like kruleboyz?
They're in 3rd edition. They're what you'd imagine. Note that in 3rd edition orcs were more traditional/less Warhammer orc-y, in that they were just vicious, if cowardly, warrior tribes. Not the silly WAAAGH! types we know from more recent years. In that sense, they were ultimately just humanoids.
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
Yeah I'm really worried that GW will just do what they did to WHFB, see no one is buying the Old World and then cancel it because they can't bloody learn.
I mean - North America is GWs largest single market. Historically speaking, NA was also (according to those in the know - i've seen former design studio members comment on this in various interviews etc in the past so im inclined to believe it to be true) WHFBs weakest market - by a very large margin.
Unless GW has figured out how to make the game/setting more appealing to American/Canadian audiences than it was before, I'm inclined to think that the relaunch would have one foot in the grave from the get-go. Though I suppose that WHFB being popular in the UK/EU but weaker in North America could indicate that GW sees TOW as a product that is marketed more towards EU/UK audiences. This further reinforces the idea that its more of a "specialist" type product though and won't be getting the same level of support as 40k and AoS - if GW is only really counting on sales from regions that account for only about 45% of their current revenue streams to carry the product line then they aren't going to invest a lot into it unless North American sales numbers come in much higher than they project them to be.
That in turn points (to me) that this game is not being designed to have giant blocks of models on the table, but rather a much smaller (and saner) footprint.
The model count in 8th was not any different than it was in 7th or 6th.
I have my army rosters from tournaments from all of those editions and the model count was roughly the same.
And the model count of many AOS armies is similar if not more depending on the army you are running.
The model count being higher in warhammer is a myth.
The steadfast rule made unit blobs a thing which is very bad. That part is true. Massive sized individual units was a thing.
My 6th - 8th edition armies averaged between 70 and 90 models per army.
My AOS armies averaged between 65 and 80 models per army. Thats not a massive difference. My skaven army had 180 models in it for AOS.
Dudeface wrote: I've no WHFB models left after a dabble in 7th ed. If they still expect people to whack out multiple core blocks of 30+ dudes at £30 per 10, can assure you I'll have no interest in coming back. I think they're going to have to reign in the scope and game sizes somewhat to account for the bulk of people not having functional armies.
You're going to be disappointed then. Look at the recent prices for the cadian guardsmen set or even genestealer cult neophytes. The prices will be absurd and you'll be expected to like it.
Yeah I'm really worried that GW will just do what they did to WHFB, see no one is buying the Old World and then cancel it because they can't bloody learn.
I mean - North America is GWs largest single market. Historically speaking, NA was also (according to those in the know - i've seen former design studio members comment on this in various interviews etc in the past so im inclined to believe it to be true) WHFBs weakest market - by a very large margin.
Unless GW has figured out how to make the game/setting more appealing to American/Canadian audiences than it was before, I'm inclined to think that the relaunch would have one foot in the grave from the get-go. Though I suppose that WHFB being popular in the UK/EU but weaker in North America could indicate that GW sees TOW as a product that is marketed more towards EU/UK audiences. This further reinforces the idea that its more of a "specialist" type product though and won't be getting the same level of support as 40k and AoS - if GW is only really counting on sales from regions that account for only about 45% of their current revenue streams to carry the product line then they aren't going to invest a lot into it unless North American sales numbers come in much higher than they project them to be.
This is a new decade, one where GW realise that the best strategy is a constant, neverending, in-your-face stream of releases rather than the 'scraps every few years' approach that marked 7th/8th. That and the diehards for GW in general have never been so zealous and will happily devour TOW even if it's literally the worst ruleset ever written just because there's a lot of hype, and rules/models/prices mean nothing to the GW fandom if they're told to get excited for it.
I mean - if you are after the pinnacle of tactics and strategy and that is your desire - embracing things like the double turn are the opposite of that as well.
I mean - North America is GWs largest single market. Historically speaking, NA was also (according to those in the know - i've seen former design studio members comment on this in various interviews etc in the past so im inclined to believe it to be true) WHFBs weakest market - by a very large margin.
The EU+UK is about 100 million more consumers than the US and Canada FWIW. Most of them pretty wealthy too.
This is a new decade, one where GW realise that the best strategy is a constant, neverending, in-your-face stream of releases rather than the 'scraps every few years' approach that marked 7th/8th. That and the diehards for GW in general have never been so zealous and will happily devour TOW even if it's literally the worst ruleset ever written just because there's a lot of hype, and rules/models/prices mean nothing to the GW fandom if they're told to get excited for it.
None of which is particularly relevant. If there was no appeal there was no appeal. I don't think the rules or quality of the game had anything to do with it, nor did the release schedule. 40k was not a particularly great ruleset at the time either and likewise suffered from the same slow-trickle release model, but 40k stil sold massively well in the US (much moreso than in other markets like the UK and parts of the EU that were mostly dominated by WHFB). It seems to be an issue of genre moreso than it is a factor of anything else. That old-school eurocentric style of medieval fantasy has historically never been all that popular in the US, whereas European audiences eat that gak up (probably because its generally much more culturally relatable to them). Theres a reason why D&D didn't surge in popularity in the US until WotC started pushing it more in the direction of gonzo mythic fancy (in many ways along the same lines as Age of Sigmar), though it generally has done a better job of appealing to American audiences without alienating traditionalists and euro audiences.
As long as I can play a DoW army I could get into this new edition. That said, unit sizes are going to be a factor. Having to paint 30-50 models for a single unit is a non-starter for me.
Kanluwen wrote: It's the one thing heavily implied, via cheeky wording, since day one. Having 100% confirmation is a different story.
They kept insinuating that this was not an attempt to "fragment" the player base. This is going to fragment it, hard.
Why? WHFB players are now playing 9th Age, so they are a different "fragment" already.
Once again, this is categorically FALSE. There is no one system WHFB players went to, they're already fragmented. The entire community is split between 8th, 6th, 4th/5th, WAB 9th, KoW, and the abortion that can't even keep its own sub community from fracturing known as 9th Age. There is NO UNITY and this will probably bring back many, if not most, to the most united grouping since 8th.
Kanluwen wrote: It's the one thing heavily implied, via cheeky wording, since day one. Having 100% confirmation is a different story.
They kept insinuating that this was not an attempt to "fragment" the player base. This is going to fragment it, hard.
Why? WHFB players are now playing 9th Age, so they are a different "fragment" already.
Once again, this is categorically FALSE. There is no one system WHFB players went to, they're already fragmented. The entire community is split between 8th, 6th, 4th/5th, WAB 9th, KoW, and the abortion that can't even keep its own sub community from fracturing known as 9th Age. There is NO UNITY and this will probably bring back many, if not most, to the most united grouping since 8th.
I'd agree. The GW banner is hard to resist and having an official supported WHFB game again will bring a lot of people back under that one banner.
Kanluwen wrote: It's the one thing heavily implied, via cheeky wording, since day one. Having 100% confirmation is a different story.
They kept insinuating that this was not an attempt to "fragment" the player base. This is going to fragment it, hard.
Why? WHFB players are now playing 9th Age, so they are a different "fragment" already.
Once again, this is categorically FALSE. There is no one system WHFB players went to, they're already fragmented. The entire community is split between 8th, 6th, 4th/5th, WAB 9th, KoW, and the abortion that can't even keep its own sub community from fracturing known as 9th Age. There is NO UNITY and this will probably bring back many, if not most, to the most united grouping since 8th.
I expect this is definitely the case. It's probably not a coincidence TOW was uncharacteristically announced out of nowhere the same time KoW 3e was being released - all the talk dried up from that and into "I guess I'll use KoW until the OFFICIAL GAMES HECKIN WORKSHOP rank and file game is released!"
I mean - North America is GWs largest single market. Historically speaking, NA was also (according to those in the know - i've seen former design studio members comment on this in various interviews etc in the past so im inclined to believe it to be true) WHFBs weakest market - by a very large margin.
The EU+UK is about 100 million more consumers than the US and Canada FWIW. Most of them pretty wealthy too.
Yes but in terms of GWs sales revenue, etc. GW considers the EU and UK two separate markets. As of the most recent financial reports, North American sales are larger than either of the other two by a pretty large margin, and almost as large as both the EU and UK combined. As I understand it GW also sees the US as a higher potential growth market than it does the UK or EU.
I mean - North America is GWs largest single market. Historically speaking, NA was also (according to those in the know - i've seen former design studio members comment on this in various interviews etc in the past so im inclined to believe it to be true) WHFBs weakest market - by a very large margin.
The EU+UK is about 100 million more consumers than the US and Canada FWIW. Most of them pretty wealthy too.
Yes but in terms of GWs sales revenue, etc. GW considers the EU and UK two separate markets. As of the most recent financial reports, North American sales are larger than either of the other two by a pretty large margin, and almost as large as both the EU and UK combined. As I understand it GW also sees the US as a higher potential growth market than it does the UK or EU.
Well then it makes sense to sell stuff that appeals to the EU+UK as they have not maximised their potential in those markets if they have more potential consumers but fewer sales. Even the EU on it's own is more consumers than all of NA.
Edit: And I agree with Stonehorse, I'd mostly be interested in the models from that era and any new models they made in a similar scale and style. I also hope that whoever is doing the project is genuinely enthusiastic about it and wants to do something interesting with it.
One bonus of growth in the USA over the EU is that its a single country and, whilst its broken into states, its a single system to work with. Plus its all English (or American). The EU is a lot of separate blocks and whilst English is very dominant the world over, there's still a huge variety of languages that GW has to work with to bring a product to market there.
Once again, this is categorically FALSE. There is no one system WHFB players went to, they're already fragmented. The entire community is split between 8th, 6th, 4th/5th, WAB 9th, KoW, and the abortion that can't even keep its own sub community from fracturing known as 9th Age. There is NO UNITY and this will probably bring back many, if not most, to the most united grouping since 8th.
I expect this is definitely the case. It's probably not a coincidence TOW was uncharacteristically announced out of nowhere the same time KoW 3e was being released - all the talk dried up from that and into "I guess I'll use KoW until the OFFICIAL GAMES HECKIN WORKSHOP rank and file game is released!"
Thats different from the response I encountered. What I saw was a lot of people saying "GW could have had my money but lost it, and I'm not going back". This also ignores the more obvious problem that KoW has a product line that is available for sale *today*, as it has for the entirety of the past decade, and will for the forseeable future, whereas GW has the shattered fragments and remains of a product line available and nothing on the distant horizon to fill that in or build it up new.
Nobody with more than a fraction of a brain saw the Old World announcement and said "well I'm not buying any rank and file minis for the next 3-5 years while I wait", Mantics business has been seemingly unimpacted by the announcement considering they've been continually expanding their product range at an accelerating rate and even launching new games based on the same IP (like their Man-O-War knockoff), and people continue to buy minis from Para-Bellum and other manufacturers for use in their various games, rank and file or otherwise.
I mean while I'm glad this project exists GW is taking to long to get it out the door to be honest. There are so many systems and games out there my excitement is slowly waning.
My fix for rank and flank is being taken care of by Kings of War, 9th Age and good old 6th edition.
I realize I say this before models even come out and probably completely change my opinion.
This is a new decade, one where GW realise that the best strategy is a constant, neverending, in-your-face stream of releases rather than the 'scraps every few years' approach that marked 7th/8th. That and the diehards for GW in general have never been so zealous and will happily devour TOW even if it's literally the worst ruleset ever written just because there's a lot of hype, and rules/models/prices mean nothing to the GW fandom if they're told to get excited for it.
None of which is particularly relevant. If there was no appeal there was no appeal. I don't think the rules or quality of the game had anything to do with it, nor did the release schedule. 40k was not a particularly great ruleset at the time either and likewise suffered from the same slow-trickle release model, but 40k stil sold massively well in the US (much moreso than in other markets like the UK and parts of the EU that were mostly dominated by WHFB). It seems to be an issue of genre moreso than it is a factor of anything else. That old-school eurocentric style of medieval fantasy has historically never been all that popular in the US, whereas European audiences eat that gak up (probably because its generally much more culturally relatable to them). Theres a reason why D&D didn't surge in popularity in the US until WotC started pushing it more in the direction of gonzo mythic fancy (in many ways along the same lines as Age of Sigmar), though it generally has done a better job of appealing to American audiences without alienating traditionalists and euro audiences.
You think WHFB failed because of the lore/theme? Not the high cost, the rules and overall entry barrier, and the lack of attention from GW that meant the game barely got updated with much of substance? The End Times was getting interesting in the setting again shortly before AoS.
I mean - North America is GWs largest single market. Historically speaking, NA was also (according to those in the know - i've seen former design studio members comment on this in various interviews etc in the past so im inclined to believe it to be true) WHFBs weakest market - by a very large margin.
The EU+UK is about 100 million more consumers than the US and Canada FWIW. Most of them pretty wealthy too.
Yes but in terms of GWs sales revenue, etc. GW considers the EU and UK two separate markets. As of the most recent financial reports, North American sales are larger than either of the other two by a pretty large margin, and almost as large as both the EU and UK combined. As I understand it GW also sees the US as a higher potential growth market than it does the UK or EU.
Well then it makes sense to sell stuff that appeals to the EU+UK as they have not maximised their potential in those markets if they have more potential consumers but fewer sales. Even the EU on it's own is more consumers than all of NA.
Except, as I said in the post you quoted (literally the last sentence) - GW considers the US a higher potential growth market than it does the UK or EU. As in literally the exact opposite of what you said - they believe they *have* maximized their potential in the UK and EU, but not in the US.
Indeed, my own experience is that brand recognition in the UK and EU is already very very high, whereas here in the US GW and Warhammer are still relatively obscure (though much better known now than it was 20+ years ago when I started in the hobby).
Number of consumers doesn't necessarily correlate to number of *potential* consumers, there are a lot of dynamics at work that may carve off sections of the consumer base from being likely purchasers of a product, whether it be linguistic barriers, space limitations (the average American has much larger living space than the average European does, which is important for something as space intensive as a tabletop wargame), access to playing accommodations (the American tabletop wargaming landscape is dominated by easy access to gaming stores with spacious play areas, whereas European gamers are more likely to participate in clubs that meet at community centers or in peoples homes), etc.
