I'm excited for what is to come for TOW. Especially new takes on lines either no longer supported or never explored.
On the flying chariot what I don't understand is how it got squatted. You can argue about its place in WHFB (and y'all have!) But it was a recent kit and absolutely fits in the Realms. Bizarre.
Of course it does. The Rule of Cool has been the primary driving force behind GW's modeling choices for 30 years now. They didn't give Elves a flying chariot because it filled a vital niche in the army. They gave Elves a flying chariot because someone sketched a flying chariot and the guy running the design studio thought it was cool.
Goose LeChance wrote: Can't believe we're defending magic chariots pulled by birds now, all the riders would look like Evel Knievel 10 seconds after takeoff.
What about skeleton horses pulling a chariot?
Is it on the ground and has at least 2 wheels? Sounds metal asf bro. Where can I get one?
Elves already have several giant birds, and they already have chariots, ignoring the fact that a flying chariot looks stupid, why is it even needed in the army?
As a HE player i think its totaly silly and unecessary and doesn't really fit the army. But I wouldn't say the reason for it are born out of any lack of following physics or anything else...
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eldarain wrote: I'm excited for what is to come for TOW. Especially new takes on lines either no longer supported or never explored.
On the flying chariot what I don't understand is how it got squatted. You can argue about its place in WHFB (and y'all have!) But it was a recent kit and absolutely fits in the Realms. Bizarre.
100% agree. Seemed much more AOS than steam tank lol
I wonder what if any other factions we will see. Id love to see some cathay/nippon stuff. Ive wanted nippon (not-samurai) warhammer minis since I saw warhammer for the first time lol.
100% agree. Seemed much more AOS than steam tank lol
I wonder what if any other factions we will see. Id love to see some cathay/nippon stuff.
Ive wanted nippon (not-samurai) warhammer minis since I saw warhammer for the first time lol.
I wonder how they can work in so many human factions. Much of their fanbase finds humans very boring but at the same time complain that AoS doesn't have enough of them.
I mean I'd fully expect the core regiment to be swords men/bowmen.
But then I'd also demands some jade beasts, Shenron style dragons and other japanese/oriental folklore beasties...
Thats peak WHFB to me. Bunch of lame humin regiments marching in ranks against some non human humonoids also in ranks both beings upported by some crazy big things.
"It's magic" is not always a strong defense of choices made for a fantasy world. Some grounding is what makes the setting believable. WHFB had/has a logic to it. Sigmar is mostly "hee, hee, it's magical!!!!"
When you already have dragons and giant eagles existing and being capable of flight without their skeletons collapsing under their own body weight, a flying chariot working 'because magic' really isn't that big a leap.
I was speaking generally about "because magic" excuses, not specifically the flying chariot. I would expect it to be enchanted. I would also expect its design to make more sense, or at least look better.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I hope GW doesn't focus on humans too much.
Although Bretonnia (and Tomb Kings) should really be their first priorities model-wise. I don't understand GW's selective squatting of kits in the transition to Sigmar. Those need to be put back into production, too. They could start now, even, 40k/AOS schedule be damned, to tide us over and start building hype. I don't want people to lose interest by the time it releases.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: They’d have a real optics problem if they expanded their trend of Europeans=human, non-Europeans=monsters.
I'm at once really excited for Cathay because it's probably the first time GW has meaningfully engaged with a predominantly non-white faction, but also deathly afraid of how bad they stand to cock it up through lazy researching and broad strokes "asian" aesthetics. White Scars are so frustrating for me, because they come close really often, such as the portrait on the Supplement cover art, but the plastic minis don't really live up to it at all, and then the FW minis, while gorgeous, seem to be a bit confused as to whether they're Mongolian, Chinese, or Japanese, and it feels like less synthesis and more confusion, even maybe ignorance on the part of the design team. I daresay that a dramaturge might be of real help for GW in some cases.
That said, this thread needs a bit more positivity I feel ! There's too much bitching and backbiting and not enough news or even speculation. I'd love to see more human civilizations explored more, but I'm also dead keen on seeing more empire/european humans stuff. I might be a bit biased because I've just started cobbling together some second hand goblins metals, but I really hope they bring back some classic greenskins too - the hill goblins and the old-style orcs, and I'd love if they brought a Total War-esque re-deux of classic characters like Skarsnik. Vampire Pirates have come up, too, and I think that'd be excellent to see in the new tabletop game, love the look of them in Total War, and I feel like they really make a lot of sense in a more confined geographical setting like TOW, as opposed to the infinite, broad scope of AOS.
The recent announcement that it's gonna be Warhammer Warhammer, with the old faction names, classic bases and scaling really buoyed me, and I think they've probably got a decently passionate team behind it all, which is a good sign. I'm personally on the side of new blood, as when whfb was in its last months, I only just got into 40k, but, provided the price point is alright (listen, I know pigs might fly, but a McBogus is nothing without wild dreams), I'd be dead keen to get stuck in. I know people are talking about r&f a lot, but I think it'd be cool if the game was shrunk down a bit at the start, something akin to pre-superheavies/flyers 40k, with like, a troop squad or 2, a hero, max 2 specialist/elite units and that's your game. It'd be interesting to see what they do with game size, as you'd assume GW want people starting new armies, but also catering to grognards who already have quite large collections, perhaps we'll see some new iteration of 'three ways to play' with a smaller, killteam-esque entry level for people who've picked up a box or two, a middle sized battle, and then some kind of apoc type thing, too. With how popular crusade seems, it'd be cool if there was a way of making all three flow into each other...
Spoiler:
Disclaimer: I am dumb and know nothing about game design.
GW thought it looks cool, but the people who should buy it thought it was not
hence you get a lot of arguments why it does not work
similar things happend with the Taurox in 40k, it just wasn't cool enough to get around the "fact check"
"magic" also only works as an argument if it makes sense, because if the whole thing flys because of magic, you don't need the bird there (and it would have worked better without it)
chaos0xomega wrote: One of us actually has facts on their side in the form of a real release schedule and proof of support.
the argument was that GW faild at supporting full model ranges but just released new models instead of replacing old, ugly, outdated core
the facts you give proofed this to be true for all but 3 armies
so yes, the vast majority of armies saw now support from GW like they do now in AoS, were every new release for a faction so far is also adding new core models
from what we know so far it will be mainly focused on humans
Kislev VS Chaos, Bretonnia VS Orcs and Empire Civil War are the settings in the teaser
so we expect 3 campaign books in 30k style to feature those inlcuding model support (resin upgrade kits for plastic models or full resin armies)
question is just if they will expand into the East and go with Cathy and Ind by the time as Chaos Dwarfs VS Cathy would be an option to get into the Asien market
chaos0xomega wrote: Won't happen, people actually buy Age of Sigmar minis and don't overwhelmingly gak on everything released for it.
Lumineth, Kruleboyz, Idoneth, Kharadron, Bonereapers and any new Stormcast get a load of gak thrown at them by the AOS community.
The most well-received universally liked bunch of new models for AOS recently was Soulblight who basically just kept all of the Vampire Counts aesthetics and stayed deliberately restrained outside of the Centaur Vamps.
I wonder why no one has brought this up over here. Looking for coming months that fit this scheme - i.e. 30 days, starting on a Wednesday - you end up with September 2021, June 2022, November 2023... stopping at October 2025.
While I do not believe for a second this September 23rd will be the release date, it might very well be the date of the next TOW preview - possibly including an actual release date.
June 2022 is pretty too soon in my opinion, it has one major benefit over November or October though: it is a "classical" release month. November in particular is pretty much impossible, since at that point GW has the Christmas bundle boxes up. October is not as unlikely, but would still be a bit odd. It would also be over four years away - while I am not the most optimistic person in general, I'm not that pessimistic here.
To be honest, I consider June 2022 not that unlikely all things considered. It fits as a "major product release slot" and also adds up with the "more than two years off" comment in the original announcement. With the other options being either too soon or unfitting for other reasons - and doubting that GW has dropped this bit without any meaning whatsoever - I guess we are in for either some major news this September or the games release next June.
Overread wrote: Over the years the only sculpt choice I find I dislike with fantasy that GW keeps doing is putting high backed arm chairs as seats for dragons/larger mounts. They always look just - -- wrong to me. So ungainly and like a huge sail they lack the sleek appeal that winged flight animals and beasts should have; if not for aerodynamics then for the basics of combat.
Sky chariots and such I'm totally fine with but highbacked armchairs- nope!
There are only to two things in WHFB that set you apart from the rabble:
I wonder why no one has brought this up over here. Looking for coming months that fit this scheme - i.e. 30 days, starting on a Wednesday - you end up with September 2021, June 2022, November 2023... stopping at October 2025.
While I do not believe for a second this September 23rd will be the release date, it might very well be the date of the next TOW preview - possibly including an actual release date.
June 2022 is pretty too soon in my opinion, it has one major benefit over November or October though: it is a "classical" release month. November in particular is pretty much impossible, since at that point GW has the Christmas bundle boxes up. October is not as unlikely, but would still be a bit odd. It would also be over four years away - while I am not the most optimistic person in general, I'm not that pessimistic here.
To be honest, I consider June 2022 not that unlikely all things considered. It fits as a "major product release slot" and also adds up with the "more than two years off" comment in the original announcement. With the other options being either too soon or unfitting for other reasons - and doubting that GW has dropped this bit without any meaning whatsoever - I guess we are in for either some major news this September or the games release next June.
Over here our weeks start on a Sunday, so that would actually be a month that starts on a Tuesday, not a Wednesday.
Also I'd be surprised if they put that much thought into it.
chaos0xomega wrote: Won't happen, people actually buy Age of Sigmar minis and don't overwhelmingly gak on everything released for it.
Lumineth, Kruleboyz, Idoneth, Kharadron, Bonereapers and any new Stormcast get a load of gak thrown at them by the AOS community.
The most well-received universally liked bunch of new models for AOS recently was Soulblight who basically just kept all of the Vampire Counts aesthetics and stayed deliberately restrained outside of the Centaur Vamps.
To be fair, the initial wave of Lumineth (the NotHighElves) seemed to be really well liked as well, it wasn't until Cow-Hammerers and The Mountain That Moos and the other, wackier stuff was revealed that opinion shifted. It was the same with the Soulblight, the NotVampireCount core stuff like the Skeletons and Blood Knights was almost universally praised (except for that small segment of diehard AoSers who want nothing to in any way resemble Fantasy) whilst the second reveal proved far more controversial and sucked a lot of the energy out of the room.
I have to disagree with the notion that Idoneth, Kharadron or specially stormcast outside the two first batches have received gak from the AoS community.
Both the sacresant chamber and this new chamber of Stormcast were very well received (specially because they had a ton of kickass female models), Kruleboyz have left a couple of people dissapointed because they aren't just more orks but in general the reception has gone from very positive to just "I'm not interested) but in general most people were comparing then as the superior version to the goofy 40k beast snaggas.
The same goes for Kharadron. The people that complained about them were not the AoS players, for many people Kharadron was the FIRST proper AoS army and one that many people loved specially the ships. Is only the balloon boys that have some controversy to their design.
And I have no horse in this race but... from my subjetive, personal experience, is true that by the most part, I have always seen (at the moment AoS became and actual game and not a joke with the first general handbook) much, much more people buy actual GW produced aos miniatures (With a good bunch of 3rd party alternatives, like I do with a ton of minotaurs, friends do for special characters ,etc...) than in Fantasy, where buying whole armies from other manufactures or going to ebay to just buy 4th-5th edition armies was the preffered approach.
Now, if nu-GW would launch WHFB with the community engagement they are doing with 40k and AoS i don't doubt that trend would not repeat. But it was a reality. But not one I'm blaming the community for, GW was extremely mismanaged in those days.
Galas wrote: And I have no horse in this race but... from my subjetive, personal experience, is true that by the most part, I have always seen (at the moment AoS became and actual game and not a joke with the first general handbook) much, much more people buy actual GW produced aos miniatures (With a good bunch of 3rd party alternatives, like I do with a ton of minotaurs, friends do for special characters ,etc...) than in Fantasy, where buying whole armies from other manufactures or going to ebay to just buy 4th-5th edition armies was the preffered approach.
But how much of that was just due to the stagnant armies?
We know most of GW's sales come from launches, that's why they maintain such a fast release cycle, but at the end of 8th many WHFB armies still had a core that dated back to 6th edition, at which point 3rd party models were often not only cheaper but looked just as good or better and buying 2nd hand armies meant you were buying the exact same models as they hadn't changed in many years. The Perry twins after leaving GW made better Bretonnians than what GW was selling at a fraction of the price.
I'm not a proponent of beefing up sales with excessive new shiny launches because it can result in a bloated range and/or rapid replacement of units, but I also can't deny that's the milkshake that brings all the boys to the yard.
I know someone on a previous page posted a comprehensive list of all the things that came out in 8th, but they were also mostly support units rather than something that'd inspire someone to start a whole new army, and even with that big list I don't think it had the pace of AoS releases.
Anecdotally I remember hearing 40K players express that they liked some of the WHFB content, but didn't like having to buy a lot of mundane and dated sculpts to assemble the core of their army so they could get to the 'good stuff'.
There are a couple of different issues represented there:
-Need for large quantities of troops to assemble a couple of core regiments. It's not just two boxes of 5 or 10 and you're done, as many armies could do in 40K; you were going to be buying enough boxes to assemble 40+ troop models at bare minimum.
-The troops weren't often new, and weren't often particularly interesting or glamorous. I remember it being a big deal when Empire got new State Troops (and it inspired me to collect Empire), but most armies didn't get new troops often, and most of them were generic fantasy archetypes.
-Those troops were outright required in order to access more interesting models. You didn't have the option to omit the basic troops in favor of more elite stuff if that's where your interest was.
From that perspective I can understand why AoS is more accessible- there are more armies that don't need to take chaff as their core (including the poster boys), the listbuilding is less restrictive so you can take more cool units if you want, and GW is moving away from generic fantasy archetypes so the core troops are getting to be more different/unique.
I think you can reasonably make the argument that blocks of troops are the price of admission for a rank-and-flank game, but in that case GW really needs to put emphasis on keeping them up to date and making them fun to use. If they're going to be the core of the game, they need to be treated as such.
here is the problem that "core" means for GW "stuff you don't but need to get the good things going"
core was never allowed to be good or exciting, and if it was done that way, they corrected it later on so that a army of core models was not good any more
Core tax exists in many games I've played over the years.
But the games I enjoy feature "core tax" as backbones of the army backed up by some cool elites.
A lot of people dont want that.
They want all elites, no core, everything can exist in isolation and be a super hero or both hammer and anvil on its own.
This has always been a struggle and a point of difference between people even going back to 6th edition days (because 5th edition was the super hero edition and 6th took it back to an army game which miffed a lot of people).
I absolutely agree that AOS letting you just take armies of elites is part of its success.
It is also sadly vomit-in-the-mouth for a lot of people looking for an army game because the core troops are the backbone, but many dont want to be forced to use any of that. And the harsh reality is for people like me that the GWaos style fanbase outnumbers the whfb style fanbase... so commercially its going to be interesting to see what they do.
But in a system where you can take all elites, no one would ever take core either because the balance is also jacked up unless the core were also super heroes. But if the core were as powerful as the elites... there wouldn't be the concept of elites.
I dont know that you can fix that situation other than making new whfb the game of superhero units like AOS is and then they have core tax units out there that no one wants because you can just bypass them in the excel-spreadsheeting phase with litsbuilding rules that let you ignore them.
One other issue with Core Units is that they were pretty static, once players had them they could use them year after year just adding a few odds and sods over time.
So in order to keep selling stuff GW either had to keep coming up with new core ideas or increasing unit size, both of which had significant issues.
Theres also the issue that the minis are quite big for the original 28mms so arranging them on a rectangle\regiment is kind of a nightmare for the more "unique look".
Thats why they look most to the times static and boxy. Which is fine for high elf but not for orcs.
I think they should move away from the 1 mini represents 1 mini and go for supplying us minis with bits and pieces for a mini diorama on that rectangle, that would be such a fresh take and potentially more affordable.
So say a regiment of 16 orcs would have 10 orc minis and enough bits to make them dynamic posed and diverse and some scenery bits to fill the regiment rectangle, so you could build what you like in it.
The second Gotrek audiodrama for AoS literally has a Realmgate that leads back to the Old World.
Wait, what?
But what if someone from AOS goes to the Old World through the portal and prevents the End Times? Paradox!
But this actually reminds me of my idea of how AOS could have been done without blowing up the Old World. Instead of destroying the world, the warpgates open and in is revealed that the Old World is just one realm in the AOS multiverse. Sure, it would have seriously altered the tone of the Old World, but less than completely blowing the bloody thing up!
I am exited for TOW and I am looking towards it in a positive way. I am one of the Total War: Warhammer players that started to get into the tabletop game, after release.
Out of couriosity asked a question about a potential Made to Order run about plastic WHFB models:
"Do you know anything about that will there be Made to Order runs in plastic for Warhammer: The Old World from previuos editions? Will they recover some models from Warhammer Fantasy Battles?
Warhammer Age of Sigmar:
We'll just have to wait and see, herjan1987! The Old World is still a little way off just yet but we'll keep you posted with any news as we get it. "
I think its possible that we may see some models return. ( I just hope Khemrian Warsphinx, Necropolis knights, Tomb guard and the Questing/Grail knights are in them ) If we are talking about Tomb Kings and Dwarf core troops while I like they design, but I can see why people wouldnt like theThe Tomb King skeleton warriors had odd hand weapons like the flail, m. The Dwarf warriors were a real pain to assemble. Also agree that the current Longbeard/Hammerer and Ironbreaker/Irondrake kits are out place compare to older dwarf scuplts. and they only had one khopes... I know that was the old Vampire Counts skeleton warrior kit still in they could add Tomb Kings hand weapons in the upgrade sprue.
Speaking of Vampire counts I hope they add a variety of humanoid skeleton, if they do a new box for them. Some beastmen or orks bodies nice to bolster their armies as they did with the previously mentioned sprue.
About the releases for TOW I wouldnt been suprised, if the Empire would be split into 3 subfaction each one have his onw separate upgrade sprue to make them look uniqe while using the same state troop as a base. Also I think there will be some units that are locked to one faction. For example the faction controlling Nuln will have acces to more gunpowder units then the other ones. Also I hope they go with Mark of Chaos empire state troop armor it just better then the current one:
The second Gotrek audiodrama for AoS literally has a Realmgate that leads back to the Old World.
Wait, what?
But what if someone from AOS goes to the Old World through the portal and prevents the End Times? Paradox!
But this actually reminds me of my idea of how AOS could have been done without blowing up the Old World. Instead of destroying the world, the warpgates open and in is revealed that the Old World is just one realm in the AOS multiverse. Sure, it would have seriously altered the tone of the Old World, but less than completely blowing the bloody thing up!
If I am correct in the End Times books ( I havent read them, but heard this info only ) the bretonnians are teleported to the ninth realm via the Damsels. So maybe a it will be the bretonnians, who will save the world!
The second Gotrek audiodrama for AoS literally has a Realmgate that leads back to the Old World.
Wait, what?
But what if someone from AOS goes to the Old World through the portal and prevents the End Times? Paradox!
But this actually reminds me of my idea of how AOS could have been done without blowing up the Old World. Instead of destroying the world, the warpgates open and in is revealed that the Old World is just one realm in the AOS multiverse. Sure, it would have seriously altered the tone of the Old World, but less than completely blowing the bloody thing up!
Does it? I'll have to re-listen
Yes.
Spoiler:
It's the reward for conquering the Silver Tower. Gotrek watches Felix's death before destroying it and accepting that the world he knew is gone.
auticus wrote: Core tax exists in many games I've played over the years.
But the games I enjoy feature "core tax" as backbones of the army backed up by some cool elites.
A lot of people dont want that.
They want all elites, no core, everything can exist in isolation and be a super hero or both hammer and anvil on its own.
This has always been a struggle and a point of difference between people even going back to 6th edition days (because 5th edition was the super hero edition and 6th took it back to an army game which miffed a lot of people).
I absolutely agree that AOS letting you just take armies of elites is part of its success.
It is also sadly vomit-in-the-mouth for a lot of people looking for an army game because the core troops are the backbone, but many dont want to be forced to use any of that. And the harsh reality is for people like me that the GWaos style fanbase outnumbers the whfb style fanbase... so commercially its going to be interesting to see what they do.
But in a system where you can take all elites, no one would ever take core either because the balance is also jacked up unless the core were also super heroes. But if the core were as powerful as the elites... there wouldn't be the concept of elites.
I dont know that you can fix that situation other than making new whfb the game of superhero units like AOS is and then they have core tax units out there that no one wants because you can just bypass them in the excel-spreadsheeting phase with litsbuilding rules that let you ignore them.
If people dislike the idea of core troops in 40K and WHFB then nobody is stopping them to play other games instead. Core troops are a fundamental design of both games. The day you remove core troops is the day when your army stops looking like an army.
I still can vaguely remember Eldar players writing army lists without Guardians.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
NAVARRO wrote: Theres also the issue that the minis are quite big for the original 28mms so arranging them on a rectangle\regiment is kind of a nightmare for the more "unique look".
Thats why they look most to the times static and boxy. Which is fine for high elf but not for orcs.
I think they should move away from the 1 mini represents 1 mini and go for supplying us minis with bits and pieces for a mini diorama on that rectangle, that would be such a fresh take and potentially more affordable.
So say a regiment of 16 orcs would have 10 orc minis and enough bits to make them dynamic posed and diverse and some scenery bits to fill the regiment rectangle, so you could build what you like in it.
Never going to happen I know.
No one is stopping you from building regiment fillers. It's actually part of the hobby to be creative.
If people dislike the idea of core troops in 40K and WHFB then nobody is stopping them to play other games instead. Core troops are a fundamental design of both games. The day you remove core troops is the day when your army stops looking like an army.
I still can vaguely remember Eldar players writing army lists without Guardians.
Yeah I remember those days too.
But I think the discussion point is that people assume that if the Old World has core tax that that means the game will crash and burn.
Granted a lot of people that like core troops etc have long moved to other games and don't pay attention to these forums... and the people here are also in love with AOS design where they can just field armies of super elites and monsters and not have to do core tax, so it may be a bit of an echo chamber.
There's no way any of us can know the actual numbers on what people want since only GW can do that marketing and they keep that data to themselves.
auticus wrote: But the games I enjoy feature "core tax" as backbones of the army backed up by some cool elites.
A lot of people dont want that.
They want all elites, no core, everything can exist in isolation and be a super hero or both hammer and anvil on its own.
The solution that seems to work well is to design the game such that those super-elite units can't succeed on their own. GW has always been bad about this, but it's not an impossible task. Make the dude who takes all samurai have to contend with his elite units getting flanked and wiped out, and then maybe he'll consider taking some ashigaru too to cover the flanks.
'Core tax' as I see it is when you have no reason to want those core troops, either because they don't provide a unique role or because they're relegated to speed bumps that aren't much fun to collect or play. You take them to fill a 3+ Minimum requirement on the force organization table and that's it. If a game is designed to allow those core units to hold the line and potentially beat elites with the right positioning and support, and makes them points-efficient for what they are, then they become attractive units in their own right.
Of course there will still be people who are stylistically uninterested in troop formations and want to take eight steam tanks, three dragons, and a unit of demigryph knights instead, and gets upset that such a combo is not tactically optimal- in which case rank-and-flank games are not for them.
auticus wrote: Core tax exists in many games I've played over the years.
But the games I enjoy feature "core tax" as backbones of the army backed up by some cool elites.
if those units are the backbones of the army, it is not a core tax, but an actual core
for GW rules, the core must be a burden and you would be better of not taking it at all but you must because the rules say so
combine this with expensive but old models and you get to the problems of those armies
If people dislike the idea of core troops in 40K and WHFB then nobody is stopping them to play other games instead. Core troops are a fundamental design of both games. The day you remove core troops is the day when your army stops looking like an army.
I still can vaguely remember Eldar players writing army lists without Guardians.
Yeah I remember those days too.
But I think the discussion point is that people assume that if the Old World has core tax that that means the game will crash and burn.
Granted a lot of people that like core troops etc have long moved to other games and don't pay attention to these forums... and the people here are also in love with AOS design where they can just field armies of super elites and monsters and not have to do core tax, so it may be a bit of an echo chamber.
There's no way any of us can know the actual numbers on what people want since only GW can do that marketing and they keep that data to themselves.
Ofc that’s a brilliant argument why the games can coexist side by side. Peeps who like 1 style can play AOS, the others can play TOW, GW get their £££/$$$ either way. Took them a while, but GW now understand that if they don’t cater to a certain type of game/customer, that customer will simply look elsewhere.
If people dislike the idea of core troops in 40K and WHFB then nobody is stopping them to play other games instead. Core troops are a fundamental design of both games. The day you remove core troops is the day when your army stops looking like an army.
I still can vaguely remember Eldar players writing army lists without Guardians.
Yeah I remember those days too.
But I think the discussion point is that people assume that if the Old World has core tax that that means the game will crash and burn.
Granted a lot of people that like core troops etc have long moved to other games and don't pay attention to these forums... and the people here are also in love with AOS design where they can just field armies of super elites and monsters and not have to do core tax, so it may be a bit of an echo chamber.
There's no way any of us can know the actual numbers on what people want since only GW can do that marketing and they keep that data to themselves.
Ofc that’s a brilliant argument why the games can coexist side by side. Peeps who like 1 style can play AOS, the others can play TOW, GW get their £££/$$$ either way. Took them a while, but GW now understand that if they don’t cater to a certain type of game/customer, that customer will simply look elsewhere.
If people dislike the idea of core troops in 40K and WHFB then nobody is stopping them to play other games instead. Core troops are a fundamental design of both games. The day you remove core troops is the day when your army stops looking like an army.
I still can vaguely remember Eldar players writing army lists without Guardians.
Yeah I remember those days too.
But I think the discussion point is that people assume that if the Old World has core tax that that means the game will crash and burn.
Granted a lot of people that like core troops etc have long moved to other games and don't pay attention to these forums... and the people here are also in love with AOS design where they can just field armies of super elites and monsters and not have to do core tax, so it may be a bit of an echo chamber.
There's no way any of us can know the actual numbers on what people want since only GW can do that marketing and they keep that data to themselves.
Ofc that’s a brilliant argument why the games can coexist side by side. Peeps who like 1 style can play AOS, the others can play TOW, GW get their £££/$$$ either way. Took them a while, but GW now understand that if they don’t cater to a certain type of game/customer, that customer will simply look elsewhere.
auticus wrote: Core tax exists in many games I've played over the years.