This is a new decade, one where GW realise that the best strategy is a constant, neverending, in-your-face stream of releases rather than the 'scraps every few years' approach that marked 7th/8th. That and the diehards for GW in general have never been so zealous and will happily devour TOW even if it's literally the worst ruleset ever written just because there's a lot of hype, and rules/models/prices mean nothing to the GW fandom if they're told to get excited for it.
None of which is particularly relevant. If there was no appeal there was no appeal. I don't think the rules or quality of the game had anything to do with it, nor did the release schedule. 40k was not a particularly great ruleset at the time either and likewise suffered from the same slow-trickle release model, but 40k stil sold massively well in the US (much moreso than in other markets like the UK and parts of the EU that were mostly dominated by WHFB). It seems to be an issue of genre moreso than it is a factor of anything else. That old-school eurocentric style of medieval fantasy has historically never been all that popular in the US, whereas European audiences eat that gak up (probably because its generally much more culturally relatable to them). Theres a reason why D&D didn't surge in popularity in the US until WotC started pushing it more in the direction of gonzo mythic fancy (in many ways along the same lines as Age of Sigmar), though it generally has done a better job of appealing to American audiences without alienating traditionalists and euro audiences.
You think WHFB failed because of the lore/theme? Not the high cost, the rules and overall entry barrier, and the lack of attention from GW that meant the game barely got updated with much of substance? The End Times was getting interesting in the setting again shortly before AoS.
I got another guy in these comments saying that army size and cost in 7th/8th edition was comparable or even potentially smaller/cheaper than in 40k. So, apparently, this wasn't the problem.
Also, WHFB had the same release schedule that 40k did, I'm not going to repeat myself on the subject as I pointed out the relevant timelines in this thread like 40 pages ago, its easy enough to google to see when new army books/codecies were released and to figure out what minis were released when. Apparently this wasn't the problem either.
Both of those points also ignore the pre-6th edition landscape of things when price points, lack of support, etc. would not have been relevant concerns - contrary to what you seem to believe, WHFB has been around in the states for pretty much the entirety of its ~40 year existence. WHFB was going through its growth phase here at the same time as it was in the EU and UK. If price and a slow release schedule slowed its popularity in the US, it would have also done the same in the EU and UK. As it stands, WHFB *never* achieved the same degree of popularity here as it did elsewhere, whereas 40k supposedly took off like a rocket ship and its massive success in the US was what enabled GW to acquire and develop the resources that enabled it to grow as it did from the 90s.
Well I'm glad this is finally out in the open. I did think the format most likely as it would cater to Total War fans, fans of the original WHFB, pull back in players from other systems (KoW etc.)
I'll hold fire on whether to commit until I see whether steadfast is a thing, as in my view that ruined the game moving WHFB away from being a 'wargame' (with the power of cavalary charges, flank attacks etc.) and those standard tropes which have existed in historical wargaming since they have been a thing.
As somebody who played Kings of War, the game is different enough from any version of Warhammer that I can't really see the cross-appeal.
I'd be surprised if many KoW players "came back" or "moved to" TOW. I'm more worried about Conquest being cannibalized by TOW... I like Conquest quite a bit and would hate to see it hurt. And there's actually cross-appeal there.
You think WHFB failed because of the lore/theme? Not the high cost, the rules and overall entry barrier, and the lack of attention from GW that meant the game barely got updated with much of substance? The End Times was getting interesting in the setting again shortly before AoS.
I remember mathing it out a few times. WHFB 8th had similar buy-in prices to Warmahordes at the time for "competitive" lists.
The major problem was everybody who played WHFB wanted to play 2000, 1999+1, or 2400/2500 point games. I've been playing 1350 point games a lot lately and let me tell you, they are an absolute joy with extremely low cost of entry, comparatively.
As somebody who never played WHFB and went in different directions with games when i came back to wargaming (WM/H, Malifaux and just painting), im watching this with interest. New sculpts and updates to the old classic WHFB ranges would be of interest to me.
However if its £60 for 10 Empire Greatswords and you need them in units of 10 or more, im out. No matter how good the sculpts are.
Also the rules need to be..... you know.....good and all in one place. If they are just a vague excuse and spread them all over the place in supplements, extra rule books, etc it will be a no from me
So im going to watch and i will not adopt at release. I'll give it time and watch to see what the coo actually is and how GW I approaching it.
Rihgu wrote: As somebody who played Kings of War, the game is different enough from any version of Warhammer that I can't really see the cross-appeal.
I'd be surprised if many KoW players "came back" or "moved to" TOW. I'm more worried about Conquest being cannibalized by TOW... I like Conquest quite a bit and would hate to see it hurt. And there's actually cross-appeal there.
You think WHFB failed because of the lore/theme? Not the high cost, the rules and overall entry barrier, and the lack of attention from GW that meant the game barely got updated with much of substance? The End Times was getting interesting in the setting again shortly before AoS.
I remember mathing it out a few times. WHFB 8th had similar buy-in prices to Warmahordes at the time for "competitive" lists.
The major problem was everybody who played WHFB wanted to play 2000, 1999+1, or 2400/2500 point games. I've been playing 1350 point games a lot lately and let me tell you, they are an absolute joy with extremely low cost of entry, comparatively.
Thats all very true. I tried getting smaller campaigns going but couldn't get any interest in deviating from the tournament standard.
Granted our fantasy campaigns back then had 25-30+ players every year. The biggest problem from a money making standpoint (GW) was that all of our new players that we got every year never spent a dime on retail. They bought their armies used on ebay or from other players. The interest was certainly there for WHFB. The desire to spend a ton of money was not and there were easy ways to make armies for much cheaper than give GW money.
Daedalus81 wrote: As long as the system works with my chaos warriors being on 32mm circles instead of 25mm square then I'm good to go.
On this note, I'm very concerned with things like Warriors of Chaos being on 32s, but their heroes mostly if not all being on 40s? Same with Bloodletters. Are we not going to see embedded heroes in units...?
I love the part of the article that has GW accepting that 10mm and 15mm are scales. But won't commit to saying what actual scale their models are.
Lol.
Wonder which they'd call it now? 25/28/32/35mm.
Daedalus81 wrote: As long as the system works with my chaos warriors being on 32mm circles instead of 25mm square then I'm good to go.
On this note, I'm very concerned with things like Warriors of Chaos being on 32s, but their heroes mostly if not all being on 40s? Same with Bloodletters. Are we not going to see embedded heroes in units...?
We could always attach them to the side of the unit. That's what happened with incompatible sizes anyway.
Not surprised, but kind of happy with the explicit mention of people being able to use their existing collections.
Certainly glad to have confirmation and to not have to repeat the "square" and "scale" debates for another few years!
Da Boss wrote:I'm skeptical about this game because it's GW making it and I'm not generally impressed with their rules writing ability. But I'll check it out!
I hope the models are actually 28mm though and not the bigger scale they're using nowadays. If they're out of scale I'm not that interested.
Pretty much sums it up for me at this stage. Some older rulesets by GW weren't always great, but typically playable and fun. Looking at the mess that is Necromunda, the weirdness of new Kill Team or the massive simplification of Aeronautica, I'm not sure it'll be any good. Looking at... pretty much any of their systems, the constant churn of new releases makes me worried too. If things look alright upon release, I'll start dusting off an old army, paint some extra figures and maybe add a new unit or two (from eBay or possibly a new release). If there's already a new book by the time my army would be finished, I'll just give up on GW; if not, maybe I'll try it out.
Kanluwen wrote: It's the one thing heavily implied, via cheeky wording, since day one. Having 100% confirmation is a different story.
They kept insinuating that this was not an attempt to "fragment" the player base. This is going to fragment it, hard.
Why? WHFB players are now playing 9th Age, so they are a different "fragment" already.
Once again, this is categorically FALSE. There is no one system WHFB players went to, they're already fragmented. The entire community is split between 8th, 6th, 4th/5th, WAB 9th, KoW, and the abortion that can't even keep its own sub community from fracturing known as 9th Age. There is NO UNITY and this will probably bring back many, if not most, to the most united grouping since 8th.
To be honest, that's the main reason I'm interested anyway. Ease of access. There are some games I'm passionate about, and I'll have multiple playable factions, organize intro games, campaigns, whatever. From WHFB-esque games, nothing has replaced it in terms of my interest or in terms of the local playerbase. If something decent appears, something that gets people playing ranked Fantasy games again, I'll happily join in.
Crimson wrote:I actually hope they ditch 20mm squares except maybe for tiny things like goblins. Ranking human-sized models on 20mm bases was always an utter pain. Make 25mm the basic human-sized infantry base size.
Meh, I've once successfully ranked Chaos Warriors on 20mm squares (converted with skeleton bits to make them undead, counts-as Grave Guard - the army represented Crom the Conqueror's host who were lost in Sylvania according to post-Storm of Chaos lore). Most other things were easy enough compared to that, though I did make a habit of writing numbers on the bottoms of the bases to ensure units always ranked up well.
Rihgu wrote: As somebody who played Kings of War, the game is different enough from any version of Warhammer that I can't really see the cross-appeal.
I'd be surprised if many KoW players "came back" or "moved to" TOW. I'm more worried about Conquest being cannibalized by TOW... I like Conquest quite a bit and would hate to see it hurt. And there's actually cross-appeal there.
Indeed, I only recently started getting into Conquest after turning my nose up at it when it first came out. The game is a real gem and mechanically speaking it could be described as a clean-sheet design of WHFB 9th edition, as it takes many gameplay concepts from WHFB but modernizes and streamlines them instead of relying on the core of a 40 year old legacy game engine. I think it will absolutely take a blow from The Old World, much moreso than the other games people are pointing to - losing Conquest to WHFB would be a real tragedy, but hopefully it can survive on its own merits.
However if its £60 for 10 Empire Greatswords and you need them in units of 10 or more, im out. No matter how good the sculpts are.
I dont know how much they will cost, but I know that they won't be any cheaper than the currently available Greatsword minis, so you can base expectations on that to some extent.
Also the rules need to be..... you know.....good and all in one place. If they are just a vague excuse and spread them all over the place in supplements, extra rule books, etc it will be a no from me
I can all but guarantee you're not going to be happy. Regardless if its a main studio game or a specialist studio game, the rules release models for 40k, Necromunda, Adeptus Titanicus, and even AoS (albeit to a lesser extent than the others) kind of only points in one direction.
I’m happy, we got some news again. WHFB is probably my favourite wargame. Mordheim is a close second.
I think it’ll do well, if the scale of battles is like in 6th edition.
It’ll get me to buy more than 1 army, rather than maxing out on one, like I’m STILL currently doing with my night goblin horde (which I love, but I just.. just can’t start another horde army)
I hope it will revive the interest of FB in my area. If I don’t like the new rules, I’ll try to lure new players into 8th.
And new models on square bases is always a plus.
Empire, Chaos, Bretonnia and Kislev are a given now, eh? Judging by the map and direct references.
I would guess we’ll see a completely new army, so that old players get to spend money on something other than just a rehash of old infantry units.
What would that be? Norsca? Chaos Dwarfs? Cathay? Are there any other forces mentioned in the lore somewhere, but never fleshed out by GW proper?
I'd probably be a lot more thrilled about the return to square bases if I hadn't already rebased my WHFB stuff to round bases for AoS. Here's hoping the rules can support round bases on movement trays.
The problem with 8th Edition Megaunits could often be less to do with cost and more to do with boredom. If you had a similar model count in 7th edition it would be split across 3/4 units, which might be different troop types or at least painted to look distinctive. Who wants to paint 80 identical goblins?
The problem with 8th Edition Megaunits could often be less to do with cost and more to do with boredom. If you had a similar model count in 7th edition it would be split across 3/4 units, which might be different troop types or at least painted to look distinctive. Who wants to paint 80 identical goblins?
Precisely. In 6th/7th my army sizes were roughly the same in model count as they were in 8th.
The big difference was instead of 6-8 units in 2000 points you had 2-4 units in 8th, and one of them was your big daddy blob deathstar belly smacking the opponent's big daddy blob deathstar in the middle of the table while both of you were shaking those magic six dice hoping to "six dice for the win" and get your uber-doom-erase-75%-of-your-opponent's-army-in-one-go spell off first with double six irresistable force.
The simple two houserules of "flanking removes steadfast" and "double 1s are miscast" stopped both of those things... but those were houserules and of course we know how a lot of people feel about houserules.
The only part that interests me is the lore. I’ll happily buy some new WHFB novels by CL Werner or Chris Wraight. The Old World was a fun setting for stories.
As for the minis, nope. They were too expensive when the Goldswords dropped in plastic, and have apparently only risen in price per mini since then. I might have been tempted by Kislev or Cathay minis, but the very thought of $35 for a single human mini or $50 for 5-10 mooks hits me like ice water.
There are too many affordable alternatives of decent-or-better quality for me to buy if the novels give me the modeling itch:
WGA is making Empire proxies with their Conquistadors.
Last Sword’s elves and lizardmen are great.
Mantic’s ratmen are good enough for Skaven to my eye.
For dwarfs, Oathmark, Mantic and Avatars of War have decent minis, but Reaper Bones are the closest lookalikes to GW, and still cheaper per axe-dwarf.
Orcs are well represented in plastic and resin across many, many ranges.
Tomb Kings are well covered by TTCombat’s new range.
Fireforge has Bretonnia down.
Chaos is well covered by lots of ranges. The Heartbreaker oldhammer resins are priced competitively with current GW plastics, and loaded with “character”.
So many affordable alternatives are out there that I suspect many TOW customers will start shopping around once they see the prices.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
GW will happily sell them new models.
I'm one of those people who couldn't get into AoS when it replaced wfb, so this game appeals to me, depending on how GW rolls it out.
What I'm still sort of surprised about was that they didn't rush this project to make the most of the current popularity of the warhammer total war game. They're launching the third and last game of the series this year and the old world is still seemingly a ways off.
There are tons of facebook groups with fantasy players still playing the game, same with Mordheim. Of course there's going to be a player base. There's also plenty of new people who want a chance at a fantasy game.
By the set up, the way they've been discussing "skirmish" style sounds to me like they're going around 5th - 6th edition style fantasy which to me was the peak. Its not "skirmish" in the way people are making out. Its still 2000 point games, it's just the unit sizes were smaller. It's not like Border Patrol 500 point games, although I'm sure that will be a similar starting point.
The way I see it, Warhammer : TOW came about after that survey they did asking people to submit their thoughts about warhammer a few years back. A lot of people talked about the demise of fantasy battles and hoping for a return.
Arbitrator wrote: I expect this is definitely the case. It's probably not a coincidence TOW was uncharacteristically announced out of nowhere the same time KoW 3e was being released - all the talk dried up from that and into "I guess I'll use KoW until the OFFICIAL GAMES HECKIN WORKSHOP rank and file game is released!"
Just leaning in to +1 the reminder that GW first blurted out some stuff about The Old World about two rounds of internal meetings after KOW 3E released and was proving a financial success. I'm genuinely impressed that the Dub has decided to reinvest in WHFB in a serious way and keep it distinct from AOS, especially as AOS has finally hit its stride as a Real Game, but then again KOW and A Song of Ice and Fire (and the success of Total War) have shown that GW was foolish to declare the rank n flank mass battle game dead however many years back.
Personally? I'll just be sad to see the KOW community lose some of its players, because it will, the draw of the Dub is too strong to keep everyone. Then again, I like to think some of the converts will stay around thanks to the strength of the rules and the freedom of the hobby (or at least the cheapness, GW is getting really tough to justify buying new at the army level, I imagine even more so in 2024 when TOW arrives in whatever form it takes). Nuking the Old World allowed me to look back on 20 years of playing WHFB, and what I realized was how stupid and riddled with NPEs a lot of it was.
catbarf wrote: I'd probably be a lot more thrilled about the return to square bases if I hadn't already rebased my WHFB stuff to round bases for AoS. Here's hoping the rules can support round bases on movement trays.
I would have bet money that GW would lift the round-models-in-square-units trays from ASOIAF, but repeatedly talking about square bases suggests otherwise. If they lifted set unit sizes from KOW they could support both square bases in trays and round bases in other trays, but I don't think the WHFB vets waiting for WTOW want that, as a complaint against KOW is that you don't remove casualties and get to enjoy Ye Old Cloude of Dead Modells like back in the day
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
I know for someone that may not care about rank and file that it may appear that there is no interest for this, especially one immersed deeply in the AOS side of things, but I'm part of several huge social media groups full of people interested in this very thing.
Also reminder that for a few years that very question was asked daily about AOS.
I didn't realize the medieval fantasy game D&D was such a failure in the US. XD
Anyway, I think hopefully if the game is based off of 5th or 6th for the most part it should be fine as a game to play. Community wise you'll get plenty of folk like me that were to young to fully play before it was murdered but grew into with help of Total Warhammer. Things like Trove and Ebay were used to get proxies and rule books.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
Well theres me
I have decades of collecting, reading and enjoying Warhamemr and now AOS as well. If I like the models /books I will buy them.
As well Total War - Cubicle 7 is doing a really good job with continuing to delve into the Warhammer World (and AOS) - combining someof the oldest lore with new and interesting elements. They also seem (like CA) to be working hand in glove with GW - the Age of Sigmar books had a lot of that examined the lead up of the recent Broken Realms campaign - especially with regards to Anvilguard.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
GW will happily sell them new models.
I'm one of those people who couldn't get into AoS when it replaced wfb, so this game appeals to me, depending on how GW rolls it out.
What I'm still sort of surprised about was that they didn't rush this project to make the most of the current popularity of the warhammer total war game. They're launching the third and last game of the series this year and the old world is still seemingly a ways off.
I wouldn't put it past GW to intentionally time it to come out right alongside KoW 4th
I'm not worried about Kings of War, it was doing perfectly well before AoS and will do perfectly well after TOW releases.
People seem to forget that it was doing great for 5 years prior to AoS and view it as a reactionary system, it just happened to be in the right place at the right time, finishing up a KS delivery exactly at the point of WHFB getting nuked.
Mantic will probably sell more minis, since they'll once again be in the position of people buying them as proxies for a mainstream GW game without even having to change the bases.
I already have some round-based KoW Undead that I use for frostgrave, wouldn't be much of a stretch for me to make a soulblight army for AoS at less than half the usual price, when TOW releases, I'll give it a try but none of the minis need to be from GW, I was done with the price rises 10 years ago and the more recent aggressive FOMO marketing keeps me away despite having more disposable income these days.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
You underestimate the ability of people who set models on fire and swore off GW as the whore of babylon to come crawling back at the slightest shake of those square-based hips of her.
GW got me with 2nd ed AoS, where it looked like they're turning a new leaf over, I won't be fooled again- they never change, at best they take a sabbatical from their usual practices.
Glad they put some rumors in the ground and made some flat declarations of intent about old models and rule set (even if a blend of 3rd to 8th sounds like a meaningless non-answer to me).
Now... who's going to be scouring calendars to see what month and year matches the calendar shown in the picture? (30 days, starts on a Tuesday)
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
You'd be surprised. When they binned WFB everyone in my playing group ignored the new AoS because it didn't really qualify as an actual, serious game at that point. When AoS started to mature and we actually began playing it people tended to go for the shiny new model ranges (I suspect that might be rather common - I rarely see AoS armies with large numbers of WFB era models in them). As a result a significant number of people in my group still have old WFB armies stashed away under beds or in boxes. Enough to create a sustainable player base for the game on release. When you couple excitement over a "new" GW game with an instant, viable population of players it is easy to see hobbyists who weren't around for WFB taking the plunge to invest. In that respect I think the decision to make the game back compatible with old WFB models is an extremely good one for kickstarting TOW.
In the article they said they were looking at taking inspiration from 3rd edition through to 8th. I do hope they'll go back to the unit/army sizes common in those earlier editions to make the game more attractive to buy into and collect, both in monetary and painting terms.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The only part that interests me is the lore. I’ll happily buy some new WHFB novels by CL Werner or Chris Wraight. The Old World was a fun setting for stories.
As for the minis, nope. They were too expensive when the Goldswords dropped in plastic, and have apparently only risen in price per mini since then. I might have been tempted by Kislev or Cathay minis, but the very thought of $35 for a single human mini or $50 for 5-10 mooks hits me like ice water.
There are too many affordable alternatives of decent-or-better quality for me to buy if the novels give me the modeling itch:
WGA is making Empire proxies with their Conquistadors.
Last Sword’s elves and lizardmen are great.
Mantic’s ratmen are good enough for Skaven to my eye.
For dwarfs, Oathmark, Mantic and Avatars of War have decent minis, but Reaper Bones are the closest lookalikes to GW, and still cheaper per axe-dwarf.
Orcs are well represented in plastic and resin across many, many ranges.
Tomb Kings are well covered by TTCombat’s new range.
Fireforge has Bretonnia down.
Chaos is well covered by lots of ranges. The Heartbreaker oldhammer resins are priced competitively with current GW plastics, and loaded with “character”.
So many affordable alternatives are out there that I suspect many TOW customers will start shopping around once they see the prices.
This was basically the main reason I hypothesized the possibility of 10/15mm scale minis, and the main reason I'm still expecting GW to find a way to feth people over/why I think the bit about "its the same scale its always been and we want you to use your old armies" is a load of steaming bs.
There are so many *not* GW options out there with incredbile minis at much better pricepoints than anything GW curently offers, much more than there was 10 years ago when such things were already becoming an issue (which many believe contributed to GW axing the game). What has changed that makes GW feel any different? The hardcore grogs are dead-set on using their old existing minis, i.e. no new miniatures sales. Those with a chip on their shoulder are vowing to play the game without using a single new GW mini as "punishment" for their misdeeds, i.e. only using third party minis. I'll certainly buy GW minis myself if they make any that tickle my fancy, but I also already have gigabytes of STLs with which I could make my own armies with if I find that preferable, as well as the CAD skills to sculpt my own ranges if the inspiration so strikes me.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
As it happens, I found about 2000 points (out of something like 15-20k points) of Ogre Kingdoms that I didn't rebase yet over the weekend I think fewer rebased/shitcanned their armies then you realize though, but many of those don't seem to be too intent on buying new minis for those armies, especially if they can bring them back to the table as-is.
I didn't realize the medieval fantasy game D&D was such a failure in the US. XD
It actually grew faster in the UK and EU in the early days (thats literally how GW got its start) and remained a small and at times obscure community in the US for some time. Which isn't to say that it was a failure here, just that it didn't really take off here (in part because of Satanic Panic nonsense, but also heavy social stigma associated with it until recently) until much later. Even then, growth in the US didn't really kick in bigly until 5e launched (and actually was almost written off as a failed product line by Hasbro/WotC with 4e). While 4e mainly struggled because of mechanical issues, thematically it was also the last hurrah of the traditional eurocentric fantasy thing in the setting. With 5e WotC injected a lot of Magic: The Gathering style modern mythic fantasy elements into the game/settings. In this manner 5e is in many ways reminiscent of AoS, except WotC managed to better incorporate the multiplanar and mythic aspects into it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater (although they did advance timelines in some of the campaign settings, pretty much all the campaign settings were retconned in some way at a minimum). You can even see this just by comparing the artwork between 4e and 5e - 4e exudes traditional nostalgic high fantasy vibes in its artwork, whereas 5e is a bit more "gonzo" by comparison. Look at the 4e and 5e covers for eberron side by side, for example - theres a big difference in the interpretation of the warforged there. Compare the Mordenkainens books, 4es cover is traditional fantasy shop, 5e is doctor strange. Compare the Monster Manuals - 4e has a rather traditional looking fantasy beastie on the cover - its a demon lord but its got a traditional devilish thing going on for it, looks like it could be a khornate bloothirster. Its got the horns, tail, wings, nothing wholly unexpected or eye-catching really. Then 5e had a friggin Beholder in a thunderstorm.
Its actually interesting that both D&D and Warhammer went through thee sales slumps and rebranding around the same time, makes you wonder if they were somehow related or if there was a deeper impetus behind it.
People seem to forget that it was doing great for 5 years prior to AoS and view it as a reactionary system, it just happened to be in the right place at the right time, finishing up a KS delivery exactly at the point of WHFB getting nuked.
Arguably it was the reason WHFB was nuked in the first place - I remember when they released their plastic skellies or zombies kits or whatever it was in the early days. One of the local undead players went out and bought 200 of the damned things to bulk out his vampire counts. Sometime later they released their plastic dwarves and one of the guys on the fence went out and built a 5000 point army that was 80% mantic minis, only using GW minis for some of the more obscure and special stuff.
Mantic will probably sell more minis, since they'll once again be in the position of people buying them as proxies for a mainstream GW game without even having to change the bases.
Londinium wrote: Oh boy am I glad we can end those daft arguments about whether TOW will be 10mm.
That tbh is the biggest thing I took from this, damn those were tedious, and they were everywhere.
As to me, this news is great, I dropped out of WHFB not long before AOS and I've tried to get into AOS twice, and to be fair there is nothing against the game, but if I am going to set up a skirmish game in the 40K/AoS style, 9 times out of ten its going to be 40K because in a similar format I prefer the pew pew of 40K. The reason I always liked WHFB because it played so differently, so I will be getting on board when Old World turns up, and I'm in the spot were I don't have lots of AoS models to fret over (just Warcry and Quest these days) so will be able to get involved with no baggage.
Also happy to wait for as long as its takes to come out.
It actually grew faster in the UK and EU in the early days (thats literally how GW got its start) and remained a small and at times obscure community in the US for some time. Which isn't to say that it was a failure here, just that it didn't really take off here (in part because of Satanic Panic nonsense, but also heavy social stigma associated with it until recently) until much later. Even then, growth in the US didn't really kick in bigly until 5e launched (and actually was almost written off as a failed product line by Hasbro/WotC with 4e). While 4e mainly struggled because of mechanical issues, thematically it was also the last hurrah of the traditional eurocentric fantasy thing in the setting. With 5e WotC injected a lot of Magic: The Gathering style modern mythic fantasy elements into the game/settings. In this manner 5e is in many ways reminiscent of AoS, except WotC managed to better incorporate the multiplanar and mythic aspects into it without throwing the baby out with the bathwater (although they did advance timelines in some of the campaign settings, pretty much all the campaign settings were retconned in some way at a minimum). You can even see this just by comparing the artwork between 4e and 5e - 4e exudes traditional nostalgic high fantasy vibes in its artwork, whereas 5e is a bit more "gonzo" by comparison. Look at the 4e and 5e covers for eberron side by side, for example - theres a big difference in the interpretation of the warforged there. Compare the Mordenkainens books, 4es cover is traditional fantasy shop, 5e is doctor strange. Compare the Monster Manuals - 4e has a rather traditional looking fantasy beastie on the cover - its a demon lord but its got a traditional devilish thing going on for it, looks like it could be a khornate bloothirster. Its got the horns, tail, wings, nothing wholly unexpected or eye-catching really. Then 5e had a friggin Beholder in a thunderstorm.
Your theories don't sound very credible tbh.
Can you think of a "gonzo," "mythic" (or whatever other ultimately-insufficient genre label we can use) fantasy setting that was popular in the US before the 5E/AoS years? Y'know, to confirm that the tastes of the US market actually reflected the preferences you're claiming they did? Is MtG the best you got? Because nobody plays MtG for the setting/characters.
Do you have numbers for NA being WHFB's weakeast market by a large margin? I'd like to know how large the margin is. I'd like to see the interview quotations you remember from the former designers so that I'm not trusting a third-hand interpretation of the measure of the word "large."
Has D&D not recently grown in Europe at the same rate it's grown in the US? Y'know, given the supposed preferences of each region?
Who was playing the best-selling Total War and Vermintide series? Europeans?
I think there's a much simpler explanation than the one you're working with: The US doesn't have strict fantasy subgenre tastes -- rather, it didn't have any widely popular sword-and-sorcery fantasy, until two more-or-less "generational" events -- the LotR movies and Game of Thrones -- brought that genre to the mainstream.
I'm pretty sure they'll be selling official Games Workshop branded movement trays at 3x the normal price so you can use your round based models with the new system. I wouldn't worry too much about that angle, not even GW is going to think it's a good idea to create some system that requires you to rip your models off their bases every time you want to switch them between AOS and Old World.
Luke82 wrote: GW already switched base shape on fantasy players before, i don’t see why people think they wouldn’t do it again.
They've done it so many times! Can you believe the 3rd edition core rulebook had pictures of hexagonal slottas? Which they wanted you to use, Sigmar forbid, alongside your squares and even rounds! And then they took all of that away from us, and made us use squares, until we needed to use rounds, and now we'll be back to squares but WHERE ARE THE HEXAGONS!?
yukishiro1 wrote: I'm pretty sure they'll be selling official Games Workshop branded movement trays at 3x the normal price so you can use your round based models with the new system. I wouldn't worry too much about that angle, not even GW is going to think it's a good idea to create some system that requires you to rip your models off their bases every time you want to switch them between AOS and Old World.