But the games I enjoy feature "core tax" as backbones of the army backed up by some cool elites.
if those units are the backbones of the army, it is not a core tax, but an actual core
for GW rules, the core must be a burden and you would be better of not taking it at all but you must because the rules say so
combine this with expensive but old models and you get to the problems of those armies
Every army I've built and run since the start of 6th had 5 Core regiments in it before I touched anything else, and I know I wasn't the only one doing that.
Depending on the army, your core choices can be small and elite looking. For example, an elf army taking light cav as their core choice and building on it with other cav or flying monsters. Not every army consists of massive infantry blobs. If they make rules that balance cav vs infantry, and they don't incentivize having half your army in one unit, it will be fine. They also need to look at scoring and terrain a bit and update those.
they don't incentivize having half your army in one unit
Really all they'd have to do is publish missions with multiple objectives.
Of course, then the player base would have to actually use those missions instead of battle line/the watchtower, which... I don't think I've ever heard of!
they don't incentivize having half your army in one unit
Really all they'd have to do is publish missions with multiple objectives.
Of course, then the player base would have to actually use those missions instead of battle line/the watchtower, which... I don't think I've ever heard of!
It's not a real Old World experience if you don't have two mirrored hills in the deployment zones, one forest in the center and the goal is to kill as many models as possible
But yes, to get round the core tax all you have to do is make core interesting, but that'd make them too Superhero-y.
Looks like Scar from lion king and the bad dragonheart cgi had a toothless baby that they named "Boremy."
I love it. The twin tailed comet on the chest just makes me happy for some reason. I could see an elf surfing the back with some reins. It'd be a fun project for someone for sure.
they don't incentivize having half your army in one unit
Really all they'd have to do is publish missions with multiple objectives.
Of course, then the player base would have to actually use those missions instead of battle line/the watchtower, which... I don't think I've ever heard of!
auticus wrote: Core tax exists in many games I've played over the years.
But the games I enjoy feature "core tax" as backbones of the army backed up by some cool elites.
if those units are the backbones of the army, it is not a core tax, but an actual core
for GW rules, the core must be a burden and you would be better of not taking it at all but you must because the rules say so
combine this with expensive but old models and you get to the problems of those armies
Every army I've built and run since the start of 6th had 5 Core regiments in it before I touched anything else, and I know I wasn't the only one doing that.
6th was an Edition were this worked really well, same as 4th/5th 40k pure core armies could do well, but this changed over time to what we have now
If people dislike the idea of core troops in 40K and WHFB then nobody is stopping them to play other games instead. Core troops are a fundamental design of both games. The day you remove core troops is the day when your army stops looking like an army.
Looks like Scar from lion king and the bad dragonheart cgi had a toothless baby that they named "Boremy."
I love it. The twin tailed comet on the chest just makes me happy for some reason. I could see an elf surfing the back with some reins. It'd be a fun project for someone for sure.
Im sorry but that is incorrect. A high backed chair is desired, nay, compulsory Also, will need to scrub out the twin star comet (which I just noticed). I hope its painted one rather then sculpted
Im sorry but that is incorrect. A high backed chair is desired, nay, compulsory
It's probably also needed to draw the eye to the teeny tiny elf on top of that massive dragon. I'm still trying to figure out which angle would showcase the rider properly. The way the head and the left wing are positioned, they'll likely obscure that part of the model from a good 120°. It is tempting to give it a try, however, even if it means that I have to sculpt a different neck and attach a new head to it.
This pose might work better in conjunction with a rider:
Looks like Scar from lion king and the bad dragonheart cgi had a toothless baby that they named "Boremy."
I love it. The twin tailed comet on the chest just makes me happy for some reason. I could see an elf surfing the back with some reins. It'd be a fun project for someone for sure.
Not gonna lie, I'm seriously considering one to finally make Naestra & Arahan happen.
chaos0xomega wrote: Won't happen, people actually buy Age of Sigmar minis and don't overwhelmingly gak on everything released for it.
Lumineth, Kruleboyz, Idoneth, Kharadron, Bonereapers and any new Stormcast get a load of gak thrown at them by the AOS community.
The most well-received universally liked bunch of new models for AOS recently was Soulblight who basically just kept all of the Vampire Counts aesthetics and stayed deliberately restrained outside of the Centaur Vamps.
Only people I saw gaking on those things were WHFB/TOW fans, not AoS fans. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Both the Kruleboyz and the Stormcast in particular seemed to have received nothing but love from the AoS community (whereas in TOW facebook group it was just a lot of hate). The only disappointment I've seen expressed towards Kruleboyz was basically on a rules/gameplay basis because they aren't part of the existing Orruk factions, but sculpt wise they have been well received by AoS fans, whereas WHFB fans have unironically gone about complaining about how awful the sculpts are and how weird the proportions are and how inferior they are to their Chad WHFB minis, apparently completely unaware that the entire mini range is based on OG WHFB Orcs. I also have a screenshot of one dude on the TOW facebook group who went from "these models are awesome, this game is gonna rock" to "oh, just saw that these minis are for Age of Sigmar, they look like gak" in a matter of minutes.
Bonereapers get hate from bitter Tomb Kings fanbois, and Lumineth from High Elves fanbois (and people who hate Kangaroos). Kharadron angered dwarf fans who want short dudes with big bushy beards who live in dark holes and have an unhealthy fixation with precious metals and stone. etc.
Bonereapers got some pushback, but they were a very original design and they were also a surprise when everyone was expecting a more traditional skeleton army. Esp since up to that point that's basically what Nagash used - regular skeletons.
Ossiarchs are one of those "we were never there until we were and then we were always there" kind things.
It's a shame because I really love them and I really hope that GW gets around to releasing more for them. They are such a unique take and have such huge creative potential!
chaos0xomega wrote: Only people I saw gaking on those things were WHFB/TOW fans, not AoS fans. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Only thing I see is confirmation bias. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Same.
I've seen/expressed love for Kruleboyz, saw a lot of initial love for Lumenith (though that largely went away in the face of Cow-Avatar-Outback land), Ossiarch fans seem to have nothing to do with either AoS or WHFB, but rather aging fans of He-Man, and most of the Overlords complaints I've seen are about the airboats, not that they're non-dwarfy.
Kharadron Overlords are the only AoS army I like, they're well sculpted and don't look like bowling balls with feet. They work in a high fantasy/steam punk setting.
If they never blew up WHFB I would be inclined to collect some at a skirmish level and possibly even try AoS.
But as a replacement for the entire WHFB Dwarf army? No, it goes too far. We will see how TOW is handled, much of the bad blood can go away over night. (the pricing issues won't)
chaos0xomega wrote: Only people I saw gaking on those things were WHFB/TOW fans, not AoS fans. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Only thing I see is confirmation bias. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Same.
I've seen/expressed love for Kruleboyz, saw a lot of initial love for Lumenith (though that largely went away in the face of Cow-Avatar-Outback land), Ossiarch fans seem to have nothing to do with either AoS or WHFB, but rather aging fans of He-Man, and most of the Overlords complaints I've seen are about the airboats, not that they're non-dwarfy.
I've seen a certain amount of love and hate for everything, but attributing those feelings to specific groups of fans ranges somewhere between a subjective and likely biased observation based on tiny sample sizes, and a complete guess.
As a WHFB fan, there's plenty of models I like in AoS, but I have no interest in AoS itself so I'm not going to buy them unless I can adapt them to a game I am interested in playing.
But that's just me, when people start talking about what WHFB players in general love/hate and what AoS players in general love/hate I find it hard to imagine they've taken a representative cross section of the community's opinions to come to those conclusions.
WHFB getting destroyed could be the best thing that ever happened to it. 7th and 8th were disasters rules/model wise and it seems a lot of fans and GW themselves don't understand why.
A soft reboot could really tighten the setting up.
Video game devs universally do a better job of representing the Warhammer world, I often wish GW would sell WHFB to someone else, so they could do it proper justice.
If TOW fails, it's because GW learned absolutely nothing. The current rules design team is the biggest hurdle, they are incompetent.
Goose LeChance wrote: WHFB getting destroyed could be the best thing that ever happened to it. 7th and 8th were disasters rules/model wise and it seems a lot of fans and GW themselves don't understand why.
A soft reboot could really tighten the setting up.
Video game devs universally do a better job of representing the Warhammer world, I often wish GW would sell WHFB to someone else, so they could do it proper justice.
If TOW fails, it's because GW learned absolutely nothing. The current rules design team is the biggest hurdle, they are incompetent.
So we've bypassed any actual news and we're down to "Why WFB sucks and AOS rules", "Why AOS sucks and WFB rules", "BAAWWWWWWWWWWWW, My WaRmAsTeR!!!!!!!111!!!!@!!!", and "Actively work for garbage wages yet somehow is the company's fault"?
Just Tony wrote: So we've bypassed any actual news and we're down to "Why WFB sucks and AOS rules", "Why AOS sucks and WFB rules", "BAAWWWWWWWWWWWW, My WaRmAsTeR!!!!!!!111!!!!@!!!", and "Actively work for garbage wages yet somehow is the company's fault"?
Just Tony wrote: So we've bypassed any actual news and we're down to "Why WFB sucks and AOS rules", "Why AOS sucks and WFB rules", "BAAWWWWWWWWWWWW, My WaRmAsTeR!!!!!!!111!!!!@!!!", and "Actively work for garbage wages yet somehow is the company's fault"?
You must be new here. Welcome to every Dakka N&R thread ever to exist about a popular GW title/faction/whatever!
Bosskelot wrote: If you think £20k a year* is actually garbage wages in the UK boy do I have some shocking news for you.
*Especially during the time period he was working there.
What time frame was that? I am comparing it to $37,529 in Australian dollars and that is definitely not an amount many people would be looking for.
That said, niche role and as much plastic miniatures you can eat could do a lot to lure people in?
Even now, £20k a year is still above minimum/living wage rates. I'm not saying it was an appropriate wage to be paying someone, but it's still higher than millions of workers in this country currently because neoliberal market capitalism and right wing governments fething suuuuuuck.
Someone with a job generating little value is logically going to get payed around minimum wage. Many many workers are in such situation.
Someone contributing to a company making millions and yearly record profits should get payed accordingly. Like this guy.
VBS wrote: Someone with a job generating little value is logically going to get payed around minimum wage. Many many workers are in such situation.
Someone contributing to a company making millions and yearly record profits should get payed accordingly. Like this guy.
This sort of perception of labour is exactly why we are where we are. Turning 20 cents worth of pig slop into a 5€ burger isn't little value.
VBS wrote: Someone with a job generating little value is logically going to get payed around minimum wage. Many many workers are in such situation.
Someone contributing to a company making millions and yearly record profits should get payed accordingly. Like this guy.
This sort of perception of labour is exactly why we are where we are. Turning 20 cents worth of pig slop into a 5€ burger isn't little value.
To say that we as a society have an issue is understatement but this isn't the place for such a talk. Of course everyone thinks everyone should be the best and if not they are crap but if no one does the suck jobs no one cares about how can anyone do the great jobs ? That is often forgotten and we only value the winners and look down on the lower rungs even if they are needed even more than the winners for us all to survive and thrive.
That said and off topic, TOW I hope will be very cool and we have more exact info and they actually surprise me in a good way for once.
VBS wrote: Someone with a job generating little value is logically going to get payed around minimum wage. Many many workers are in such situation.
Someone contributing to a company making millions and yearly record profits should get payed accordingly. Like this guy.
Funny how without those min-wage workers the company generates ZERO value cause it's closed. As has been amply demonstrated in the States recenly, where the restaurant business is having hard time finding anyone to work, and profits plummet when no one is there to serve forth the eyelid-foreskin mince patties in sugarbuns.
Bosskelot wrote: Even now, £20k a year is still above minimum/living wage rates. I'm not saying it was an appropriate wage to be paying someone, but it's still higher than millions of workers in this country currently because neoliberal market capitalism and right wing governments fething suuuuuuck.
A quick google says the median wage in the UK is roughly £30k, so 20k is a solid third less than the median. The median is usually a better measure of what your average employee should expect, if you're much below that then your company obviously doesn't value what you do very much and thinks you're easily replaceable.
I don't imagine they'd expect to get competent employees paying that little.
VBS wrote: Someone with a job generating little value is logically going to get payed around minimum wage. Many many workers are in such situation.
Someone contributing to a company making millions and yearly record profits should get payed accordingly. Like this guy.
Funny how without those min-wage workers the company generates ZERO value cause it's closed. As has been amply demonstrated in the States recenly, where the restaurant business is having hard time finding anyone to work, and profits plummet when no one is there to serve forth the eyelid-foreskin mince patties in sugarbuns.
It'll be interesting to see if there's a shuffle around in years to come.
How much those low paying jobs pay isn't just related to how much we value people in those jobs, but also how many people are willing to take them. Maccas can afford to pay employees sweet f-a because if someone quits, they likely got 10 applications to replace them. If no one is willing to take those essential but low paid jobs the salary is going to have to go up.
Funny how without those min-wage workers the company generates ZERO value cause it's closed. As has been amply demonstrated in the States recenly, where the restaurant business is having hard time finding anyone to work, and profits plummet when no one is there to serve forth the eyelid-foreskin mince patties in sugarbuns.
What I wrote would be a "logical" situation, not reality. Hence the situation with the ex-gw rules designe (ie. not getting a more reasonable compensation for what the value generated).