I'd think they're thinking would be buy both instead of facilitating swapping back and forth.
yukishiro1 wrote: I'm pretty sure they'll be selling official Games Workshop branded movement trays at 3x the normal price so you can use your round based models with the new system. I wouldn't worry too much about that angle, not even GW is going to think it's a good idea to create some system that requires you to rip your models off their bases every time you want to switch them between AOS and Old World.
I suspect they simply won't care. The longer AOS goes on, the more it diverges from it's WHFB roots, the more new races with no links/heavily different styles are added (Idoneth, Kruleboyz, Lumineth etc). As time goes on the old WHFB players playing AOS with original Fantasy models also drops. Thus the % of cross compatible models being used drops year on year and the people using them do so as well. You might find the odd madman trying to play Bretonnians using the AOS1 rules but they're going to be a minority of a minority and will likely just move back to TOW anyway.
When you look at it this way it suits GWtbh, as if it goes perfectly for them they'll have two distinct fantasy playerbases, covering both the old school rank and file lot and also the new style high fantasy 40k style gaming fans, thus covering all fantasy bases within miniature gaming while offering two quite different experiences. I certainly don't expect to find dual AOS/TOW players using shared units between the two universes, being a large % of the TOW fanbase by 2023. Those that do exist will be faced with the prospects of rebasing or having to buy all new TOW models, which suits GW just fine.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
Gimgamgoo wrote: I love the part of the article that has GW accepting that 10mm and 15mm are scales. But won't commit to saying what actual scale their models are.
Lol.
Wonder which they'd call it now? 25/28/32/35mm.
That is proprietary and trademarked. Better off not knowing… /s
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
Lots of 9th Age folks
I have my stuff stashed, was considering turning boar boys into a 40k unit or three. Now that can wait…
yukishiro1 wrote: I'm pretty sure they'll be selling official Games Workshop branded movement trays at 3x the normal price so you can use your round based models with the new system. I wouldn't worry too much about that angle, not even GW is going to think it's a good idea to create some system that requires you to rip your models off their bases every time you want to switch them between AOS and Old World.
I'd think they're thinking would be buy both instead of facilitating swapping back and forth.
Oh, I'm positive they will be releasing different ranges for each one, to try to get you to buy both. There's zero chance you'll be able to use your Idoneth or Stormcast in the Old World game, or that you'll be able to use Kislev in AOS. But for the models they specifically called out as being usable in both, I can't imagine they're really going to go out of their way to make it hard to play with round bases.
My major gripe is the magic system, hopefully they will look closer to AoS. I would LOVE to use a Burning Head in TOW, even if it is just scenery, because cool (hotness?) factor.
The setting is something I still want to see, but positively hopeful: if this takes place centuries before The End Times, Lizardmen's range is completely unscratched, except Lord Kroak, who should get a small plastic version of himself if they want to make plastic Slanns, so they can be optionally build as him, and maybe as Mazdamundi, and, who knows? maybe even make them compatible with the default Stegadons, so they can finally mount one without kitbashing!
Oh, yeah, about the presence of Lizardmen? Well, that I don't know for sure, but if they bring back all the plastic squats from AoS, from TK to HE, I would expect to see the entire world. They still have to have those moulds around.
That being said, no Karl Franz and Deathclaw on monster bases (amongst many other characters alive in 8E). Kinda sad, I'd love to build that specific assembly, but Amber Wizards on bicephalous Griffon is fair game.
Production would be cheap; just make some FW exclusives and fewer plastic kits. I love my current plastic Seraphon battleline options for AoS: they look prehistorically charming, but I would mind to instead rebase my Warriors to square bases and, if GW relelase new plastic kits for Lizardmen/Serpahon, use the new ones in AoS instead. Also, plastic Kroxigors, Sallies and Razors, please.
Planning ahead in this case will not disappoint me.
Can't wait for the boomers to celebrate the impeding fall of AoS in MySpace and Blogpost.
Can't wait for the boomers to celebrate the impeding fall of AoS in MySpace and Blogpost.
Much like social media today is rife with AOS fans saying this will die as soon as it comes out because no one wants to play a game like warhammer fantasy today.
If it's similar to 6th/early 7th I'm in. Ravening Hordes to pre-daemon codex 7th were the good times. Armies were relatively compact and diverse. Magic existed but didn't demolish games, etc.
Hopefully they'd remove some of the things that made the game tedious such as guess range, templates, and set charge distances. Those are ones I remember but it's been.....a long time.
I'll happily build a new army and get games in or even just paint a single force up for display. Nostalgia is strong.
Can't wait for the boomers to celebrate the impeding fall of AoS in MySpace and Blogpost.
Much like social media today is rife with AOS fans saying this will die as soon as it comes out because no one wants to play a game like warhammer fantasy today.
Yet AoS has been alive well for over a lustrum and the nayers keep telling that next BT will kill the game for real this time, meanwhile AoS players know that the WHFB is already extremely fractured and that having so many flavours to appeal make it harder to nail a ruleset that satisfies the broader playerbase possible.
I would also like to compare this to the Nostalgia effect from remasters/remakes/revivals/reboots; see WoW Classic and TBC Classic as examples (don't include pirate servers numbers up, A., they are not "private" servers: the official servers ARE THE PRIVATE ONES because you have a monthly fee to access it, it is not a P2P or F2P game, B., they can lie about numbers): lots of hype, then a notorious steep because people didn't liked for whatever reason or just didn't wanted to pay for the month. This was even worst with TBC because executive meddling to give the playerbase "the best experience for everyone possible".
I would also point out that whenever a game comes out that someone else doesn't like, the first thought / desire for them is that the new game they dont like will die.
Because its human nature.
WHFB is fractured because the main game that the WHFB players played went away and was replaced by something totally not like what WHFB was.
It coming back will inevitably draw a lot of people back to the GW mothership.
It coming back will inevitably draw a lot of people back to the GW mothership.
Define "a lot".
As for myself...I think people who loved playing Warhammer Battle at that time weren't especially young when it died, and now as years pass on, they keep aging. The Old Guard having still their WFB armies are either using them for another game, moved on something else or just keep playing the same old rules anyway and don't need another "new edition".
I think at the time it will be finally available (honestly believing it won't be there before another couple of years at best), it will draw way more new players than veteran back. Talking only about those who left GW entirely, not just playing 40k or AoS...if they still stay inside GW, it's not "being back to the mothership".
These news are nice to know, I guess, but I still don't understand the need to make articles about this project this soon, really. That game should be ready for when Total War Warhammer 3 is out and it will clearly miss the release no matter what anyway.
I'm not a psychic. But every big rank and file game I'm a part of has a lot of its community talking about going back to try it out and there is some worry in pretty much every game's community right now.
So ... a lot.
Having been around wargaming since the internet was aol chat rooms, I've heard the "its going to die right away" prediction probably more times than I can recall counting.
GW being a huge company has likely done a lot of marketing on this to determine if it was worth their time.
Apparently they feel its worth their time.
I realize the AOS fan base hopes it fails and burns because they dont want their own community to fragment, and despite any bravado put forth about how awesome AOS is, many in the AOS community also fear losing players back to the old world.
I think its nice that gw now has a game for both types of players, instead of just giving the finger to the warhammer players who had no game to go to when their game got exploded overnight.
Cronch wrote: I look forward to blocking 50-strong regiments with 5 dire wolves again, the pinnacle of tactics and strategy in the system
Wasn't there an overcharge mechanic where if you wipe out a unit in a turn you can keep going?
But you angle the direwolf unit so they then overrun in a direction exposing their flank. The worst example of this was 6-7th with skirmish blobs where the unit had the charge the closest model. So you would position one model so the charging unit would nearly have to pull a 90 turn. That was thing I did not miss going from 7th to 8th.
I realize the AOS fan base hopes it fails and burns because they dont want their own community to fragment, and despite any bravado put forth about how awesome AOS is, many in the AOS community also fear losing players back to the old world.
I guess there will be a "War of the Ring" effect (mostly was just from a minority of extremists who like to be more vocal on the Internet than their real numbers are, anyway), but most AoS fans don't really care about that. It will be clearly not the same universe nor the same game system. Bet more than one player will gather an army in both systems...what can happen is that they may not have all the time to play both as much as they would like to, for sure...that was my main problem when I was playing both War of the Ring and Warhammer Battle at that time.
What will be nice here is that we'll certainly have miniatures fitting to be played in AoS. Kislev will surely look nice in a Cities of Sigmar army (if it's still around when 4th edition of AoS will be out at the date of Old World's release )...and since we know it will be the same scale and it's not Lord of the Ring, nothing will be in the way. Ok, maybe just changing bases.
Sure, it may be worrying for small communities like on Discord for Conquest (or the Ninth Age, since they...well...it was a project about continuing the 8th edition of Warhammer Battle and "making it better than GW" - but now it's completely its own thing), but I'm not. Reality is that we're still a few years away from the real release and meanwhile, these games will keep growing and consolidating their fanbase...or they'll die and their playerbase will be free anyway.
Cronch wrote: I look forward to blocking 50-strong regiments with 5 dire wolves again, the pinnacle of tactics and strategy in the system
Wasn't there an overcharge mechanic where if you wipe out a unit in a turn you can keep going?
But you angle the direwolf unit so they then overrun in a direction exposing their flank. The worst example of this was 6-7th with skirmish blobs where the unit had the charge the closest model. So you would position one model so the charging unit would nearly have to pull a 90 turn. That was thing I did not miss going from 7th to 8th.
Yeah that does sound counterintuitive. They should have allowed a wheel action when you overrun.
Da boyz woz called Orcs in da Old World, so datz what dey’z called!
This makes me happy. I still can't wrap my head around the race names in AoS.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
The playerbase would be people like me, who want a rank & file Fantasy game and aren't interested in KoW.
If this is good, and recognisably WHFB (and the bit about drawing rules from previous editions is a hopeful sign there) then I'll likely check it out. If not, then I'll just go back to my current plan of dusting off 5th edition as soon as I have time... which will be any month now, honest...
Only at the expense of flank charges, monsters and elite infantry. It threw tactics out the window and reduced armies to fielding one massive block of infantry with a couple of other units, usually monsters.
I wasn't a fan.
I never encountered this tbh.
Usually things like monsters were killy enough to be able to handle any kind of heavily ranked infantry unit over the course of a few turns.
It didn't throw tactics out the window at all. All you had to do was get your own highly ranked unit in with the enemy to remove their steadfast, and then flank them with cavalry.
Nobody took basic blocks of infantry prior to steadfast unless they had stubborn or unbreakable.
You couldn't just charge the front of a fully ranked unit with bunch of cavalry and expect to win, just like real life.
And people like to bring up Skaven Slaves a lot for this argument, but Skaven never had an 8th edition book released so I think its unfair to use them as an example of why steadfast was broken when they never had the update to the new rules. By the end of 8th edition, things were so lethal that nobody started relying on big blocks of infantry anymore. They just died too quickly. They were used as a roadblock to tie up enemy units for a turn or two.
I would very much be in favour of Flank charges removing steadfast, but ultimately the rule was important in the way infantry functioned and was a good rule.
As long as they fix the fact that by the most part, 90% of the gameplay of 6th fantasy (the BEST edition for most people) was using small units to redirect the bigger units of your opponent and charge their flanks (NO GW, NO, WHY IS MY 15 CHOSEN REGIMENT FORCED TO CHARGE 5 OUTRIDERS IN A STRAIGHT LINE!), then this will be surely great.
Also I'm in the camp of "I like Fantasy better when infantry is more relevant". MESBG can make a game with individual models and round bases were cavalry charging from the front a spearwall of infantry is nearly always letal with 0 bonus for charges, formations, flanking, rear attacks, etc..., but Fantasy with regiments and fixed, squared formations can't? And units exist in a dichotomy between "Cavalry charges, something dies" or "Infantry is charged, what charged is destroyed by a thousand cuts" for eternity.
I want to play the game and see it thrive (so I can get plastic Kroxigors), but I'm just pointing out that AoS already has a playerbase and only two real editions of the game, while TOW will have to engage people from different systems, ever since 6th Edition. And they just said that they will partially base the game on 8E. That already is a "No" for diehard detractors of that Edition that don't wan't anything to do with it.
Goose LeChance wrote: Gatekeep everything AoS, including model design. If you want to play AoS just play AoS.
You know that won't happen. Good luck getting Finecrap/metal Greater Daemons. What about the new, plastic Ogor Tyrant? can't anyone just base him on a square base instead of using a lame resin one?
Such a dumb mentality; again, looks a lot like "#NoChanges" from WoW Classic. I knew people that legitimately thought that Classic was going to be hard as nails, and then they left because raiding MC "was not the same".
Can you think of a "gonzo," "mythic" (or whatever other ultimately-insufficient genre label we can use) fantasy setting that was popular in the US before the 5E/AoS years? Y'know, to confirm that the tastes of the US market actually reflected the preferences you're claiming they did? Is MtG the best you got? Because nobody plays MtG for the setting/characters.
Thats kind of a silly (read: invalid) way of "confirming" something. You're essentially asking me to prove something subjectively defined existed prior to its actual existence.
American audiences were not responding well to Warhammer Fantasy, ergo a change was needed to broaden the appeal. GW made those changes, and in doing so produced a new setting that broke from traditional fantasy tropes (and in the process pulled in some scifi/space opera tropes) in order to produce a new non-traditional fantasy setting - not unlike how the MCU approached Thor in much the same way to turn the character and his films into more of a space opera than the more campy traditional fantasy interpretation of the character. In fact, the Thor films and AoS share a lot of elements and tropes in common, thematically speaking, and its hard not to imagine that they may have both been spawned as the result of a similar creative process. The result of this was a more mythic/gonzo setting (words which I am probably misusing, but I think you understand what I am trying to describe). This type of setting was not pre-defined or pre-destined, it was not a case of "American audiences like this type of genre more", rather it was "American audiences respond well to these features" and when packaged together they ended up being this mythic/gonzo thing.
Do you have numbers for NA being WHFB's weakeast market by a large margin? I'd like to know how large the margin is. I'd like to see the interview quotations you remember from the former designers so that I'm not trusting a third-hand interpretation of the measure of the word "large."
Of course I don't have numbers, I doubt anyone does outside of GW themselves. I just accept the word of those who would know *eyeroll*. I can't find it now but years ago there was an interview hosted somewhere online relating to the release of the Generals Compendium, I believe it was Jeremy Vetock speaking. He discussed how the Generals Compendium was produced by the US design studio (basically the only thing they ever did) in an attempt to try to attract American audiences to the game because Warhammer Fantasy was performing dismally in the US market. According to the interview, Warhammer Fantasy sales in the US (or North American, can't remember which specifically) in the region were only a small fraction of the sales that 40k was generating in the same region, whereas in the EU/UK market WHFB was about on par with 40k in terms of sales performance.
I also recall James Hewitt (I think) saying something similar on his twitter some time back with regards to how 40k was more popular in the US vs WHFB in the UK/EU.
Has D&D not recently grown in Europe at the same rate it's grown in the US? Y'know, given the supposed preferences of each region?
The data wouldn't necessarily be clean-cut, WotC only did limited localization in Europe until recently (iirc it was mainly only French, Spanish, and German for the EU audience) meaning that a lot of Europe was SOL unless they learned English or one of the other 3 languages. A Polish translation wasn't released until 2019, for example. As it stands though, there is this:
Spoiler:
There is no US/RoW data to compare it to, nor are there any numbers so you can't really draw a meaningful quantitative comparison to other markets, but the attention they have paid to the European market in this infographic implies that sales growth there did not keep up with other markets, BUT we can indirectly draw a conclusion on this: In 2017 WotC reported a 44% year-on-year sales growth over 2016. We don't know where that growth came from - but we do know it didn't come from the European market, because according to the infographic there was barely no change in sales from 2016 to 2017.
Who was playing the best-selling Total War and Vermintide series? Europeans?
You might be able to get that data if you pay for SteamSpy, otherwise its most likely not data that you'll find for free. That being said, the Total War franchise (in general, not specifically warhammer) generally sells better in the UK/EU market than the US market - in part because the majority of the games cover European history and thus are of greater interest to European audiences. From comments made by Creative Assembly in the past, it also seems that the UK market generally outperforms all others in sales on a per capita basis (i.e. scaled for population), so its not that simple/I'm not sure that this would give us a straight answer, though it might otherwise indicate that Europeans are playing these games more than Americans are based on those historical trends.
The US doesn't have strict fantasy subgenre tastes -- rather, it didn't have any widely popular sword-and-sorcery fantasy, until two more-or-less "generational" events -- the LotR movies and Game of Thrones -- brought that genre to the mainstream.
Sure, but doesn't that kind of prove my point that traditional fantasy hasn't tended to sell well in the US? Look at the cultural monolith that Star Wars is/was/has become. Look at the prominence of Star Trek in American cultural history. Avatar (the one with the blue dudes), Transformers, The Matrix, Independence Day, etc. etc. etc. were all domestic box-office blockbusters. The top-ranking traditional scifi (excluding Frozen, Shrek, and Pirates of the Carribean here as they are non-traditional stuff) is Return of the King at #45: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_the_United_States_and_Canada
Couldn't find data for EU, but overall Return of the King is #28, which implies it also did better in the EU market than it did in the US.
As for Game of Thrones, much ink (digital and print) has been spilled discussing how its not a traditional fantasy setting - it is overwhelmingly eurocentric, true, but it breaks with many of the traditional high fantasy tropes that have defined the genre, including Warhammer.
Can't wait for the boomers to celebrate the impeding fall of AoS in MySpace and Blogpost.
Much like social media today is rife with AOS fans saying this will die as soon as it comes out because no one wants to play a game like warhammer fantasy today.
Yet AoS has been alive well for over a lustrum and the nayers keep telling that next BT will kill the game for real this time, meanwhile AoS players know that the WHFB is already extremely fractured and that having so many flavours to appeal make it harder to nail a ruleset that satisfies the broader playerbase possible.
I would also like to compare this to the Nostalgia effect from remasters/remakes/revivals/reboots; see WoW Classic and TBC Classic as examples (don't include pirate servers numbers up, A., they are not "private" servers: the official servers ARE THE PRIVATE ONES because you have a monthly fee to access it, it is not a P2P or F2P game, B., they can lie about numbers): lots of hype, then a notorious steep because people didn't liked for whatever reason or just didn't wanted to pay for the month. This was even worst with TBC because executive meddling to give the playerbase "the best experience for everyone possible".
CMLR wrote: I want to play the game and see it thrive (so I can get plastic Kroxigors), but I'm just pointing out that AoS already has a playerbase and only two real editions of the game, while TOW will have to engage people from different systems, ever since 6th Edition. And they just said that they will partially base the game on 8E. That already is a "No" for diehard detractors of that Edition that don't wan't anything to do with it.
Goose LeChance wrote: Gatekeep everything AoS, including model design. If you want to play AoS just play AoS.
You know that won't happen. Good luck getting Finecrap/metal Greater Daemons. What about the new, plastic Ogor Tyrant? can't anyone just base him on a square base instead of using a lame resin one?
Such a dumb mentality; again, looks a lot like "#NoChanges" from WoW Classic. I knew people that legitimately thought that Classic was going to be hard as nails, and then they left because raiding MC "was not the same".
You can't compare WHFB players to World of Warcraft players.
WoW players are always chasing the next content high, they devour DLC/Expansions in a month and get bored, it's only natural they would lose interest in Classic.
WHFB players have kept the game going long after GW told them all to go away. Either through old editions or alternative companies, they'll be around until they die.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
In spite of only playing 1 game in the past decade, I still have all my old armies and still on their square bases, my friends are all the same, they talked about selling up but kept their armies as they were on square bases.
yukishiro1 wrote: I'm pretty sure they'll be selling official Games Workshop branded movement trays at 3x the normal price so you can use your round based models with the new system. I wouldn't worry too much about that angle, not even GW is going to think it's a good idea to create some system that requires you to rip your models off their bases every time you want to switch them between AOS and Old World.
I suspect they simply won't care. The longer AOS goes on, the more it diverges from it's WHFB roots, the more new races with no links/heavily different styles are added (Idoneth, Kruleboyz, Lumineth etc).
Eh. Kruleboyz were deliberately designed as a callback to early edition O&G. They're pretty much the biggest callback to Warhammer roots that GW has released this century.
Lumineth at least started as high elves, even if they got lost in the Outback of Avatar the Last Airbender.
Fishmen/elves were a long running joke, even if models never happened.
In all seriousness, thinking Towtruck will split the fanbase is like saying MESBG's soft-reboot would have split AoS' fanbase. AoS' rule set is a lot more like 40k than it was Fantasy, complete with Ground Marine poster boys. I'm willing to bet most people here have a 40k and AoS army but I don't see anyone complaining about that splitting things.
Also I can guarantee as a former Warmahordes player that TOW will have the same effect on rank and file games as 8e 40k did on that and every other skirmish wargame around 2017 - it will suck up all the hype, people will come back either out of a genuine desire to be part of a big game from GW again and the rest will follow along because it's what all their friends are playing. Eventually the vast majority are playing TOW, the games being played reduces and people look back at those other games and dismiss them as dead because... everyone is playing TOW, but none wants to play anything else yet because everyone is playing TOW, why would they play that other thing? A lot of those people will probably start chanting how they always hated KOW/Conquest/ASOIAF anyway, even if TOW's ruleset is trash.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I dont know why people thought the game would be 10mm-15mm to begin with anyway. GW will not produce a wargame like this without the ability to potentially have minis cross over, if not as whole units, but as potential conversion. having their minis the same scale across all games mean more sales.
*Stares at you in Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis.*
Oh let's open that can of worms shall we?
The Titanicus and Aeronautica models seem to be "1/4th of 40k" (whatever that might be). But looking at the models they seem to work just fine with 6mm scaled humans. Note that the original Titans and aircraft were closer to 3mm scale. The Forgeworld aircraft were more akin to "1/5th of 40k" whilst tanks generally were all over the place.
No wonder they work with 6mm humans. They ARE 6mm scale.
Point is. Where'sother games you use at models? Gw after all supposedly sells only one scale to cross use models.
*Stares at you in Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis.*
Those games had existed previously. At worst they are the exceptions that prove the rule.
And 12mm fantasy combat existed before.
12mm would be logical scale if you wanted game of ranked battles over couple dozen soldiers pretending to be army
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MaxT wrote: It was only 8th with its stupid extra rank fighting and steadfast that got crazy with the number of models in an infantry unit, it was 40+ or don’t bother. In earlier editions outside of horde type exceptions like gobbos, 20 ish was the norm. With the article saying they took mechanics from 3rd through to 8th, we’ve got a 5/6ths chance of not having that horror show!
That assumes odds per edition is equal. And gw not favouring rules making people buy models
Not even GW could be dumb enough not to realize what a disaster 8th was from a rules perspective. I would read the "it's not just 8th!" as a "it's not 8th at all but we can't actually say that 8th sucked!"
yukishiro1 wrote: Not even GW could be dumb enough not to realize what a disaster 8th was from a rules perspective.
You're clearly not as cynical as I am.
From someone who knows more about it, what specifically were the issues with the 8th ruleset?
I've heard that Daemons were a massive problem, and have heard that Tzeentch Summoning lists were basically impossible to defeat with all the gak they could bring in during a game (GW are still over compensating for this in AoS, first with the way things like Horrors work in the rules, Rule of 3, and now with that 'Reinforcement Point' bs), but what else caused so many issues?
7th was pretty terrible too in a lot of ways, so it wasn't just 8th. But basically the short version is that the rules started increasingly rewarding broken magic and big massed infantry - like crazy big, 40-60 model big. The game just stopped being fun to actually play, it became a boring slog, made worse by the fact that you could spend 30 minutes setting up and moving huge numbers of models only to remove half of them in a turn as your opponent's wizard went super saiyan all over your army. Armied stopped looking and feeling and playing like armies, they became super gimmicky vehicles for the most broken elements of the rules. WHFB always had a problem with weak mechanics, but at least in earlier editions armies sorta looked and behaved how an army should. In 8th, they stopped even doing that, and it was like - well, what's the bloody point of this game now? It's not fun to play, armies don't look good on the table, the mechanics aren't satisfying. As much as I am still angry at GW for squatting the setting, GW had killed it as a game well before they followed up by killing the setting.
And yeah, there were also terrible balance issues, especially with the daemons book.
Basically it's a question of what wasn't terrible in 8th, not what was.
edit: And how could I have forgotten the stupidity of cannons (especially the movable ones) and the terrain rules? There were so many bad things about 8th it's hard to remember them all at one time...
I think the thing that really encapsulated how poorly managed Fantasy in its last two editions was how GW kept on releasing these absurdly big centrepiece monster models and put a ton of marketing focus on them... meanwhile the rules discouraged their use completely because 8th basically made you take a unit 80 unbreakable infantry as the core of your army with assorted light cavalry hangers on to protect your flanks.
The start of this problem was 7th, where the rank bonus moved from a 4-width to a 5-width. Not only was this the start of bloating regiment sizes but it really screwed over a load of armies and kits which previously came in 16-man boxes so could be used as 4x4 regiments and still get full rank bonus. Suddenly you weren't even able to buy a minimum effective regiment just for a normal casual game. Obviously most people ran regiments of 20+ anyway, but in terms of just getting people started with usable models and rules it was a really big blow.
In general I do actually think the core rules in 7th were fine and probably an improvement over 6th (I played a lot of 6th and not much 7th though so I could be wrong) but what really killed the edition was the poor quality of the army books. Not only did they lose a lot of flavour from a rules and presentation perspective (reduction in magical items, things like vampire bloodlines being "streamlined" etc) but the balance of the edition was just destroyed by successive busted book releases. There's definite parallels you can make with 9th ed 40k now, but at least we get erratas and FAQ's nowadays. If you were an Orc and Goblin player in 7th then you basically had to eat gak for the entire edition as Daemons and Dark Elves ran over everything.
And here i was hoping they would commbine warmaster and fantasy. Guess this is and will be a new fantasy edtion, so hopefully thouse fans has something to look forward to.
Just to mark it down, the Q and A of this actually pleases me with GW. The fact I kept my old armies intact and just kept the dream alive is great for me. If GW do this right I will actually praise them, but so far this Old World sounds amazing to me. My longbeard self is finally at peace, for now. One less grudge will I hold if they do it right.
Scale was never really in question. The only people thinking this was going to be a smaller scale (10mm) game were the 17 people that actually played Warmaster the first time around hoping that GW would be willing to fail a second time, and the AOS people that have felt their game threatened since W:TOW was announced. Anyone with access to the lexicon knows that Warmaster stopped receiving shelf retail support 6 months after release. That's the fastest birth to hospice care tenure of any GW game.
Squares I was genuinely skeptical about, but it looks like they are indeed sincere about that. Good on them.
I'm more than a little worried that incredibly dumb rules from older editions may migrate in, but I'm also hopeful that there's a decent amount of 6th thrown in there to make it more balanced. I'm also elated about army support as far as rules. Models? I sincerely doubt GW has gotten rid of the mold plates, so seeing some battalion style boxed sets will more than likely happen. I just wish they'd throw out some square bases for sale now.
Also as a side note, it's adorable the number of AOS players who've come into this thread explicitly to fling poo. You have your game to enjoy, why is it so important for you that we don't get the same?
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
Lots of 9th Age folks
Just to chime in, old grognard here, still have my fantasy armies and never changed the bases to play AoS. I doubt I'm alone in that either.
Just Tony wrote: Scale was never really in question. The only people thinking this was going to be a smaller scale (10mm) game were the 17 people that actually played Warmaster the first time around hoping that GW would be willing to fail a second time, and the AOS people that have felt their game threatened since W:TOW was announced. Anyone with access to the lexicon knows that Warmaster stopped receiving shelf retail support 6 months after release. That's the fastest birth to hospice care tenure of any GW game.
Warmaster is so unpopular that sculpting 10mm fantasy minis is a day job for half a dozen 3D artists.
Olthannon wrote: I'm so glad they clarified the scale and square bases. We knew that it was going to be like and yet a shocking amount of people in this very thread were trying to say it was smaller scale.
I'd like to momentarily take this opportunity to say haha .