Minimum wage jobs usually rely on a massive influx of people resigned to do such jobs because of low qualificiation/skill/labour market not designed to accomodate everyone. Always has been. If it is fair or not is up for debate but that's just how it goes.
The current situation, as the one you describe in the US (or many other countries for the matter), is not the way things usually work mainly due to stimmies, where people are no longer required to work minimum wage jobs in order to earn a minimum wage. Or if minimum wages are heavily increased by law (such as in this country), offers plummet for low level jobs due to the perceived value of the position (hire 2 to do the job of 3 is a classic). Remove the last year and a half and the situation would be exactly the same it's always been in the labour market.
Funny how without those min-wage workers the company generates ZERO value cause it's closed. As has been amply demonstrated in the States recenly, where the restaurant business is having hard time finding anyone to work, and profits plummet when no one is there to serve forth the eyelid-foreskin mince patties in sugarbuns.
What I wrote would be a "logical" situation, not reality. Hence the situation with the ex-gw rules designe (ie. not getting a more reasonable compensation for what the value generated).
Minimum wage jobs usually rely on a massive influx of people resigned to do such jobs because of low qualificiation/skill/labour market not designed to accomodate everyone. Always has been. If it is fair or not is up for debate but that's just how it goes.
The current situation, as the one you describe in the US (or many other countries for the matter), is not the way things usually work mainly due to stimmies, where people are no longer required to work minimum wage jobs in order to earn a minimum wage. Remove the last year and a half and the situation would be exactly the same it's always been in the labour market.
Another factor for people not coming back to work is they've realised their job is not stable. The traditional logic (which I think was always pretty questionable) was the business owner is the one taking all the risk while the employee gets a steady income which is likely going to be less. The pandemic showed that as an employee your income can be just as shaky, so people are less willing to work for someone else and more willing to take personal risks to start their own businesses or gamble on the stock markets.
But all this is pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand, paying 20k pounds to a rules writer when the median wage is 30k demonstrates how little value the company places on that person. I'd be curious to know if that was person was genuinely in a position to effect the rules or just an easily replaceable grunt, though.
If people dislike the idea of core troops in 40K and WHFB then nobody is stopping them to play other games instead. Core troops are a fundamental design of both games. The day you remove core troops is the day when your army stops looking like an army.
40k had no mandatory core units for two editions.
Presses x to doubt in regards to CSM in 8th and their CP needs.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'd be curious to know if that was person was genuinely in a position to effect the rules or just an easily replaceable grunt, though.
that person wrote/designed Silver Tower and Titanicus on his own (were he also once said that playtesting happened in private at home as he was not allowed to do it during his working hours), and wrote the updated rules for new version of BB
and GW thought of him as an easily replaceable grunt
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Not Online!!! wrote: Presses x to doubt in regards to CSM in 8th and their CP needs.
that some armies needed them to get it working because of other rules is true, but there was no rule that said you must take this one unit before you can take anything else
The current situation, as the one you describe in the US (or many other countries for the matter), is not the way things usually work mainly due to stimmies, where people are no longer required to work minimum wage jobs in order to earn a minimum wage.
Amazing how removing the threat of starvation to death results in levelling the playing field between the jobgivers and jobseekers.
Is it? The only reason people work is because they need money to live. The only reason people work low-paying trash jobs is because they have no other option to gain that money (legally, most people are unwilling to break the law). The employers are in a position where if they don't have employees, they just lose profits. If an employee has no job, their physical existence is essentially threatened. The system is inherently skewed towards the people with (surprise) the capital vs those who provide the labor.
In any case, back on topic. When do people think TOW is going to be released?
I think July 2023 would be good timing, 40 years of the 1rst whfb edition!
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I'd be curious to know if that was person was genuinely in a position to effect the rules or just an easily replaceable grunt, though.
that person wrote/designed Silver Tower and Titanicus on his own (were he also once said that playtesting happened in private at home as he was not allowed to do it during his working hours), and wrote the updated rules for new version of BB
and GW thought of him as an easily replaceable grunt
Well, he might have been, it's really hard to gauge what someone's position really is without a lot of insight into the company. People will often have an overinflated view of their importance (not saying that's the case here, just talking generally).
It's the people that steer a project successfully that are worth a lot of money, then the senior editors and creative folk are also really important.
You can have a replaceable grunt doing the nitty gritty work of writing, playtesting and so on if there's an experienced non-replaceable person directing their actions and doing the final editing.
There are the employees that might be essential to the running of a company, and those people might work hard and put in a lot of effort and sometimes they might even be well educated, but also if they quit you could get a dozen other people to fill that role, then there's the employees that if they quit will completely derail the company.
EDIT: I finally found the thread and see we are talking about James Hewitt, one would assume he was pretty important given his name was often mentioned, but still hard to guess how replaceable he might have been. 20k definitely sounds too little to pay someone who is doing anything more than grunt work.
then there's the employees that if they quit will completely derail the company.
Protip, it's never the overpaid Good Old Boys at the top. They're utterly replaceable because they clone them at the Business Boy Sunday Classes.
Anyway, Old World Good, core tax bad, game will disappoint people who want 1:1 copy of the old Warhammer Experience because you can't enter the same river twice and half the Experience is in your memories.
EDIT: I finally found the thread and see we are talking about James Hewitt, one would assume he was pretty important given his name was often mentioned, but still hard to guess how replaceable he might have been. 20k definitely sounds too little to pay someone who is doing anything more than grunt work.
I made more money than that as a temp 20 years ago. And I could be replaced with a phone call.
Granted people want to work for GW, it's like the movies, they'll work for nothing just to get a toe in. But as we've all seen writing fun, balanced, tests and proofread rules ain't like dusting crops kid.
You can be sure GW's accountants, lawyers, web designers and factory techs are properly paid, it's a shame their rules writers aren't held in the same esteem.
You can be sure GW's accountants, lawyers, web designers and factory techs are properly paid, it's a shame their rules writers aren't held in the same esteem.
You would seem to be wrong. A few people on twitter and elsewhere chimed in from the various non-studio functions basically saying the pay was gak in other departments as well - IT is one that comes to mind.
only the outsourced IT gets properly (over) paid, their in house team is well below normal levels (from folk I know who had offers but didn't think its realistic), and i'm fairly certain the lower level factory techs are in the same position
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: only the outsourced IT gets properly (over) paid, their in house team is well below normal levels (from folk I know who had offers but didn't think its realistic), and i'm fairly certain the lower level factory techs are in the same position
Well, no surprise there considering the the previous CEO handed the contract to make the new website to his wife's company, if I remember correctly. Might have just been a company they owned stock in, but they definitely had financial links to it.
they don't incentivize having half your army in one unit
Really all they'd have to do is publish missions with multiple objectives.
Of course, then the player base would have to actually use those missions instead of battle line/the watchtower, which... I don't think I've ever heard of!
It's not a real Old World experience if you don't have two mirrored hills in the deployment zones, one forest in the center and the goal is to kill as many models as possible
But yes, to get round the core tax all you have to do is make core interesting, but that'd make them too Superhero-y.
LOL! Yep, those two hills better come along in the starter box.
After the recent revelations of square bases (for sure!) and 'use your old armies' and 'build new armies'...combined with some sort of system that is from 3rd edition to 8th edition...
I'm struggling to see how this is going to succeed and survive, given what the cost of a ranked up army will be from GW.
Maybe GW will have (relatively speaking) good value starter boxes for blocks of line troops...?
So given that the predominant theme keeps going back to ranked up armies cost a ton compared to AOS, which I haven't seen to be true at all...
the cost of a ranked up game from GW will be roughly equal to the cost of what it takes to play AOS.
Based on the fact that model count in 2000 points of whfb is roughly similar to model counts of AOS at 2000 points.
The difference is that in 8th edition whfb steadfast made people build mega blocks of the same troop in one mammoth sized sumo block to belly slap with their opponent in the middle of the table.
But the cost in money of building a mega blob of 80 guys is roughly the same as the cost of building a roughly 80 model AOS army.
* my definition of roughly being +/- $150/$200 or so. I have some AOS armies that (after adjusting to current prices) cost MORE than my whfb forces.
While true, its also not good to let misinformation just keep continuing to be repeated as people also tend to not want to research things themselves and will dismiss the game outright because they are told its more expensive to play rank and file than it is to play AOS ... which up to this point is not true.
All of it is guesswork, though (in my opinion only) AoS has the advantage that small squads work just as well as large blobs whereas in RnF games 30-40 model blobs have obvious advantage.
Even if the armies cost the same, the lack of variety (If it sticks to WHFB mold of army building), both in terms of gameplay and visually, and the chore of painting/gluing the same models 2-3 times just to make a regiment might not be that popular.
I firmly believe GW will try to do something about it, and we'll see less focus on Core units than before.
Cronch wrote: All of it is guesswork, though (in my opinion only) AoS has the advantage that small squads work just as well as large blobs whereas in RnF games 30-40 model blobs have obvious advantage.
Even if the armies cost the same, the lack of variety (If it sticks to WHFB mold of army building), both in terms of gameplay and visually, and the chore of painting/gluing the same models 2-3 times just to make a regiment might not be that popular.
I firmly believe GW will try to do something about it, and we'll see less focus on Core units than before.
Thats also not really true. 7th edition was MSU edition. It was full of checkerboarded minimal sized units. It depends on the RnF game. 30-40 model blobs were largely a waste in 5th, 6th, and 7th edition. There were always optimal sizes but 30-40 model units were very rare outside of goblin or skaven armies.
Even if the armies cost the same, the lack of variety (If it sticks to WHFB mold of army building), both in terms of gameplay and visually, and the chore of painting/gluing the same models 2-3 times just to make a regiment might not be that popular.
Also not true outside of 8th edition building mega blobs.
My tournament Vampire Counts 6th edition army roughly (2000 pts)
4 vampire characters
2 units of five black knights
2 units of 5 dire wolves
1 unit of 20 grave guard
1 unit of 24 zombies
1 unit of 10 ghouls
1 black coach
1 banshee
Total model count: 80 break down of: 4 vampires, 1 banshee, 1 coach, 10 knights, 10 wolves, 20 grave guard, 24 zombies, 10 ghouls
My slaanesh army for AOS 1 keepers of secrets
1 harp player
1 slaanesh hero
1 demon prince
5 units of 10 daemonettes
2 chariots
2 units of seeker cavalry x5 each
Total model count: 66 break down of: 1 greater demon, 1 demon prince, 2 heroes, 50 daemonettes, 2 chariots, 10 demonic cavalry
The diversity and unit sizes - pretty similar. Note 50 daemonettes in my army. There aren't really a lot of core troops in AOS. In 8th edition of course that would be one unit of 50 daemonettes as opposed to 5 units of 10.
The painting and modeling and buying are similar.
RnF games can be and often as diverse as anything else.
Slann
Saurus oldblood/scar vet (it's been 15 years since I ran it last...)
skink shaman
2x10 skinks for screen
2x30 saurus warriors (I think it was 3x20 in 6th and 2x30 in 7th due to the changed rank bonus from 4 to 5)
5 saurus cav
stegadon
3 terradons
1 salamander
The list was by no means optimal, but it was what a kid like me could afford back then, and it was a wild mix of 5th and 6th edition models.
I'm not going to say that I was the model customer back then, but I imagine more people were like me, fielding whatever they happened to collect, than people running optimized lists that they could re-build whenever meta changed.
Are people really arguing that WHFB armies lacked diversity when most Ossiarch lists comprise of spamming blocks of 20+ Mortek Guard, Lumineth are about cramming as many Sentinels/Wardens onto the board as you can, Fyreslayers consist entirely of naked dwarf infantry except two Heroes and Flesheater Courts- well, just, Flesheater Courts?
kodos wrote: 30-40 model blocks are rare in most R&F games in 28mm
Kings of War, 15-20 models for regiments (larger Hordes with 40 models possible)
Napoleonics, 24 models for standard sized regiments (larger regiments with 36 models possible)
ACW, 20-30 models per regiment
aSoIaF, 12 models for regiments
it was just 8th Edi Fantasy that made them common hence in games modeled after those rules, like The 9th Age, 30-40 model blocks are there as well
in 7th, I had 1 unit of 28 models in my dwarf army, the others were smaller my Empire Army had several with 24 models but none with 30
Which is a terrible convention. Blocks of 40 28mm models does not look good on the table top. It's just way too large of a foot print. To me, units in WHFB looked and felt better at 20 models.
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Arbitrator wrote: Are people really arguing that WHFB armies lacked diversity when most Ossiarch lists comprise of spamming blocks of 20+ Mortek Guard, Lumineth are about cramming as many Sentinels/Wardens onto the board as you can, Fyreslayers consist entirely of naked dwarf infantry except two Heroes and Flesheater Courts- well, just, Flesheater Courts?
To be fair, that was true of 8th ed, where it was encouraged to take a single massive block of your most cost effective infantry, a caster and a couple of supporting units.
kodos wrote: 30-40 model blocks are rare in most R&F games in 28mm
Kings of War, 15-20 models for regiments (larger Hordes with 40 models possible)
Napoleonics, 24 models for standard sized regiments (larger regiments with 36 models possible)
ACW, 20-30 models per regiment
aSoIaF, 12 models for regiments
it was just 8th Edi Fantasy that made them common
hence in games modeled after those rules, like The 9th Age, 30-40 model blocks are there as well
in 7th, I had 1 unit of 28 models in my dwarf army, the others were smaller
my Empire Army had several with 24 models but none with 30
Which is a terrible convention.