No one was trying to say it was a smaller scale, we were just discussing how 10-15mm could be cool, and could also be a way for GW to recreate a RNF game with a broad range without investing a huge amount (i.e., manufacturing one sprue could create several regiments, reducing the mould cutting time needed to support a faction).
No one seriously believed that was the road GW was going down, just simply an option that was being discussed.
Though it's interesting GW have specifically addressed the scale issue, it shows at least they are reading forums and whatnot to some extent and directly addressing those sorts of discussions.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
Lots of 9th Age folks
Just to chime in, old grognard here, still have my fantasy armies and never changed the bases to play AoS. I doubt I'm alone in that either.
Changing bases honestly just sounded like a terrible experience, maybe something I would have done as a broke teenager who couldn't afford new models, but there was no way in hell I was going to rebase hundreds of Night Goblins, Orcs, Saurus, Skinks, etc,.
If anything I think it'd be more likely that old WHFB just shelved their models rather than either rebasing them or destroying them.
With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
I am pretty interested to see what they do with it. I hope the game is more like 6th, which I greatly enjoyed, and less like 8th (which I hated).
Like most posters here it seems my favourite time for WFB was 6th and early 7th. Late 7th was ruined by bad army book design that didn't stay true to the paradigm set by the first books. The demon book is an embarrassment. But I thought the core rules were alright, a bit clunky in some places but overall gave satisfying games.
8th edition I know is pretty popular but I don't really understand why. Giant infantry blocks and super wizards made for a tedious game with a huge set up time and very little emphasis on actually playing the game tactically. I had 3 fully painted fantasy armies going into 8th and was working on a 4th and I just stopped playing. It was just too much hassle for such an unfun game. The fixes to make it more fun would be relatively straightforward.
It's really interesting to read this thread though because I remember in the aftermath of AoS there was a strong and vocal group who say 8th as the best edition and wanted to keep it going, and were scornful of people who preferred 6th. Seems like the people interested in this project are more interested in 6th edition.
Late 6th had the best gameplay for sure. It was horrid to get into, however. The rules writing was atrocious, coupled with the then-new RAW approach and lack of official FAQs whatsoever, meant months of mentorship just to learn the accepted rules, not even talking about the tactics.
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
WHFB was GW's firstborn, and their flagship game for many years. The fact that they're revisiting it is much less surprising than the fact that they completely canned it to begin with.
And a lot of 40K players from a particular decade came into the game through Dawn of War. It's entirely possible for the same to happen with WHFB.
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
It's presumably a similar story to the Specialist Games. First they drop them because they're not profitable enough, then they bring them back because they realize it's a share of the market they aren't covering, and they'd rather fill the gap themselves than have another company do it. While AoS appears to be pretty successful, both the setting and game don't appeal to the same people WHFB did, or not fully at least. Maybe they also hoped more people would transition eventually, rather than stay grumpy or just look for their fix elsewhere. Perhaps the alleged failure of 8th means they invest little in the relaunch until knowing more about how successful it's being, while presumably also being part of the reason they are looking at a rewrite using all older editions as a basis, and not just reprinting 8th with some tweaks. (And thank Isha for that!)
Now that it's confirmed old models should be useable, it makes it realistic that they'll at least do some Made to Order waves perhaps. Seems like the most practical way for them to sell old models without having to have even a fraction of the massive old range permanently in stock. Hopefully they'll spread it out a bit (not have an army's full range in a single week), or better still, communicate a roadmap of re-releases in advance so you know what will or won't become available for e.g. the next half year. I suppose the only real similarity is Blood Bowl (relaunched game with rules for old teams and occasional MtO for the old sculpts which haven't received updates yet), but the sheer size of the WHFB miniatures range changes things considerably of course.
Coenus Scaldingus wrote: Maybe they also hoped more people would transition eventually, rather than stay grumpy or just look for their fix elsewhere..
To be clear, it certainly wasn't all just people being grumpy. I had no problem with AoS existing, it's just not a type of game I'm remotely interested in. So it was no more appropriate a 'replacement' for WHFB than, say, Man'o'War would have been.
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
I am pretty interested to see what they do with it. I hope the game is more like 6th, which I greatly enjoyed, and less like 8th (which I hated).
They really think the video-game people will swarm to spend up to $1k to buy and glue plastic toy soldiers. The game will no doubt drag in all the battered housewives of WHFB because this time it won't be so bad, but I don't know how many vidya-only gamers they will capture with their pricing model.
Olthannon wrote: I'm so glad they clarified the scale and square bases. We knew that it was going to be like and yet a shocking amount of people in this very thread were trying to say it was smaller scale.
I'd like to momentarily take this opportunity to say haha .
No one was trying to say it was a smaller scale, we were just discussing how 10-15mm could be cool, and could also be a way for GW to recreate a RNF game with a broad range without investing a huge amount (i.e., manufacturing one sprue could create several regiments, reducing the mould cutting time needed to support a faction).
No one seriously believed that was the road GW was going down, just simply an option that was being discussed.
Though it's interesting GW have specifically addressed the scale issue, it shows at least they are reading forums and whatnot to some extent and directly addressing those sorts of discussions.
lord_blackfang wrote: Really what is the playerbase here? I can't imagine there being a lot of grognards left who haven't either rebased their army or set it on fire.
Lots of 9th Age folks
Just to chime in, old grognard here, still have my fantasy armies and never changed the bases to play AoS. I doubt I'm alone in that either.
Changing bases honestly just sounded like a terrible experience, maybe something I would have done as a broke teenager who couldn't afford new models, but there was no way in hell I was going to rebase hundreds of Night Goblins, Orcs, Saurus, Skinks, etc,.
If anything I think it'd be more likely that old WHFB just shelved their models rather than either rebasing them or destroying them.
this is a 100+ page thread.
Plenty of people seemed to be saying it would be warmaster scale/ should be warmaster scale. No idea why but this argument was brought up enough to warrant GW to axctualy clarify.
Do you think GW would have clarified if the question wasnt being asked?
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
I seem to recall those estimates of WHFB being a small percentage relative to 40k was...
a ) When they were barely releasing anything for WHFB and GW's sales mostly came from new releases, as highlighted by sales figures that got released during the Chapterhouse lawsuit,
and,
b ) Everything was a small percentage relative to Space Marines, so while WHFB might have been a small portion sales relative to 40k, 40k as a whole was only small relative to Space Marines.
I think to some extent GW have realised they need to diversify away from Space Marines.
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Argive wrote: this is a 100+ page thread.
Plenty of people seemed to be saying it would be warmaster scale/ should be warmaster scale. No idea why but this argument was brought up enough to warrant GW to axctualy clarify.
Do you think GW would have clarified if the question wasnt being asked?
No one was saying it "would" be Warmaster scale. At least I don't think so, if you want to find some posts to prove me wrong, go for it. But from my recollection we were simply discussing the possibility that an option for GW, however unlikely, was that they could go for a smaller scale, and how that could be a good idea.
That caused some whackos to blow an aneurysm as if folk genuinely posited that was what GW were doing, rather than just wishlisting and theorising.
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
I am pretty interested to see what they do with it. I hope the game is more like 6th, which I greatly enjoyed, and less like 8th (which I hated).
They really think the video-game people will swarm to spend up to $1k to buy and glue plastic toy soldiers. The game will no doubt drag in all the battered housewives of WHFB because this time it won't be so bad, but I don't know how many vidya-only gamers they will capture with their pricing model.
You seem to have a lot of contempt for people...
Here is the thing:
I know many gamers who will spend £200+ on 1 computer game because it comes with some tacky, cheap, made-in-china "limited edition" figurine. Getting several of these games a year.
I can certainly see some gamers buying some of the big centre pieces. Especially when WHTW3 hits... I think some people might be interested in a blood thirster or some cool Ice Beardzilla..
DOW games are an excellent case study and support the idea that a sucess of a game can translate into miniatures sales.
They may buy a centerpiece, but do you really think they will buy a 100 infantry dudes to make into an army, read the archaic rules (since they'll be taken from multiple editions of WHFB, not something written from clean slate) and then haul it all to a game vs...idk, playing the game on their screen and getting better and more balanced experience?
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
It's presumably a similar story to the Specialist Games. First they drop them because they're not profitable enough, then they bring them back because they realize it's a share of the market they aren't covering, and they'd rather fill the gap themselves than have another company do it. While AoS appears to be pretty successful, both the setting and game don't appeal to the same people WHFB did, or not fully at least. Maybe they also hoped more people would transition eventually, rather than stay grumpy or just look for their fix elsewhere. Perhaps the alleged failure of 8th means they invest little in the relaunch until knowing more about how successful it's being, while presumably also being part of the reason they are looking at a rewrite using all older editions as a basis, and not just reprinting 8th with some tweaks. (And thank Isha for that!)
Now that it's confirmed old models should be useable, it makes it realistic that they'll at least do some Made to Order waves perhaps. Seems like the most practical way for them to sell old models without having to have even a fraction of the massive old range permanently in stock. Hopefully they'll spread it out a bit (not have an army's full range in a single week), or better still, communicate a roadmap of re-releases in advance so you know what will or won't become available for e.g. the next half year. I suppose the only real similarity is Blood Bowl (relaunched game with rules for old teams and occasional MtO for the old sculpts which haven't received updates yet), but the sheer size of the WHFB miniatures range changes things considerably of course.
They could do it like Lotr which is also comparable. The Lotr range is too large to keep in stock apparently so they move models in when they fit the current release of a book and move models out of production to make room, with a warning before. They also produced models that were going for insane prices on ebay and even some models that never made it past prototypes. There are additional made to Order waves as well, where some favorites even appeared two times.
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
I seem to recall those estimates of WHFB being a small percentage relative to 40k was...
a ) When they were barely releasing anything for WHFB and GW's sales mostly came from new releases, as highlighted by sales figures that got released during the Chapterhouse lawsuit,
and, b ) Everything was a small percentage relative to Space Marines, so while WHFB might have been a small portion sales relative to 40k, 40k as a whole was only small relative to Space Marines.
I think to some extent GW have realised they need to diversify away from Space Marines.
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Argive wrote: this is a 100+ page thread. Plenty of people seemed to be saying it would be warmaster scale/ should be warmaster scale. No idea why but this argument was brought up enough to warrant GW to axctualy clarify. Do you think GW would have clarified if the question wasnt being asked?
No one was saying it "would" be Warmaster scale. At least I don't think so, if you want to find some posts to prove me wrong, go for it. But from my recollection we were simply discussing the possibility that an option for GW, however unlikely, was that they could go for a smaller scale, and how that could be a good idea.
That caused some whackos to blow an aneurysm as if folk genuinely posited that was what GW were doing, rather than just wishlisting and theorising.
I'm pretty sure mods had to lock this thread a couple times coz people were very adamant in their arguments and things were getting heated.. Maybe I'm misremembering, not going to go digging through this thread, so if im wrong Id be happy to accept that.
Anyway, water under the bridge, whatever the case, it doesn't matter anymore. That argument is in the bin (finaly)
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
I am pretty interested to see what they do with it. I hope the game is more like 6th, which I greatly enjoyed, and less like 8th (which I hated).
They really think the video-game people will swarm to spend up to $1k to buy and glue plastic toy soldiers. The game will no doubt drag in all the battered housewives of WHFB because this time it won't be so bad, but I don't know how many vidya-only gamers they will capture with their pricing model.
I don't expect many exclusive video gamers to get into WHFB, but I imagine there'll be a bunch of ex-WHFB who have been reinvigorated by TWW to want to jump back in and buy some models.
I know TWW has on several occasions given me the urge to start a new army, if it weren't for the fact WHFB is dead.
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Argive wrote: I'm pretty sure mods had to lock this thread a couple times coz people were very adamant in their arguments and things were getting heated..
Maybe I'm misremembering, not going to go digging through this thread, so if im wrong Id be happy to accept that.
Anyway, water under the bridge, whatever the case, it doesn't matter anymore.
That argument is in the bin (finaly)
I think it was just locked because the thread was going off topic with pages discussing wishlisting and theories rather than actual news and rumours, but yeah, not fussed, it was just a bit baffling to read posts of "haha, told you so" as if anyone had actually been positing it as a likely option, when I only ever recall it being raised as wishlisting or an off the cuff theory on how GW could afford to support what was a very broad game with many many SKUs.
Cronch wrote: They may buy a centerpiece, but do you really think they will buy a 100 infantry dudes to make into an army, read the archaic rules (since they'll be taken from multiple editions of WHFB, not something written from clean slate) and then haul it all to a game vs...idk, playing the game on their screen and getting better and more balanced experience?
I'm not stating there will be legions of gamers in the millions suddenly getting into TOW minatures... but many might?
Board games and table tops are really on the up trend culturally. Its not that hard to take that leap..
these barriers didn't stop some DOW players picking up minatures...
Also, why would they not ? Why does anyone go into miniature hobbying in the first place?
Maybe they will want a new hobby that is isn't gaming.. Its the most positive exposure possible for GW in any case.
If you know much about WHTW then im not sure how you can call the game a balanced experience; Doom stacks and missle unit spam are not possible in table top.
Its a totally different thing... The rule of cool exists on the table top that just does not translate into the game environment IMO.
We have no idea how bad the rules are going to be (I think we agree they will be bad coz GW but maybe not where on the spectrum of bad they will fall). You never know, the rules might be bearable...
The existence of the video games with surely act as a pathway to some people. How many is debatable. I got into 40K from the Space Hulk computer game back in the 90s.
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
I seem to recall those estimates of WHFB being a small percentage relative to 40k was...
a ) When they were barely releasing anything for WHFB and GW's sales mostly came from new releases, as highlighted by sales figures that got released during the Chapterhouse lawsuit,
and,
b ) Everything was a small percentage relative to Space Marines, so while WHFB might have been a small portion sales relative to 40k, 40k as a whole was only small relative to Space Marines.
I think to some extent GW have realised they need to diversify away from Space Marines.
c) 40k has always been much more popular than WHFB in the US, while in Europe 40k could not top WHFB until the decline in releases and support and increase in prices during 7th Edition and the start of 5th 40k (which was ridiculously cheap to start with the Black Reach Box compared to Fantasy)
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
I am pretty interested to see what they do with it. I hope the game is more like 6th, which I greatly enjoyed, and less like 8th (which I hated).