Blocks of 40 28mm models does not look good on the table top. It's just way too large of a foot print.
To me, units in WHFB looked and felt better at 20 models.
Agreed!
Hopefully a 'standard' infantry block will be in the 20 to 30 range.
With heroes, war machines, wizards and monsters, maybe it won't be...too bad?
I still find myself looking forward to it - given what GW *can* (but often does *not*) do with their plastics, it really could be fantastic!
Which is a terrible convention.
Blocks of 40 28mm models does not look good on the table top. It's just way too large of a foot print.
To me, units in WHFB looked and felt better at 20 models..
Me too and this was one reason why I never got into 8th
the possibility to field several blocks of 20 models and those are not just "chaff" or extra wounds for the Hero is what I want to see
Friends and I have returned to warmaster after decades of not playing.
Cannot stress enough what a fantastic rule set it is. 40k and AoS are just a chore to play - transporting tons of models, costs of thousands of dollars, gibberish rules spiralling through a vortex of poorly written, misspelled, and expensive wastes of paper.
The rank and flank system works well. I highly recommend diving back in while we wait to see just how maddeningly expensive GW will make the return of the Old World.
Alpharius wrote: After the recent revelations of square bases (for sure!) and 'use your old armies' and 'build new armies'...combined with some sort of system that is from 3rd edition to 8th edition...
I'm struggling to see how this is going to succeed and survive, given what the cost of a ranked up army will be from GW.
New shinny factions on the block. We know for sure the Kislev is going to be released. We can also count on 90%-sh, that Bretonnia will have an update, I would be happy. but suprised, if it wouldnt.
Maybe GW will have (relatively speaking) good value starter boxes for blocks of line troops...?
Most likely there will be a FOMO box like Dominion and Indomitus at launch and then they will cut up to 3 separate boxes. I am not expecting another "Battle for the Skull Pass" / "Island of Blood" type of starter.
Sorry, I rather see this as a true army for rank and files :
Yes, it takes time to build and paint (and money) but that's what rank and files armies really shine as from my point of view. I see it as the Saint Graal to have such a result. It looks simply awesome on the table.
Sure, you can always enjoy Battle in its "skirmish version" with units of 15-20 soldiers and think that's an army, but to me, I never thought it looked good. Same for Kings of War armies with minimal model count per unit. Purely a question of visual to me.
I want to do the same games as this one :
Oh yes, that's the stuff you'll keep remembering for the rest of your life.
Sarouan wrote: Sorry, I rather see this as a true army for rank and files :
Yes, it takes time to build and paint (and money) but that's what rank and files armies really shine as from my point of view. I see it as the Saint Graal to have such a result. It looks simply awesome on the table.
Sure, you can always enjoy Battle in its "skirmish version" with units of 15-20 soldiers and think that's an army, but to me, I never thought it looked good. Same for Kings of War armies with minimal model count per unit. Purely a question of visual to me.
I want to do the same games as this one :
Oh yes, that's the stuff you'll keep remembering for the rest of your life.
The biggest roadblock with that is simply the community is very stubborn and often sticks to what the community deems is tournament standard.
In 8th edition that meant people felt compelled to HAVE to go out and buy and paint up 2500 points as that was about what tournament standard was back then.
The biggest roadblock with that is simply the community is very stubborn and often sticks to what the community deems is tournament standard.
In 8th edition that meant people felt compelled to HAVE to go out and buy and paint up 2500 points as that was about what tournament standard was back then.
Who cares about the community of a dead game, anyway ?
We started playing again at Warhammer V8 with a friend, and we made our first game at 3000 points. Put a unit of 100 night goblins because I could and it just look awesome !
Next will be 4000 points. What's the point of rank and files if we keep the game at "mere" 2000 points, anyway.
I know V8 is often seen as "less tactical" because combat results are often countered by the "I have more ranks than you so I don't care about morale modifiers anyway" rule, but you can say that it helped having a visual of really big units as a result instead of small MSU that look more like a skirmish game.
Too bad it hasn't the same result for monstruous cavalry units, though.
Yet, I'm not sure it will change that much with the Old World project. I think they'll be too focused on making sure it feels like old Battle and be stuck with the same hinders in design. My main gripe is base size - having to deal with square bases of different scales (20 versus 25 mm, mostly) that is already a rule disadvantage for the miniatures with the bigger base (same thing happen as well in AoS - also 40k but in a different way there and less griping for melee fights). I don't believe that will change, sadly.
8th edition was the beginning of removing the tactics and strategies and "game" out of wargaming and moving toward visual appeal and cinematic cool and making it more appealing to a wider audience base by making it easier and not having as many tactics and strategies, which were seen as a barrier to entry.
At one of the last games days before GW folded that, the topic came up at a rules dev Q&A about why things centered around mega blobs and stupid-powerful magic and the answer given by mr phil Kelly was that the stupid-powerful magic was exciting and appealed to people more, and that it looked more fun seeing larger units on the table and that they didn't want to punish players for fielding what they wanted (big units) by negating steadfast for flanking etc because that was not fun and discouraged new players.
I fully expect the old world to continue that precedent.
Any new units will not be at the price points of many old kits, eg: Mauraders box of 20 for 50$. vs Slaves to Darkness Warbands which are 20 for 80$, Witch Elves are 10 for 70$
Don't expect Great Swords at 55$ or Freeguild at 35$. Any new models will be modern prices.
Enjoy filling out a 40 man Kislev unit with a box of 10 for 70$.
Goose LeChance wrote: Any new units will not be at the price points of many old kits, eg: Mauraders box of 20 for 50$. vs Slaves to Darkness Warbands which are 20 for 80$, Witch Elves are 10 for 70$
Don't expect Great Swords at 55$ or Freeguild at 35$. Any new models will be modern prices.
Enjoy filling out a 40 man Kislev unit with a box of 10 for 70$.
Is that really where prices are now? I remember when $4.125 per great sword was too much.
Goose LeChance wrote: Any new units will not be at the price points of many old kits, eg: Mauraders box of 20 for 50$. vs Slaves to Darkness Warbands which are 20 for 80$, Witch Elves are 10 for 70$
Don't expect Great Swords at 55$ or Freeguild at 35$. Any new models will be modern prices.
Enjoy filling out a 40 man Kislev unit with a box of 10 for 70$.
Is that really where prices are now? I remember when $4.125 per great sword was too much.
They're talking Canadian dollars. They're 45$ for 10 in the US, but technically the kit comes with 12 great swords (but only 10 pairs of legs) So that's 3.75 a great sword!
So I've done some exhaustive research on this topic and I think I have some unit size predictions.
In Total War: Warhammer 2, a Bretonnian Men At Arms(Shield) unit has 30 models at "small" unit size (under graphics settings) and 120 at "ultra" setting.
Therefore, we can suppose that units will be between 30 and 120 models in TOW.
Alpharius wrote: After the recent revelations of square bases (for sure!) and 'use your old armies' and 'build new armies'...combined with some sort of system that is from 3rd edition to 8th edition...
I'm struggling to see how this is going to succeed and survive, given what the cost of a ranked up army will be from GW.
Maybe GW will have (relatively speaking) good value starter boxes for blocks of line troops...?
Maybe?
The issue wasn't rank and file units, the issue with cost was really in 8th with over expensive boxes ( goldswords anyone ? ) Who needed massive units to be really useful. Even cheaper units you needed to have huge numbers to really make them viable good, even cav units needed to be huge to disrupt infantry blocks, it got crazy.
They could have ranked units that didn't need to be so huge they blocked out the sun so your wallet died in the shade.
Was? Warmaster is probaby doing better right now than at any point in history. There's a living ruleset and most armies have been digitally resculpted.
Rihgu wrote: So I've done some exhaustive research on this topic and I think I have some unit size predictions.
In Total War: Warhammer 2, a Bretonnian Men At Arms(Shield) unit has 30 models at "small" unit size (under graphics settings) and 120 at "ultra" setting.
Therefore, we can suppose that units will be between 30 and 120 models in TOW.
Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
Was? Warmaster is probaby doing better right now than at any point in history. There's a living ruleset and most armies have been digitally resculpted.
auticus wrote:Warmaster was amazing I love it.
For model sizes I'd prefer 20 be the normal unit. 25 be a big normal unit. 30-40 be like goblins and 15-20 be elites.
Gregor Samsa wrote:Friends and I have returned to warmaster after decades of not playing.
Cannot stress enough what a fantastic rule set it is. 40k and AoS are just a chore to play - transporting tons of models, costs of thousands of dollars, gibberish rules spiralling through a vortex of poorly written, misspelled, and expensive wastes of paper.
The rank and flank system works well. I highly recommend diving back in while we wait to see just how maddeningly expensive GW will make the return of the Old World.
Okay, people have been spoofing this damn thread with Warmaster since the initial announcement. It isn't going to be Warmaster, move on. Maybe it's time to start some sort of Warmaster appreciation thread to localize the OT discussion before the thread gets locked for the fourth time.
I'm starting to think the threadlocks from spoofing aren't a bug but a feature of said posting...
Las wrote: Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
I think the exact opposite, it looks great. Plenty of historicals play with large quantity of minis.
Las wrote: Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
It is a hot take indeed. To a certain extent I get your point, but I think you fail account that 28mm soldiers can pull double duty in RPG's, so are going to be preferred over smaller scales just because they are going to sell to more than just the war gaming audience. I can attest to it because that's why I'm here.
Las wrote: Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
It is a hot take indeed. To a certain extent I get your point, but I think you fail account that 28mm soldiers can pull double duty in RPG's, so are going to be preferred over smaller scales just because they are going to sell to more than just the war gaming audience. I can attest to it because that's why I'm here.
Totally agree. Not saying I want to see TOW go to a smaller scale (I've already got Warmaster for that). I'm fine with it being 28mm, but the key is that the game has to be playable at the 50-ish model count level to survive imo.
I think it can be playable at the 50ish model count. At like 1000-1200 points.
Thats the whole point of having a point system. To play it bigger or smaller or however we like.
The hurdle is the community's obsession with every game having to follow a tournament standard. If your group doesn't care about tournament standard - then nothing stops that group from playing 1000-1200 point games to keep the model count lower.
Las wrote: Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
I think the exact opposite, it looks great. Plenty of historicals play with large quantity of minis.
Aren't most historical 25mm scale as opposed to 28 heroic? I do understand the appeal of having a lot of miniatures on the table, it's that in terms of practicality it isn't feasible due to the large footprint of such regiments on a standard 6'x4' playing surface. 8th ed handled it particularly poorly by encouraging the player to field a single large regiment through steadfast instead of using a variety of regiments. Imagine if in Total War you only fielded one, massive blob of infantry and a couple of, idk, cavalry units. It's just not fun or interesting to play with.
Las wrote: Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
I think the exact opposite, it looks great. Plenty of historicals play with large quantity of minis.
Historicals do. But for example, the models below cost £20 for a box of 44 plastic multipose models.
When GW price like that I'm sure we'll all be happier with large units.
Spoiler:
With their current prices, I'm hoping they drop down to unit sizes of something like 12 (3 ranks of 4 models). A single box of models should be a usable unit. Not the old 8th edition of needing 2-3 boxes for a single unit.
auticus wrote: I think it can be playable at the 50ish model count. At like 1000-1200 points.
Thats the whole point of having a point system. To play it bigger or smaller or however we like.
The hurdle is the community's obsession with every game having to follow a tournament standard. If your group doesn't care about tournament standard - then nothing stops that group from playing 1000-1200 point games to keep the model count lower.
In a sense I agree, but I would argue that by the end of WHFB the rules heavily encouraged 2k+ games as well.
Las wrote: Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
I think the exact opposite, it looks great. Plenty of historicals play with large quantity of minis.
Historicals do. But for example, the models below cost £20 for a box of 44 plastic multipose models.
When GW price like that I'm sure we'll all be happier with large units.
Spoiler:
With their current prices, I'm hoping they drop down to unit sizes of something like 12 (3 ranks of 4 models). A single box of models should be a usable unit. Not the old 8th edition of needing 2-3 boxes for a single unit.
Yep, and they usually play with much, much smaller model counts per unit. It's also worth mentioning that while 25/28mm historicals are indeed played, they are in a minority when compared to 6-15mm rank n flank historicals.
You tend to see 25/28 for WWII and moderns, or skirmish games in other eras.
28mm historicals with mass battles have the problem that you need more units to play well but this usually means more models and larger tables with larger models
yet this is also a problem with 15mm, like the proposed ACW Epic system from Warlord
the supposed models/base count and how the models are set up means you end up with similar sized units (in centimeter) as with 28mm, but with more models so it looks better, but you lose all the advantages for smaller scale
on the other hand, I once proposed a alternate basing system for Black Powder to be used with 28mm
the suggested one in the rulebook with 4 models per 40x40mm base and 6 bases on standard sized units ends up with being too large for normal sized wargaming table and needs way too many models
so doing its 1/2 but with small adjustments:
50x50mm bases for Infantry and 70x50mm for Cavalry (or 60x50 for both, the larger width helps with models in attack/shooting position )
small units: 8-12 infantry models, 2 bases, 2-3 cavalry models, 1 base
standard units: 15-18 infantry models. 3 bases, 4-6 cavalry models, 2 bases
large units: 21-24 infantry models, 4 bases, 6-9 cavalry models, 3 bases
using the minimum number for light infantry/cavalry, and for skirmisher to 2-3 models per base
so if GW really goes down the rabbit hole of bringing back 40 model units, it should not be a big problem of keeping the rules but half the model count
I feel the size of the armies is going to be comparable to AoS and one-page rules, around 40 - 50 models at 1000 points for 'classic' armies (averagely mid costed with few low and high-end units). The limitation on how many times a unit can be 'reinforced' is also something I feel it's going to stay or is going to be more dominant in the future. It's rather elegant, as the base size of the unit dictates how big a unit can get, cheap 'horde' units can see up to 40/regiment (20/base size), while the 'common' troops can stay at 10/base size. It maintains a nice visual distinction, iirc, the magic is going to be more tame, so hopefully that means less spells that nuke your entire regiment without any counter play. Just my pondering on this rainy evening.
kodos wrote: the supposed models/base count and how the models are set up means you end up with similar sized units (in centimeter) as with 28mm, but with more models so it looks better, but you lose all the advantages for smaller scale
I think there's a sweet spot.
A 5x4 unit of 28mm models on 20mm square bases has a footprint of 100mm x 80mm, for an area of 80 square centimeters. If instead you use 15mm minis on 10mm square bases, then 8x5 has a footprint of 80mm x 50mm, or 40 square centimeters.
So you get twice as many models in a unit for that fun mass-battle look, but half the footprint on the board. That means you can halve your board size (go from 6x4 to 4x3, for example) and still have your units take up proportionally the same amount of space, and the smaller scale makes it cheaper to get into. It's then easy to scale up to play a larger game if you like.
One of the known barriers to entry with WHFB was the cost of assembling an army. That wasn't just a matter of the community being fixated on tournament game sizes; I found 8th didn't function well below 1K points, in part because of the relatively large size of units. So if GW ends up retaining the same scale as WHFB 8th Ed, but at modern prices, it's going to be hard to get new players into it.
If the system allows smaller units- 12, 16, 20- to be viable, not just the 30+ blocks, then it'll be easier to scale down to lower points values.
Point taken, even, if it'd be in line with the background (fewer 'arch' mages for the high elves, no high level wizards for the empire, since they haven't researched that branch of the tech just yet), there's always an underlying feeling that there must a good nuke spell available. Hopefully it'll be more interesting than baiting out the scrolls before hitting it with the nuke.
One of the known barriers to entry with WHFB was the cost of assembling an army. That wasn't just a matter of the community being fixated on tournament game sizes; I found 8th didn't function well below 1K points, in part because of the relatively large size of units.
That I suppose will depend on you and your location.
I'm not saying 1000 pts of 8th was fun. People's fixation on the mega blob to min/max steadfast was the direct cause of that, but AOS at 1000 points is equally like chewing glass in terms of fun because in AOS you can basically take whatever you want.
You're just trading people's self inflicted requirement of min/maxing steadfast with them fielding a couple nuke models instead. The resultant game was equally unfun - at least for me and the groups I ran with.
And as the model counts are similar in either game and AOS doesn't have the problem of getting people to assemble that many models for their army, I dont think its the number of models that was the problem.
Rihgu wrote: Therefore, we can suppose that units will be between 30 and 120 models in TOW.
You know this is literally unit size in every TW game, starting with Shogun from 2000?
Gimgamgoo wrote: Historicals do. But for example, the models below cost £20 for a box of 44 plastic multipose models.
When GW price like that I'm sure we'll all be happier with large units.
Spoiler:
With their current prices, I'm hoping they drop down to unit sizes of something like 12 (3 ranks of 4 models). A single box of models should be a usable unit. Not the old 8th edition of needing 2-3 boxes for a single unit.
Yeah, I wonder what some people do for living they think 50 minis for a single unit at GW prices is a remotely sane proposition.
On a side note, GW really should have gone with round bases in unit trays like in pic above, not bring back dumb square ones to appease a few ancient whiners who bought nothing in ages anyway. Rounds look so much better and they are going to lose a lot of appeal of multi system armies (especially seeing I can already see TOW gatekeepers screeching at new players who want to try their AOS ogre or demon army in TOW because of round bases, see HH grognard obsession with SM knees since they have nothing else to latch on to)...
auticus wrote: And as the model counts are similar in either game and AOS doesn't have the problem of getting people to assemble that many models for their army, I dont think its the number of models that was the problem.
It kinda is. 10 models in AOS unit are spread out and look visually more impressive than 2x5 mini tiny block. Especially seeing AOS minis have much wider, imposing stances than unnaturally stilted FB minis that need to fit into a small cube or you won't rank them. AOS just gives you more bang for your buck visually and finished army gives you as much sense of fulfillment as FB one twice the size.
Ah but thats ... just preference on visuals. Its not really number of models its a preference for having skirmish formation everywhere and a disdain for rank and file.
I find aos armies to be the opposite. They do nothing for me visually and I am attracted to blocks of troops, thats why I got started with warhammer when I did long long ago.
As long as they fixed the small units used to redirect the proper units of the rival, I cannot care about anything else, I'll play it.
The moment a play group understood that "trick", then the game basically died. It was a ballerina's dance of fething 5 undead wolves or cheap outriders or whatever baiting your 2-3 proper units into charging a rock or some woods.
Galas wrote: As long as they fixed the small units used to redirect the proper units of the rival, I cannot care about anything else, I'll play it.
The moment a play group understood that "trick", then the game basically died. It was a ballerina's dance of fething 5 undead wolves or cheap outriders or whatever baiting your 2-3 proper units into charging a rock or some woods.
Yeah that was gamey. All GW had to do was allow a pivot after an overrun.
Irbis wrote: On a side note, GW really should have gone with round bases in unit trays like in pic above, not bring back dumb square ones to appease a few ancient whiners who bought nothing in ages anyway. Rounds look so much better and they are going to lose a lot of appeal of multi system armies (especially seeing I can already see TOW gatekeepers screeching at new players who want to try their AOS ogre or demon army in TOW because of round bases, see HH grognard obsession with SM knees since they have nothing else to latch on to)...
My only concern is, how do you do a unit of empire halberdiers or night goblins? The smallest round base is 25mm wide, and the smallest square base is 20mm. Chaos warriors are now on 32mm width rather than 25mm width.
The change from 4-wide minimum to 5-wide minimum increased unit widths by 25% for not much gameplay significance. Round bases slotting into movement trays would again increase unit widths by 25% for no value gained.
EDIT: To answer my own question, I guess they could make movement trays that accepted round bases, and movement trays that accepted square bases with spacing in between to make it the same dimensions as the round-slot movement trays. If they at the same time dropped the 5-wide to 4-wide your units would be wider than 6th edition and previous for no gain, but they would be just as wide as 5-wide in 8th edition and not worse.
On a side note, GW really should have gone with round bases in unit trays like in pic above, not bring back dumb square ones to appease a few ancient whiners who bought nothing in ages anyway. Rounds look so much better and they are going to lose a lot of appeal of multi system armies (especially seeing I can already see TOW gatekeepers screeching at new players who want to try their AOS ogre or demon army in TOW because of round bases, see HH grognard obsession with SM knees since they have nothing else to latch on to)...
It's nothing to do with 'appeasing ancient whiners'. Round bases look better for individual models, but when they need to rank up having them on square bases makes much more sense. Using round bases in trays would force people to use trays, and looks far worse than ranked up square bases do. Having round bases on models that are intended to be used in rectangular formations is silly.
NinthMusketeer wrote: 5-wide is absolutely necessary. With 4-wide the classic three man command group is off center and that is an abomination.
Yeah, you're probably right. The off center command bugged the heck out of me too. Just don't push people to hop from 5 wide to 10 wide and it would be just fine.
Galas wrote: As long as they fixed the small units used to redirect the proper units of the rival, I cannot care about anything else, I'll play it.
The moment a play group understood that "trick", then the game basically died. It was a ballerina's dance of fething 5 undead wolves or cheap outriders or whatever baiting your 2-3 proper units into charging a rock or some woods.
Its funny how much attitudes vary. The groups I played with always felt the onus was on them to eliminate the potential enemy charge blockers with shooting, magic and/or morale.
Maybe even a charge of their own light cav while the infantry blocks were still advancing.
Five wolves or outriders stood up to jack and squat.
On a side note, GW really should have gone with round bases in unit trays like in pic above, not bring back dumb square ones to appease a few ancient whiners who bought nothing in ages anyway. Rounds look so much better and they are going to lose a lot of appeal of multi system armies (especially seeing I can already see TOW gatekeepers screeching at new players who want to try their AOS ogre or demon army in TOW because of round bases, see HH grognard obsession with SM knees since they have nothing else to latch on to)...
It's nothing to do with 'appeasing ancient whiners'. Round bases look better for individual models, but when they need to rank up having them on square bases makes much more sense. Using round bases in trays would force people to use trays, and looks far worse than ranked up square bases do. Having round bases on models that are intended to be used in rectangular formations is silly.
The problem with ranked squares is that it severely limits possibility and even as a grog who hates the 'leaping off Tactical Rock' and 'DYNAMIC posing' nonsense, even models stood at attention can be a real nightmare to properly rank up without them clipping, sometimes even on rounds-on-tray bases which have more space by default.
Arbitrator wrote: The problem with ranked squares is that it severely limits possibility and even as a grog who hates the 'leaping off Tactical Rock' and 'DYNAMIC posing' nonsense, even models stood at attention can be a real nightmare to properly rank up without them clipping, sometimes even on rounds-on-tray bases which have more space by default.
That's not an inherent problem with square bases, it's a problem of the base (whatever shape it is) being too small, or the models not being sculpted correctly for ranking up on that base.
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.
I have been adding to my army’s, I am ready for anything at this point the game goes.
To be fair, that was true of 8th ed, where it was encouraged to take a single massive block of your most cost effective infantry, a caster and a couple of supporting units.
Encouraged right up to the point where you played a halfway competent balanced, MSU, or avoidance army that killed the supporting units and led the Deathstar around as if on a leash.
Or they lost the Command Point scenario due to lack of banners.
Or the general deploys clear across the field from the One Big Unit and gets picked off trying to get to them in a meeting engagement.
Or they lose Watchtower because the only infantry unit they have is the One Big Unit and it runs out of time trying to get through my army to get at my unit in the tower...
So many ways to win against the One Big Unit; I always loved seeing them deploy.
there was only one, with no special deployment on killing the most points at the end of the game wins
because GW in 5th gave that as example for tournament play and never again made a tournament pack/rules, this was the only one allowed
it was hard work to get people to play different scenarios in mid 7th, mostly with the need of houserules anyway
but this was gone the day 8th hit the shelf because GW now listens, the solved all the problems and made the perfect game, so all achievements from the past were removed and we got back to armies have to stick to the old army books without Errata/FAQ, no scenarios and must play 2500-3000 points because with the change to 50% heroes people need to points to put some units on the table (instead of making the decision for either heros or units)
kodos wrote: no one ever played the different scenarios
there was only one, with no special deployment on killing the most points at the end of the game wins
because GW in 5th gave that as example for tournament play and never again made a tournament pack/rules, this was the only one allowed
it was hard work to get people to play different scenarios in mid 7th, mostly with the need of houserules anyway
but this was gone the day 8th hit the shelf because GW now listens, the solved all the problems and made the perfect game, so all achievements from the past were removed and we got back to armies have to stick to the old army books without Errata/FAQ, no scenarios and must play 2500-3000 points because with the change to 50% heroes people need to points to put some units on the table (instead of making the decision for either heros or units)
Gee, I guess I'm no one then. Our group random rolled scenarios because we understood the whole POINT of having the scenarios was to help balance the game. If you didn't use the scenarios, you weren't playing the full game and OF COUSE the game devolves into "Who's got the nastiest deathstar?"
At which point several armies become basically unplayable because their best deathstar was hamburger in front of a ChosenStar or BlenderStar.
which was a reason why I left the game behind before the first army book hit
the community already took a hit with the bad army books of 7th, but the attitude of the people that stayed (and run the events/club nights) killed 8th for me and some friends right at the start
no house rules are allowed because we only play the official rules, but only those rules "we" like and the others are ingored (like scenarios, or FW units, so no Chaos Dwarfs here)
I don't even care what the recommended unit sizes are in Old World as long as the models are sold in unit sizes that are usable straigth from the box. Rank bonus from 5 models that were sold in boxes of 16 or combat bonuses for large units that were sold in boxes of 10 didn't make a very good customer experience.
I wouldn't mind if Old World took a similar approach to army building than AoS 3rd edition. A default unit size is the number of models in box, you pay points per unit instead of model and if you want to double or triple the size of a unit you need to Reinforce it. You can only Reinforce a limited amount of units depending on game size.
Galas wrote: As long as they fixed the small units used to redirect the proper units of the rival, I cannot care about anything else, I'll play it.
The moment a play group understood that "trick", then the game basically died. It was a ballerina's dance of fething 5 undead wolves or cheap outriders or whatever baiting your 2-3 proper units into charging a rock or some woods.
Its funny how much attitudes vary. The groups I played with always felt the onus was on them to eliminate the potential enemy charge blockers with shooting, magic and/or morale.
Maybe even a charge of their own light cav while the infantry blocks were still advancing.
Five wolves or outriders stood up to jack and squat.
Well, a lot of people complain about games they don't actually know how to play (not necessarily the ones complaining here) and some will complain even if they've never tried the game, basing their opinion on a strawman of someone else's experience. There were countless games I experienced where people forgot important rules i.e. rolling for terrain, broken concentration on wizards, 1 or 2 on the total of a spell meaning it was auto fail regardless of bonuses from wizard level or other source, bounce of a cannonball stopping if it doesn't kill something with multiple wounds, if a unit has most of its footprint in a forest (most common terrain type to have access to) it loses that hated steadfast etc...