They really think the video-game people will swarm to spend up to $1k to buy and glue plastic toy soldiers. The game will no doubt drag in all the battered housewives of WHFB because this time it won't be so bad, but I don't know how many vidya-only gamers they will capture with their pricing model.
You seem to have a lot of contempt for people...
Here is the thing:
I know many gamers who will spend £200+ on 1 computer game because it comes with some tacky, cheap, made-in-china "limited edition" figurine. Getting several of these games a year.
I can certainly see some gamers buying some of the big centre pieces. Especially when WHTW3 hits... I think some people might be interested in a blood thirster or some cool Ice Beardzilla..
DOW games are an excellent case study and support the idea that a sucess of a game can translate into miniatures sales.
I don't know why people forget how much attention Dawn Of War brought to Warhammer 40k. I think it's fair to say it wouldn't be as well known a brand as it is without that game.
At the same time the Lord of the Rings market evaporated overnight when the films ended.
That said it DID bring in a lot of new gamers and whilst many never lasted and the sales of "parents lets get them one or two boxes" dried up; there were many who did stick it out and became gamers.
That's why GW is so free with their game licence; they want games made of their product. If the game does badly its forgotten about and any shame is on the developer. If it does great then its 100% free (actually GW get paid so its paid!) marketing for GW. Sure not everyone will buy armies; some might only get one model; some might get a few; some iwll get hooked.
In the end its increasing exposure; increasing awareness; increasing marketing. All what you want to help people be more aware of your brand nad game.
If anything GW doesn't do enough- they could easily start doing limited edition sculpts of models tied to video games. Dawn of War got one or two as I recall and I'm sure there's a few other big title games that GW could work that magic into (Total War, the Battlefleet games)
well the LotR market evaporated over night not only because the movies ended
but because GW halved the box content and doubled the prices (if you ever asked were his meme came from) with the problem that most of those player were LoR fanboys and not GW fanboys and they reacted not just with buying less or from others but still play the GW game
but stopped doing anything related to it and moved on to something else
(most of those players I know who started with that game during the movies are now historical wargamers and never played anything from GW)
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it. I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s because TW has been popular, but 99% of the people that play it are computer gamers and won’t touch a miniatures game, much less an extremely expensive, time consuming (to get to table) game like WHFB.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
I am pretty interested to see what they do with it. I hope the game is more like 6th, which I greatly enjoyed, and less like 8th (which I hated).
40k 8th showed GW if they actually put in some effort to market themselves as giving the slightest impression they give a damn, people will generally give them a second chance and pay hand over fist for the privilege.
Plus End Times stuff sold really well. Probably made them realise to late that if you actually make models instead of letting stuff languish for a decade people will actually buy new stuff.
This was another thing that came up in the past in this thread and is again, which is "where is the player base?"
When it was the small scale arguments it was "why would anyone play when there's AoS at 28mm" yadda yadda. It'll be smaller scale instead.
They are clearly going ahead with it so I mean it's pretty obvious the player base exists considering WHFB was massive when it was out. There is always a market for fantasy and warhammer is iconic, it's a massive trend setter. If they didn't think there was enough of a market they wouldn't be bothering their arses. That's what this long drawn out hype is about, checking the market and seeing how keen people are.
How is this difficult to grasp? I mean I get that there's people who just love to refute anything and everything no matter what GW do, but come on.
I love all these hot takes on the prospect of a game that isn't even out yet, all founded on uncited anecdotal evidence.
My grandma said wfb will have the momentum of a runaway freight train because 97.4% of gamers and 99.125% of computer gamers want a slice of hot Karl Franz.
40k 8th showed GW if they actually put in some effort to market themselves as giving the slightest impression they give a damn, people will generally give them a second chance and pay hand over fist for the privilege.
Plus End Times stuff sold really well. Probably made them realise to late that if you actually make models instead of letting stuff languish for a decade people will actually buy new stuff.
The decision to no longer insult their fans in messages from the CEO was also quite welcome.
As I mentioned this might actually be driven largely by internal enthusiasm. I imagine the studio are much greater fans of WHFB than even us and are genuinely excited to bring it back. This, more than a master plan again Mantic, may be the main driver.
Yeah I would not recommend GW launch a 3rd 28mm mass battle fantasy game (after AoS and LotR), but I can also see that love of the Olde World might overrule what seems like an obvious problem.
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did), it is weird to see GW take another stab at it.
Few GW games will ever sell 10% of what 40k does currently. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if for all its growth, AOS still only sells 10-20% of what 40k does. ICV2 (not the must accurate source ofc) even put AOS below Marvel Crisis Protocol and Star Wars Legion and anecdotally my experience is that the actually quite large European fanbase for Fantasy did not migrate over to AOS. In my local area that has a huge wargaming scene, AOS comes below games like Bolt Action, Armada, Saga, KoW, 9th Age, Blood Bowl, Infinity and even Epic. One LGS sold 125 Indomitus boxes last year. He was brow beaten by GW to order 30 Dominion sets and has only managed to sell 10 so far. He had an allocation of 30 boxes of Soul Wars going back to 2018 and only just managed to sell the last of them 2 months ago.
But from a lot of metrics, support and statements, we know that GW is actually pretty happy with how AOS is doing. Because the new management realises that not everything needs to be Space Marines and do 40k numbers.
It's almost as if Fantasy was mismanaged and killed off for arbitrary reasons.....
I think GW today looks for solid return on investment, but also market dominance and spread. I think GW of the Kirby era got too fixated on finding the maximum possible return, which led to them going to the same pathway over and over (marines marines marines 40K marines). Which in the end weakened their position on the market overall.
I think GW today realises that they can chase the golden goose that is Marines, but if they do that they run a high risk that the rest of the wargaming market will chase all the other geese and that, in the end, GW will only have 1 golden goose and the rest will have all the others. Leaving GW in a very vulnerable position should anything happen to that goose (eg marine players get sick of mirror-matches and move onto other games).
GW today is very much spreading itself out to support more. It's a smart move as it helps smother the competition before they can get their head up; which leaves GW in a long term safer position and not having to suddenly panic market products to regain their position. As dominant as they are, they can be dethroned very quickly if the right situatoins happen.
Heck just look how fast Warmachine fell from being second only to GW at its best.
Gee, I can't imagine why a specifically 40kGT event that doesn't even mention AoS on its website (at least that I could find) might have only had two people show up. Googling only finds one indication that an AoS event existed, seems to have been a small 3-round tournament from the getgo that was barely advertised outside of facebook. If thats the case, then Im really not surprised that only 2 people showed up.
AngryAngel80 wrote: Just to mark it down, the Q and A of this actually pleases me with GW. The fact I kept my old armies intact and just kept the dream alive is great for me. If GW do this right I will actually praise them, but so far this Old World sounds amazing to me. My longbeard self is finally at peace, for now. One less grudge will I hold if they do it right.
This might kill your buzz - if GW releases a compendium for the legacy armies, its either going to be a book full of rules for models that you mostly can't buy, or a book full of rules for models that you only can buy. Both approaches have their ups and downs. This is unless they do a large amount of Made to Order stuff, but its my understanding that GW has already dispossessed itself of a lot of the older WHFB molds so its unclear to what extent they would be able to support the missing stuff. I certainly don't expect them to reboot continuous production of any of the discontinued kits even if they have the molds for them. In any case, point is that while this might make some people happy, there will also probably be some who are pissed off by the approach as well because they either can't take their discontinued units in their army as anything other than a proxy for something else (and indeed army balance may be impacted by that), or because they can't acquire the units that they didn't purchase previously but really want.
Just Tony wrote: Anyone with access to the lexicon knows that Warmaster stopped receiving shelf retail support 6 months after release.
Weird, anyone with access to lexicanum, or wikipedia, or who actually played the game knows that it received 2 editions, multiple expansion books, and 3 official spinoff games (2 historicals, 1 lord of the rings) over the period of a decade. Officially, it had more support than Battlefleet Gothic did. But okay, "6 months". *eyeroll*
Warmaster is so unpopular that sculpting 10mm fantasy minis is a day job for half a dozen 3D artists.
Indeed, my local group has been buying up those minis by the bucketload the last few months. Some are playing warmaster, others are playing "microhammer" or something (basically 7th ed whfb using centimeters instead of inches) with them. Locally there were a lot of people bummed that the game would be 28mm, it works so much better in 10mm and the minis are incredible (tons of detail, easy to paint, look great in rank and file, and you can actually build and play with massive armies like you imagined and were depicted in the artwork without any of the headache that comes with doing so in 28mm).
Sabotage! wrote: With how unprofitable 8th edition was for GW (I’ve seen several sources claim it made less than 10% what 40k did)
No source for it but the long-standing rumor is that Space Marines alone outsold the entirety of WHFB.
It occurred to me last night that we can estimate how relevant WHFB was to GW's finances in its final couple years of life. Observe:
So it doesn't mark when WHFB died, but it was August 2014. Because the chart is based on annual and half-year reports, theres not a good place to actually measure from that would completely or accurately capture the lost sales, but if we consider the WHFB "maximum" to be before that point at Jan 1 2014 (marked with the note pertaining to the release of 40k 7th), at which point The End Times hype cycle was in full swing, and consider the WHFB "minimum" to be Jan 1 2016 (marked with the note pertaining to the release of AoSGHB), we can very generously get a gauge of how much sales of WHFB minis and books contributed to GWs top line. So, marking the maximum with a red line, the minimum with a purple line, and marking the area we are focused on with the orange circle we get this:
Roughly speaking, it looks like WHFB was between 5-10 million GBP/year of revenue, lets call it 7.5 million, or about 5-6% of GWs total annual revenue at the time.
One key assumption made here is that WHFB was not already in a downward sales trend on Jan 1 2014 (and indeed the fact that the End Times books had started being released sometime prior to this, which was supposedly driving sales* would imply that WHFB sales would have been on an upswing at this time). Another key assumption here, which is intended to be as generous to WHFB as posslbe, is that the downward trend that continued from Jan 1 2014 onwards was 100% entirely due to the loss of WHFB and had nothing to do with 40k or the lackluster response to 7th ed 40k whatsoever. Likewise, final key assumption here is that the lowest point measured after WHFB was axed on Jan 1 2016 is due entirely to the loss of sales from WHFB and that Age of Sigmar was barely selling anything at all at this point. In essence, the idea here is that WHFB was undergoing a sales renaissance up until Jan 1 2014, and then it was killed and everyone stopped buying that product range until AoSGHB was released, and every lost dollar in that timeframe is 100% due to WHFB.
Again, the assumptions made are designed to be as generous to WHFB as humanly possible and in reality would probably indicate WHFB generated significantly more top-line revenue than it actually did. Even if we dial this up to 11 and assume the WHFB "maximum" was at Jan 1 2013 (i.e. GWs top line revenue maximum prior to the post AoSGHB peak) indicated with the yellow line/focus area in grey circle, you still only get about 20 million GBP max (in reality closer to 16-18, but Im being generous) or around ~16% of Revenue total - but for that to be true would require 40k to not have been on a sales and popularity downtrend at the time, which it was, so its hard to justify attributing that entire decline solely to WHFB.
In short, WHFB had just a fraction of 40ks popularity.
*Note that the longstanding recurring narrative among WHFB apologists is that The End Times generated some massive uptick in interest and sales for WHFB - the inferred data from this chart would seem to imply otherwise, while there may have been an increase in interest in WHFB there certainly was not a meaningful or significant change in the financial trends as a result of its release.
Maybe they will just make new rules and bundle up some of the old models in bundles with an occasional FW release?
Well, its essentially been confirmed to be a Forgeworld/Specialist game with the revelation that Andy Hoare is leading the design. Expectation is a handful of new plastic kits every 3 months or so supplemented by Resin upgrades for specialist units/weapons, etc. plus resin characters + rare units, mercs and the like. I fully expect there to be at least one entirely resin faction released for the game, and I think most of the plastic support for the first year or so will come for the 1-2 factions included in the probable launch box before they may begin releasing another faction in plastic.
Between its Specialist status and the likelihood of it using the new smaller table sizes, I don't see this being a return to WHFB of 7th or 8th ed, I think we're going to see a game skewed more towards 3rd-6th. Which is good - if I can't have my warmaster scale minis then I want this to be a game where I show up to the table with 2-3 units of 10-20 infantry, 1-2 units of 5-10 cavalry, a couple characters, and a monster/warmachine. I am nostalgic for that sort of smaller "super-skirmish" type rank and file game adn there is an opening in the market for it. I think it will work a lot better than trying to make the 7th/8th massed battle approach work.
Some may point to the impending rumored HH/30k plastic release, to those people I will point out that FW has released at least a dozen resin kits for the game in the past 6-12 months alone, spread between characters, upgrade kits, and new units, with indications being there are more in the pipeline based on the leaked SoH Praetor. Even if HH is getting more plastic support, its still going to have a whole lot of resin.
Graphite wrote: I'm bewildered that some people in this thread seem to actively want TOW to fail
Sadly over the years the general "I hate GW's choice on this matter" aspect has grown to the point where there is an active element of the fanbase who are basically die hard haters of GW and anything they touch. It manifests in a really odd way in that new projects they want to fail; new ideas they want to fail; heck we have had several threads locked recently about a 3D designer who was going to work for GW who got basically hounded out by "fans" hating on them working for GW. The same also happened with some of the authors for the Warhammer Kids books, who got targeted hate.
Gamers are pretty good at being welcoming/friendly to fellow gamers (generally); however when it comes to GW there's a huge amount of hate that just mindlessly gets thrown around. It's unhealthy, but its grown over the years steadily into a subset of tolerated behaviour.
The decision to no longer insult their fans in messages from the CEO was also quite welcome.
I was absent from the hobby before Kevin Roundtree took over the company. What kind of insults did the previous CEO dish out?
I don't really remember any outright insults, but the previous CEOs attitude (to which he made clear verbal/written statements to) was that they were a miniatures company and that only a minority of their customers actually played their games.
Graphite wrote: I'm bewildered that some people in this thread seem to actively want TOW to fail
I'm not. Every new edition, every game that comes out always gets fans of whatever other game to start railing for its demise. Largely I feel because the main draw to GW games is not the bad rulesets, its the community. People play AOS simply because everyone else plays AOS. Thats the draw! Not the rules. Not the (balance lol). THe massive community followed by the great models.