Those same people would also complain about interactions that were the direct cause of not playing those rules properly. I remember people complaining about hordes/large formations covering a deployment zone end to end..and then they would be playing on a board with a couple of hills and a very small forest, which they hadn't rolled for and they wouldn't remember the rules that removed steadfast (note: this was at a club that has free access to a large amount of terrain). The average terrain roll was around 7, I think, so some or a lot of those hordes are getting clogged up and/or having their precious steadfast removed.
Having said that 8th has/had plenty of issues and a lot of those were logistical, the size and cost of the units/armies (though not for all armies), not everyone has or wants to provide terrain either (although that's a cost in a lot of games) and also rules based: e.g. the imbalance of the core ultimate spells for most of the lores, some of the lores were just plain better than most (looking at you life and shadow), deathstars and army book power-creep. The end times also introduced some ridiculous things, particularly the magic in the Khaine book.
It certainly wasn't without issues, but some of the complaints I've heard would suggest it was an unmitigated disaster and maybe for some groups it was. I can only go off my own experience where we saw record numbers of people at our club (30+) playing in escalation leagues (which were competitive) and even narrative events (less competitive), throughout the entirety of 8th and it only died down after they killed off the system. There were quite a few who were even starting new armies when that suddenly hit, although they were warned, in fairness.
But I'm one person and maybe I am the exception that proves the rule; after all my experience is just my own and if a majority feels differently it ultimately beats my individual preference.
kodos wrote: which was a reason why I left the game behind before the first army book hit
the community already took a hit with the bad army books of 7th, but the attitude of the people that stayed (and run the events/club nights) killed 8th for me and some friends right at the start
no house rules are allowed because we only play the official rules, but only those rules "we" like and the others are ingored (like scenarios, or FW units, so no Chaos Dwarfs here)
Yes, but honestly that was a community problem. At that time, the more vocal voices on the Warhammer Battle scene was mostly competitive (I'll even say hardcore competitive) and thus only one scenario was played. So of course all lists turned about making death stars and killing stuff.
Saw this a bit when some of the WB community briefly shifted to Kings of War...a lot of competitive players came at that time and tried to do the same. The rest went on 9th Age, and you can clearly see the game system was shaped from the same mindset.
here most of them went to T9A and some of the more vocal ones became the core part of the project.
they mostly skipped KoW because it was too friendly to competitive play
while it would have helped the popularity of KoW in the beginning, in the long run I am very glad the ETC went with T9A as their Fantasy game
while it would have helped the popularity of KoW in the beginning, in the long run I am very glad the ETC went with T9A as their Fantasy game
I totally agree. I still think it helped KoW to be known and more popular in some areas where previously it wasn't even a dream to hope so, but I'm also glad most of the...let's say "problematic people" went to join 9th Age instead.
With some luck, they'll stick with it once Old World is released.
Sarouan wrote: With some luck, they'll stick with it once Old World is released.
I am pretty sure they will, as the game was designed around their needs and they will do everything to keep it as a main game (while in some regions, the game tied pretty fast as soon as those people stopped playing)
Who was the one missing from the 2-man command? Because it better not be the musician! Nothing says ranked combat quite like a person marching to war armed only with a drum.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Who was the one missing from the 2-man command? Because it better not be the musician! Nothing says ranked combat quite like a person marching to war armed only with a drum.
It was also a tie breaker and had some effect on movement. Free reform, wasn't it?
I am very glad the ETC went with T9A as their Fantasy game
Of course they did, 9th Age was designed from the beginning to be "ETC: The Game".
but after they decided to go with that game (which was more or less a promise only by that time)
there was a captains vote in the beginning between KoW, Warhammer Armies, keeping 8th and "future proof game made by the players and will the best game ever (based on 8th because this is the game the people behind it like and there is not enough time to make something new)"
Mantic offered support for the ETC if KoW is played, yet people voted for the "new game" because: don' like Mantic miniatures, Warhammer Armies has too many factions so the pairing will be too complicated, it is boring to play with the same rules twice (so no 8th)
than we got a different version of 8th so that people have something to play in the upcoming ETC, than they started to flesh the game out with their first Edition, which was how 8th should have been from the beginning
and now they focused on making their own game, with their own fluff and rules with 2nd Edition
kodos wrote: champion, as in the older rules it was a character not a unit upgrade
Wow, you clearly didn't model your unit leaders as special in third edition even though there was no statistical difference between any other member of the unit and it shows. Shame on you.
there was a captains vote in the beginning between KoW, Warhammer Armies, keeping 8th and "future proof game made by the players and will the best game ever (based on 8th because this is the game the people behind it like and there is not enough time to make something new)"
And the Brit team going full patriot and actually pushing to switch to AoS, and I mean pre-GHBAoS, as the premiere tournament game
Re rank/unit size - its going to be 5's. Most of the surviving old world kits are sold in multiples of 10, I took a quick glance through what remains and theres basically only a handful of kits still for sale that do multiples of 4.
Sorry, I rather see this as a true army for rank and files :
Yes, it takes time to build and paint (and money) but that's what rank and files armies really shine as from my point of view. I see it as the Saint Graal to have such a result. It looks simply awesome on the table.
Sure, you can always enjoy Battle in its "skirmish version" with units of 15-20 soldiers and think that's an army, but to me, I never thought it looked good. Same for Kings of War armies with minimal model count per unit. Purely a question of visual to me.
I want to do the same games as this one :
Oh yes, that's the stuff you'll keep remembering for the rest of your life.
As amazing as that looks, you have to understand that this actually alienates 98% of the games potential customer base from ever playing it due to time and cost, as well as the massive amounts of space needed to actually play a game of that size. Most people don't have the means for that. This is not a game that will sell sufficiently to justify the investment of GWs resources.
Was? Warmaster is probaby doing better right now than at any point in history. There's a living ruleset and most armies have been digitally resculpted.
Well according to that one guy the game died 6 months after it released and was never heard from again, so I don't see how its possible for it to be going strong in 2021.
Las wrote: Hot take: 28mm rank n flank isn't easy to begin with and looks terrible with large units.
Big exposed movement trays primed brown or green sitting on the table like plates. Barely tabletop quality minis due to the crazy painting load of hundreds of dudes. Ridiculous terrain set ups so that units can maneuver at all. It just looks bad.
I hope they keep it to no more than 20 minis per unit. Honestly 10-15 would be ideal.
I think the exact opposite, it looks great. Plenty of historicals play with large quantity of minis.
Aren't most historical 25mm scale as opposed to 28 heroic? I do understand the appeal of having a lot of miniatures on the table, it's that in terms of practicality it isn't feasible due to the large footprint of such regiments on a standard 6'x4' playing surface.
8th ed handled it particularly poorly by encouraging the player to field a single large regiment through steadfast instead of using a variety of regiments.
Imagine if in Total War you only fielded one, massive blob of infantry and a couple of, idk, cavalry units. It's just not fun or interesting to play with.
Historicals as a general rule are dominated by smaller scales. 25/28mm is gaining popularity as a result of Warlords efforts of promoting the scale amongst "historicals lite" types, but the overwhelming majority of "real" historicals games I've encountered are played at 15mm and 6mm, and less commonly at other scales.
chaos0xomega wrote: Historicals as a general rule are dominated by smaller scales. 25/28mm is gaining popularity as a result of Warlords efforts of promoting the scale amongst "historicals lite" types, but the overwhelming majority of "real" historicals games I've encountered are played at 15mm and 6mm, and less commonly at other scales.
this is kind of cool if Warlords marketing gains fruit in the US
usually it depends on the level played, Warband/Platoon is usually 25/28mm, Brigade is 15-20mm and Division/Army level games in 6-10mm
while for abstract gaming, any scale is used (there are army level Napoleonic games that are played with 1 marker being 1 Division and some players put 28mm models on top of them, while the others use 2mm "models")
mid 80ies to 90ies, 20mm was the dominant scale for historicals because all the scale model companies made 1/72 soft plastic models while any other scale was hard to get
I am not sure when 25-30mm really became a thing here but the "real" historical players already used in the mid 80ies
Re: kodos, Vulcan, etc. talking about WHFB 8E being good, bad, scenarios, the ETC, tournament play, and so on --
I played WHFB tournaments in the Northeast US region from early 7E to the end of 8E, and I never went to an event that didn't comp and/or errata the rules to some extent. For 7E it was primarily to help the horrifically unbalanced army tiers, but for 8E it was to navigate any number of NPEs across the board, not least of all poor balance but quite often around magic and army composition. I actually only played a handful of pure 8E games in the very beginning, before it was entirely clear that we needed to house rule basic things like terrain in order to have a functional game. That, uh, that's bad. Almost Day 1 AOS 'heck the rules just use model count' bad, but not quite
The general adage I hear on The Internet is that the last time WHFB was balanced and mostly equitable for both players was Ravening Hordes 6E (ignoring the chain panic rule in that edition O_O). However when I suggest this to people jonesing for Oldhammer (like my buddy a couple years ago, looking to start up a league), I usually get told that it's too boring and too samey, and they end up choosing between the raw brutality of 7E (often because they have a Dark Elf or Daemon army in their closet) or the sheer bs and mass carnage of 8E. In my experience, this is the true draw for the Warhammer player: to smash face thanks to arbitrarily having the strongest rules; or to have games hinge on unequally distributed but devastating random mechanics, preferably with an abundance of charts on which to look them up.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: I personally like the look of Konflikt 47.
I'm a sucker for Weird World II.
Funnily enough, speaking of Warlord, their use of 28mm, and Konflikt 47; the original designers of K47, Clockwork Goblin, had apparently intended for their miniatures to be released in 15mm which you can find examples of. Once they started working with Warlord, the game got scaled up to 28mm so it could be used Warlords Bolt Action miniatures.
Which is a shame, since if 28mm Bolt Action wasn't so popular, it'd be way better to play at 15mm scale.
chaos0xomega wrote: Historicals as a general rule are dominated by smaller scales. 25/28mm is gaining popularity as a result of Warlords efforts of promoting the scale amongst "historicals lite" types, but the overwhelming majority of "real" historicals games I've encountered are played at 15mm and 6mm, and less commonly at other scales.
this is kind of cool if Warlords marketing gains fruit in the US
usually it depends on the level played, Warband/Platoon is usually 25/28mm, Brigade is 15-20mm and Division/Army level games in 6-10mm
while for abstract gaming, any scale is used (there are army level Napoleonic games that are played with 1 marker being 1 Division and some players put 28mm models on top of them, while the others use 2mm "models")
mid 80ies to 90ies, 20mm was the dominant scale for historicals because all the scale model companies made 1/72 soft plastic models while any other scale was hard to get
I am not sure when 25-30mm really became a thing here but the "real" historical players already used in the mid 80ies
25/28 was a popular historicals scale back in the day amongst historical players in the US and UK (20mm less popular as the 1/72 range was very limited to late 19th and 20th century at the time), but a British manufacturer ( Miniature Figurines Ltd, aka Minifigs) launched 15mm ranges (followed later by an American manufacturer named Heritage) that caused the historical scene to shift towards 15mm as the bulk of historical games being played at the time were rank and file ranging from ancients to Napoleonic/post-Napoleonic era and it just worked better at the smaller scale (as well as being more affordable and accessible to general audiences, particularly in the UK where housing and accommodations were tight). That in turn drove the industry towards smaller scales (with 6mm gaining much popularity for more modern periods as a result of microarmor type rulesets). The shift back towards 25/28mm is only relatively recent starting in the late 90s and early 2000s as a result of GWs growth and the shift towards the American market (which has more spacious housing and gaming venues) driving the industry back towards larger minis.
Boss Salvage wrote: Re: kodos, Vulcan, etc. talking about WHFB 8E being good, bad, scenarios, the ETC, tournament play, and so on --.
we had 8th comp here as well, yet it did not come down in helping anything instead of changing stuff the TO's don't like
for example in 7th the house rules got that far that older army books that did not got an update or were based in outdated rules, were allowed to adjust (like that the Battlestandard bearer could use other equipment and items) with the generic "no dragons" rules
all this was gone (because 8th was balanced and dragons are fine now while older armies don't need adjustment because otherwise it would have been in the official errata) and replaced with stuff like "no melee dwarfs allowed" or warmachines must be on round bases to avoid cheating
and yes every time someone ask for Oldhammer I also suggest 6E with Ravening Hordes, also because the supplement was given away free and you can still download it
I remember liking those early 6th games with Ravening Hordes. Sure, a lot of the more strange stuff that wasn't covered in the core rule book were just sorta "counts as" this other thing with a few changes. So, a steam tank didn't really feel like a steam tank (though I don't think I ever fielded one back then anyway). But I liked that there weren't so many special rules that made everything totally different than everything else, and so many earth shattering spells and magic items and combos.
chaos0xomega wrote: 25/28 was a popular historicals scale back in the day amongst historical players in the US and UK (20mm less popular as the 1/72 range was very limited to late 19th and 20th century at the time), but a British manufacturer ( Miniature Figurines Ltd, aka Minifigs) launched 15mm ranges (followed later by an American manufacturer named Heritage) that caused the historical scene to shift towards 15mm as the bulk of historical games being played at the time were rank and file ranging from ancients to Napoleonic/post-Napoleonic era and it just worked better at the smaller scale (as well as being more affordable and accessible to general audiences, particularly in the UK where housing and accommodations were tight). That in turn drove the industry towards smaller scales (with 6mm gaining much popularity for more modern periods as a result of microarmor type rulesets). The shift back towards 25/28mm is only relatively recent starting in the late 90s and early 2000s as a result of GWs growth and the shift towards the American market (which has more spacious housing and gaming venues) driving the industry back towards larger minis.
always interesting how different markets developed
In my experience, this is the true draw for the Warhammer player: to smash face thanks to arbitrarily having the strongest rules; or to have games hinge on unequally distributed but devastating random mechanics
Also my experience. Also hear the same things.