AOS players dropping napalm on The Old World does not surprise me at all because no one wants their playerbase fragmenting off. There ARE a lot of AOS players that want to play the Old World, and that means less time for AOS (in some cases, people only play one game or another so thats a permanent loss for some). No matter how you slice it, its at the very least going to remove some players from the aos player pool for a time, and THAT is where a lot of the "its going to die lol" comments come from. A gatekeeping attempt to keep AOS the primary game.
Do I think The Old World will overtake AOS? Hardly. We're in the 2020s now, where game design follows what AOS is pretty closely for a reason. Its more inclusive, easier to play, it melds popular games like magic the gathering with its deckbuilding / chain comboing gameplay - and you can git gud by just being good at simple math and just keep on buying whatever the GHB makes powerful for that year.
Do I think the Old World will die? Nope. I think Kings of War, 9th age, and Conquest players right now are sweating (and are being quite vocal about it in other social media hubs) because they know that they are going to lose some players as well back to the GW mothership because a lot of WHFB players would have kept playing WHFB but only started playing KOW or 9th or whatever because their game that they loved vanished overnight.
In the end - who cares? I think its a good thing that AOS players have AOS and players that want a rank and file have a game again. That can only be a positive thing overall. Yeah - your player base is going to fragment a bit because some people prefer one over the other. But forcing EVERYONE to have to play AOS was never a good thing in my book. GW is a business, they realize they can make money from the rank and file crowd as well.
very nice chart, @chaos0xomega, yet one thing that might help here is that during those times prior GHB, 40k and WHFB shared the same costumer base, so overall sales stayed the same with the loyal fans switching systems while those left being replaced with new and the overall numbers stayed the same
I don't really remember any outright insults, but the previous CEOs attitude (to which he made clear verbal/written statements to) was that they were a miniatures company and that only a minority of their customers actually played their games.
The decision to no longer insult their fans in messages from the CEO was also quite welcome.
I was absent from the hobby before Kevin Roundtree took over the company. What kind of insults did the previous CEO dish out?
I don't really remember any outright insults, but the previous CEOs attitude (to which he made clear verbal/written statements to) was that they were a miniatures company and that only a minority of their customers actually played their games.
Yeah GW really took a turn for the worse under Kirby.
Apparently the reason why we don't have nice artwork on our boxed sets anymore is because of him.
I don't really remember any outright insults, but the previous CEOs attitude (to which he made clear verbal/written statements to) was that they were a miniatures company and that only a minority of their customers actually played their games.
Oh, I see. Cheers.
There was that one investor report where Kirby was high on crack and said they sell to people genetically predisposed to hoard toys or some such, and also mentioned losing the Chapterhouse case because legislation was written with swine theft in mind, not IP.
I'm not. Every new edition, every game that comes out always gets fans of whatever other game to start railing for its demise. Largely I feel because the main draw to GW games is not the bad rulesets, its the community. People play AOS simply because everyone else plays AOS. Thats the draw! Not the rules. Not the (balance lol). THe massive community followed by the great models.
Disagree. I know plenty of people who got into 40k without having a community to play with. In my case, I *WAS* the entirety of my local Age of Sigmar community through the entirety of its first edition and through a good portion of 2nd edition. I didn't play my first game of AoS until like a year ago, simply because I couldn't find anyone to play with. A massive online presence is irrelevant if you have nobody to chuck dice with.
Do I think the Old World will die? Nope. I think Kings of War, 9th age, and Conquest players right now are sweating (and are being quite vocal about it in other social media hubs) because they know that they are going to lose some players as well back to the GW mothership because a lot of WHFB players would have kept playing WHFB but only started playing KOW or 9th or whatever because their game that they loved vanished overnight.
I'm fine with KoW and 9th Age dying, they mean nothing to me, have never looked at them. But please, please spare Conquest. Sadly I think its the one most likely to go under of the three you listed - KoW has built itself a solid community of people who legitimately enjoy the game (with an increasingly large slice of people who have never played WHFB), and 9th Age has a lot of bitter hacks that will never come back to playing a GW game - it'll take a hit but it won't die. Conquest is pretty much modernized WHFB gameplay wise and lorewise is WHFB if the writers had read fiction written by people other than Moorcock and Tolkien. I know theres quite a few people playing it that never touched WHFB in the first place, but I suspect theres a lot of people who will also peel off when WHFB comes back too.
The only other game I can think of that might be impacted is ASOIF, but it appeals to such a different type of gamer its essentially a "gateway game". The community overwhelmingly has never played WHFB, quite a few are entire noobies to the miniatures hobby as a whole. I think ASOIF walks away from TOW without any harm.
kodos wrote: very nice chart, @chaos0xomega, yet one thing that might help here is that during those times prior GHB, 40k and WHFB shared the same costumer base, so overall sales stayed the same with the loyal fans switching systems while those left being replaced with new and the overall numbers stayed the same
ehhh. I don't know that "they spent the money they were spending on WHFB previously on 40k instead" really flies as an explanation for why there wasn't a bigger decline. Aside from the fact that 40k was *also* seeing declining sales and a declining playerbase in that same timeframe, the fact of the matter is that WHFB was itself not selling particularly well prior to this point (it fell off of icv2s top 5 rankings some years prior, etc.). If there was a contingent of WHFB players who were spending regular sums of money on WHFB and then switched over to spending that money on 40k instead, there weren't very many of them. As WHFB supporters often say "there wasn't anything for WHFB to spend their money on because the game got no support." That isn't true, of course, it had the roughly the same average number of releases per year that 40k got, but the fact that so many people can't seem to remember those releases leads me to believe that it was stuff that didn't interest them enough to warrant them opening up their wallets to actually purchase them, which further reinforces the idea that there was not a large community of people actively chucking money at WHFB who then started chucking their money at 40k instead.
Also, on top of that, logic says that 40k and AoS *also* share overwhelmingly the same customer base. We can see the sales uptrend that occurred after GHB was released. Logic dictates that if revenues stayed consistent after WHFB died because WHFB players were spending their money on 40k instead, then it would have also stayed consistent after AoS released because it would have likewise been the same pool of money coming from the same pool of people.
EDIT - I should also mention that one accusation I saw particularly bitter fans of WHFB throw around back in the day was "They made AoS to appeal to 40k players". If so, then that would imply the crossover between 40k and WHFB players was minimal (I played both as did most WHFB players I know, though I definitely know a few who only played WHFB), whereas the crossover between AoS and 40k is much larger (I don't know anyone who plays AoS but doesn't also play 40k).
We are entering a new era now where a lot of people know WHFB based on the Total War game. More people know about warhammer in general so while I have no idea how well this will be received overall. Odds are good it can be more successful then the last iteration of WHFB.
I don't really remember any outright insults, but the previous CEOs attitude (to which he made clear verbal/written statements to) was that they were a miniatures company and that only a minority of their customers actually played their games.
Oh, I see. Cheers.
There was that one investor report where Kirby was high on crack and said they sell to people genetically predisposed to hoard toys or some such, and also mentioned losing the Chapterhouse case because legislation was written with swine theft in mind, not IP.
I don't recall either of those. The one about Chapterhouse isn't really an insult to the playerbase though, more towards lawyers.
Disagree. I know plenty of people who got into 40k without having a community to play with. In my case, I *WAS* the entirety of my local Age of Sigmar community through the entirety of its first edition and through a good portion of 2nd edition. I didn't play my first game of AoS until like a year ago, simply because I couldn't find anyone to play with. A massive online presence is irrelevant if you have nobody to chuck dice with.
Thats fine. For a lot of other people thats not the case though. Whenever I am in a balance conversation in a forum, facebook, discord, wherever, inevitably there will always be responses that say "I dont care about balance, I just want to hang out with my friends playing what they are playing and chucking dice."
And when you talk about other rank and file games you get "lol, I'm not playing a game that no one else is playing or where I have to build a community. AOS / 40k I can get a game whenever I want."
Pretty much every time. For years and years. Enough that I know its a massive reason why a very large number of people play GW and not other games even when they like those other games more.
AOS players dropping napalm on The Old World does not surprise me at all because no one wants their playerbase fragmenting off. There ARE a lot of AOS players that want to play the Old World, and that means less time for AOS (in some cases, people only play one game or another so thats a permanent loss for some). No matter how you slice it, its at the very least going to remove some players from the aos player pool for a time, and THAT is where a lot of the "its going to die lol" comments come from. A gatekeeping attempt to keep AOS the primary game.
I find this quite funny because I've not seen any large number of AoS hobbyists hoping for TOW to fail or being afraid it's going to kill AoS. In fact, all I have seen is legacy WHFB people baying for the death of AoS and praising GW for returning WHFB. The TOW Facebook group is particularly toxic towards AoS and I've seen more comments on how AoS sucks and should be replaced with TOW since its announcement, that it's kind of souring the whole thing for me. I love TW:WH and the Old World has its own merits as a setting but I'm not jumping into a community that's already filled with chuds before the game has even been released.
Whenever I am in a balance conversation in a forum, facebook, discord, wherever, inevitably there will always be responses that say "I dont care about balance, I just want to hang out with my friends playing what they are playing and chucking dice."
YOU LIE MISTER!
I am very active in online communities for these games, I have literally never once seen someone say that
Whenever I am in a balance conversation in a forum, facebook, discord, wherever, inevitably there will always be responses that say "I dont care about balance, I just want to hang out with my friends playing what they are playing and chucking dice."
YOU LIE MISTER!
I am very active in online communities for these games, I have literally never once seen someone say that
lol hahaha. Its all over the dakka aos forum. Like... in dozens if not hundreds of places over the years. There was a subsection in one of the total warhammer facebooks I'm in now on why balance is secondary to community. The TGA forums ... again littered everywhere. Commonly stated. The Conquest discord we talked about that fairly regularly. Same thing.
Its literally everywhere. If you have never seen anyone say that community is what matters most and balance is not their primary reason they play, you are simply willfully blinding yourself to it being said.
AOS players dropping napalm on The Old World does not surprise me at all because no one wants their playerbase fragmenting off. There ARE a lot of AOS players that want to play the Old World, and that means less time for AOS (in some cases, people only play one game or another so thats a permanent loss for some). No matter how you slice it, its at the very least going to remove some players from the aos player pool for a time, and THAT is where a lot of the "its going to die lol" comments come from. A gatekeeping attempt to keep AOS the primary game.
I find this quite funny because I've not seen any large number of AoS hobbyists hoping for TOW to fail or being afraid it's going to kill AoS. In fact, all I have seen is legacy WHFB people baying for the death of AoS and praising GW for returning WHFB. The TOW Facebook group is particularly toxic towards AoS and I've seen more comments on how AoS sucks and should be replaced with TOW since its announcement, that it's kind of souring the whole thing for me. I love TW:WH and the Old World has its own merits as a setting but I'm not jumping into a community that's already filled with chuds before the game has even been released.
Indeed. I've seen plenty on facebook - and in this thread - predicting or hoping for AoS demise. Admittedly I've seen a few predicting or hoping for TOWs demise as well, but an absolute minority by comparison. The overwhelming attitude of AoS fans interested in TOW - such as myself - is basically "calm the feth down and check your expectations". EDIT - I suppose to a WHFB diehard anything short of "hail our lord and savior, the second coming of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. May it deliver us from the great Satan of Age of Sigmar!" might seem like hate or a desire for TOW to die an inglorious death, but that perspective is a "you" problem.
AOS players dropping napalm on The Old World does not surprise me at all because no one wants their playerbase fragmenting off. There ARE a lot of AOS players that want to play the Old World, and that means less time for AOS (in some cases, people only play one game or another so thats a permanent loss for some). No matter how you slice it, its at the very least going to remove some players from the aos player pool for a time, and THAT is where a lot of the "its going to die lol" comments come from. A gatekeeping attempt to keep AOS the primary game.
I find this quite funny because I've not seen any large number of AoS hobbyists hoping for TOW to fail or being afraid it's going to kill AoS. In fact, all I have seen is legacy WHFB people baying for the death of AoS and praising GW for returning WHFB. The TOW Facebook group is particularly toxic towards AoS and I've seen more comments on how AoS sucks and should be replaced with TOW since its announcement, that it's kind of souring the whole thing for me. I love TW:WH and the Old World has its own merits as a setting but I'm not jumping into a community that's already filled with chuds before the game has even been released.
Confirmation bias is a thing. If you are on one side, you will not see what that side says so much as you will see what the other side, the side you don't like, says. The derogatory words being tossed like "chuds" from both sides only fuels it even more. I'm told multiple times a day by an AOS fan that WHFB is garbage and the old world will die followed by some unneccesary remark. I'm sure that whfb people still slag AOS for the same reason. Its no more or less in one camp or the other.
Whenever I am in a balance conversation in a forum, facebook, discord, wherever, inevitably there will always be responses that say "I dont care about balance, I just want to hang out with my friends playing what they are playing and chucking dice."
YOU LIE MISTER!
I am very active in online communities for these games, I have literally never once seen someone say that
lol hahaha. Its all over the dakka aos forum. Like... in dozens if not hundreds of places over the years. There was a subsection in one of the total warhammer facebooks I'm in now on why balance is secondary to community. The TGA forums ... again littered everywhere. Commonly stated. The Conquest discord we talked about that fairly regularly. Same thing.
Its literally everywhere. If you have never seen anyone say that community is what matters most and balance is not their primary reason they play, you are simply willfully blinding yourself to it being said.
Whenever I am in a balance conversation in a forum, facebook, discord, wherever, inevitably there will always be responses that say "I dont care about balance, I just want to hang out with my friends playing what they are playing and chucking dice."
YOU LIE MISTER!
I am very active in online communities for these games, I have literally never once seen someone say that
lol hahaha. Its all over the dakka aos forum. Like... in dozens if not hundreds of places over the years. There was a subsection in one of the total warhammer facebooks I'm in now on why balance is secondary to community. The TGA forums ... again littered everywhere. Commonly stated. The Conquest discord we talked about that fairly regularly. Same thing.
Its literally everywhere. If you have never seen anyone say that community is what matters most and balance is not their primary reason they play, you are simply willfully blinding yourself to it being said.
I've played this game before on here. I think even with you. Posting screenshots / links just gets the automatic rebuttal of "well yeah that was just ONE or TWO, its not a LOT". So I'll pass on your game. Anyone who has been around the internet reading wargaming content knows exactly what I'm talking about though. I'll sleep easy at night being ok with that.
Sadly I think its the one most likely to go under of the three you listed - 