Balanced games are "boring". The standard GW fan doesn't want balance in my experience. They want to chase the strongest army and crush people with it and have ultimate devastation / brutality with a single roll of the dice.
That was an eye opener for me when I did azyr comp for AOS years ago.
What does everyone think GWs intentions are for the Old World? Will it be a return to rank and flank wargamng?
or is it going to be solely about charging as much as they can to the older generation of gamers nostalgic about all the bretonnian knights they couldn’t afford in their youth?
I honestly cannot tell. Part of me think this may be a return of GW actually designing a war game, as AoS really serves that new models, new rules, higher prices treadmill.
Whereas the Old World seems like it could be more about reestablishing GW in the historical wargaming market, even if WHFB is pseudohistory.
But in the end I’m not sure GW will be able to resist driving Old World by using nostalgia as a weapon to drive the prices of classic sculpts through the roof.
What does everyone think GWs intentions are for the Old World? Will it be a return to rank and flank wargamng?
As they have said its going to be a continuation of warhammer fantasy battles - yes its a return to rank and flank wargaming.
However I believe it will also be a continuation of appealing to the wide audience which means easy to play, few tactics, few strategies, emphasis on massive cinematic explosions and things like spamming mortal wounds and chasing the meta dragon around to do well.
Definitely square! Warhammer: The Old World is a reinvention of the classic rank-and-file game of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Regiments move in ranked-up units, and strategic manoeuvring into position to launch or receive a critical charge will be as much a key part of the game as it ever was.
8th ed or something new? Both! We’ve played every single edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles over the years and like every player, we have our favourite bits from each. Warhammer: The Old World will gather up all our favourite mechanics from the 3rd edition to the 8th edition** and add new elements where needed to create something deeply familiar yet fresh and new.
Based off of those quotes from the article I am about 99.99% sure its not a revision of Lord of the Rings and is a continuation of old warhammer with new stuff added.
Wouldn't you rather spend the next four years being optimistic about it only to be proven wrong than being pessimistic about it and proven right? While we can draw similarities to past and existing rule design GW has never done a project like this. The closest thing would be... maybe blood bowl? Which come to think of it has a really good ruleset and some nice new minis to boot.
After 20 odd years since GW began the power churn in mid to late 6th edition - no I'm not going to be optimistic. Its simply not profitable to do things the way that classic-hammer players want. At least not as profitable as making it a Michael Bay movie on the tabletop.
Its nice to be able to discuss it though, but I'm going to be very leery of anything GW puts out until they prove me wrong. After all the last time they REALLY cared about the ruleset over just pushing and churning models was about 20 years ago.
They have a very very long track record to fall back on.
I don't think its true GW has never done a project like this. They are from my standpoint making 9th edition warhammer fantasy. This is no different from when they create a new edition of any game.
If this was going to be a totally brand new game from scratch then maybe but all signs point to this being official 9th edition warhammer fantasy.
Thats where I'm going to put my thoughts and feelings into the project until shown otherwise.
I'm with Auticus on this one. With the last Warhammer Community article, I feel like the Old World project is more about "Warhammer Battle : the Nostalgia fan service game" than a real new innovative game system.
In my experience, this is the true draw for the Warhammer player: to smash face thanks to arbitrarily having the strongest rules; or to have games hinge on unequally distributed but devastating random mechanics
Also my experience. Also hear the same things.
Balanced games are "boring". The standard GW fan doesn't want balance in my experience. They want to chase the strongest army and crush people with it and have ultimate devastation / brutality with a single roll of the dice.
That was an eye opener for me when I did azyr comp for AOS years ago.
I’ve also heard this. And that meta churn is great as it keeps things fresh. Weird to me but takes all sorts i guess.
Pro: the meta churn of not having balance keeps things fresh. I agree. It does that.
Con: we have a game where point values don't represent what they are supposed to, and a game where players can and often win based purely off of what army they are fielding.
That is not a game to me though. No one wants to play the board game where the red token gets a bunch of added bonuses and dice just because its the red token.
And then next year the blue token gets the bonuses and the red token gets penalized.
And then the next year the green token gets it, etc.
And each token costs you $800 - $1200 retail and you have to paint it.
I feel the same applies in wargaming. At least for me.
Ask me if that business model worked before 2015 and I'd have said hell no who the hell wants that?
Of course since 2015 we've all learned a very valuable insight into what many people will throw money at.
I don't need or expect a fantasy wargame to be perfectly balanced between the factions, meaning that none have any advantage over the others given two gamers of equal "skill". However, I think it's important for any wargame for the outcome to be uncertain for as long as possible. That's what makes it dramatic. But it's also important to feel like you influence the outcome meaningfully in order to be engaged with the game. While I like fun, dramatic, narrative driven games, i think GW sometimes makes up for imbalance by adding randomness in order to make the outcome more in doubt, since the random events or random secondary objectives or random turn order or whatever it is has the possibility of turning the game around that seemed to be already decided. But if that decides the game, it feels completely out of the control of the players.
Even with that random element though I have often been able to look down at a table of AOS or 40k (or even late period 8th whfb) and determine the winner before the game started based on the two army lists.
Sarouan wrote: I'm with Auticus on this one. With the last Warhammer Community article, I feel like the Old World project is more about "Warhammer Battle : the Nostalgia fan service game" than a real new innovative game system.
But here is the thing, WHFB is essentially R&F game. (With elements of magic & heroes)
If they do make it "something else" would that not mean it basically has to stop being a R&F game?
It seems like a bit of a trap where GW will be doomed if they and doomed if they dont.
I dont understand why there is a sudden resentment in TOW being called "WHFB: nostalgia fan service"
What would it need to be to NOT be like WHFB ? How much different can it be as a R&F game while remaining a R&F game?
Wish listing aside realistically what are peoples expectations?
They confirmed they will be building on the WHFB predecessor but I dotn get a sentiment that it will be WHFB 8th with a tweak. I mean it would have to be some drastic change to not be like WHFB. ... I
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auticus wrote: Even with that random element though I have often been able to look down at a table of AOS or 40k (or even late period 8th whfb) and determine the winner before the game started based on the two army lists.
auticus wrote: Even with that random element though I have often been able to look down at a table of AOS or 40k (or even late period 8th whfb) and determine the winner before the game started based on the two army lists.
And were those games any fun at all? I wouldn't find it fun, though if my opponent insisted on continuing the game once it was a foregone conclusion, I guess I'd make the best of it and make up some objective, like defeat their general with mine or something to strive for to add some drama.
Now, to some extent it's unavoidable. If you have a lot of options, of course it's always going to be possible for someone to pick an army list that is just terrible, or due to circumstances can't beat another one. Like if you're just starting to build 40k armies playing like 500 or 750 point games with what you've been able to buy and put together and paint. If one guy buys a vehicle, and the other guy hasn't bought any heavy weapons, that game isn't going to be very fun. I don't think that's a problem the game can fix really, sometimes players just have to work together to make the game fun for both of them. It's not a sport, where the only goal is to win.
Now you have found the entire reason for how I'm confused as to why people shovel money at GW over the last decade+.
We had a lot of player churn. Our average lifespan of players was about 18 months. After that they'd sell off and be done.
The hardcore competitive guys lasted longer, usually about 3-5 years. But then those guys were chasing the power monkey around the room and were never losing by virtue of playing another power player whose list destroyed theirs, because they were always running the optimal lists to begin with so it was more fun for them.
Argive wrote: But here is the thing, WHFB is essentially R&F game. (With elements of magic & heroes)
If they do make it "something else" would that not mean it basically has to stop being a R&F game?
It's not being a rank-and-file game that makes it sound like nostalgia fan service, it's how they're bending over backwards to describe it as exactly like the Warhammer you knew and loved.
I mean, take Kings of War: Rank-and-file? Yes. An amalgam of 3rd-8th WHFB? Absolutely not. So clearly a game can be R&F without being nostalgia bait.
Personally, I would like to see GW use this opportunity to bring WHFB into the modern era. A more modern activation system, more elegant implementation of morale, and maybe a layer of C&C tying in with both would do a lot.
Argive wrote: But here is the thing, WHFB is essentially R&F game. (With elements of magic & heroes)
If they do make it "something else" would that not mean it basically has to stop being a R&F game?
It's not being a rank-and-file game that makes it sound like nostalgia fan service, it's how they're bending over backwards to describe it as exactly like the Warhammer you knew and loved.
I mean, take Kings of War: Rank-and-file? Yes. An amalgam of 3rd-8th WHFB? Absolutely not. So clearly a game can be R&F without being nostalgia bait.
Personally, I would like to see GW use this opportunity to bring WHFB into the modern era. A more modern activation system, more elegant implementation of morale, and maybe a layer of C&C tying in with both would do a lot.
"Let's try to appeal to the people who used to love our game by making a new game that's nothing like it!"
I'm 100% in the camp of wanting to see this terrible amalgam of previous editions. I want what I grew up on. What I wasted Saturdays playing with my best friend in high school. If I wanted to try something new and different, I'd play one of the other games that have sprung up since.
These suggestions are making me think both of the first time I tried warhammer 40k 3rd edition and was dumbfounded that you couldn't throw grenades to kill things, or even worse, trying age of sigmar when it first released and realizing that the game amounted to a giant pile on in the middle of the board afterwhich you took turns with your opponent rolling dice to remove models until one side "won."
Now you have found the entire reason for how I'm confused as to why people shovel money at GW over the last decade+.
We had a lot of player churn. Our average lifespan of players was about 18 months. After that they'd sell off and be done.
The hardcore competitive guys lasted longer, usually about 3-5 years. But then those guys were chasing the power monkey around the room and were never losing by virtue of playing another power player whose list destroyed theirs, because they were always running the optimal lists to begin with so it was more fun for them.
Admittedly, I was always only a pretty casual player more interested in a dramatic story than a competitive challenge. I never went to tournaments or anything and know nothing of that style of playing. But clearly there are different ways for people to have fun with these games. And different people can be looking for very different things from the game.
Right but WHFB can be "classic" and still have good rules. WHFB is the iconic GW wargaming product and it deserves a proper rule set that brings it inline with other historical wargames.
"Rank and Flank" is a game play style that belongs to more games than just WHFB. It is a theme of game design interaction that models a certain era/style of warfare in an interesting way.
The nostalgia factor is just sales and advertising. Time moves forward, things change, and experiences are not lived in reverse.
I don't want GW to sell me "what it feels like" to play WHFB in 1998. I want a strategic tabletop game set in an ethereal otherworldly, yet vaguely familiar setting. Which was actually a common theme in game design in the early 90s, and done well by many design studios. GW was one such design studio on that pulse back then.
It would be good to see a return and for them to learn from mistakes made and improve, as any good artists does.
Now you have found the entire reason for how I'm confused as to why people shovel money at GW over the last decade+.
We had a lot of player churn. Our average lifespan of players was about 18 months. After that they'd sell off and be done.
The hardcore competitive guys lasted longer, usually about 3-5 years. But then those guys were chasing the power monkey around the room and were never losing by virtue of playing another power player whose list destroyed theirs, because they were always running the optimal lists to begin with so it was more fun for them.
Admittedly, I was always only a pretty casual player more interested in a dramatic story than a competitive challenge. I never went to tournaments or anything and know nothing of that style of playing. But clearly there are different ways for people to have fun with these games. And different people can be looking for very different things from the game.
I dont even think this is about competitive players. I still don't know anybody, competitive or casual, that would buy a board game where the red token has a huge advantage over the other tokens simply because its red.
In my experience, this is the true draw for the Warhammer player: to smash face thanks to arbitrarily having the strongest rules; or to have games hinge on unequally distributed but devastating random mechanics
Also my experience. Also hear the same things.
Balanced games are "boring". The standard GW fan doesn't want balance in my experience. They want to chase the strongest army and crush people with it and have ultimate devastation / brutality with a single roll of the dice.
That was an eye opener for me when I did azyr comp for AOS years ago.
I think your idea of the standard GW fan is different to my idea of the standard GW fan.
Maybe that's the standard GW tournament player, but most people I knew back in the day didn't chase the imbalance.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Maybe that's the standard GW tournament player, but most people I knew back in the day didn't chase the imbalance.
Eh, it isn't binary. Most don't chase it but they will prefer the stronger units in their chosen army to weaker ones, which is entirely understandable. As for players actively wanting imbalance, I haven't encountered one, even online.
I dont even think this is about competitive players. I still don't know anybody, competitive or casual, that would buy a board game where the red token has a huge advantage over the other tokens simply because its red.
That's the thing ; Warhammer Battle wasn't a board game. Same for AoS : the point here is not necessarily about choosing red token because it's better than the other ones.
Which is why people advocating for balance above all don't understand those who say that's not important. They don't see that their interest is elsewhere.
Like the abused lists :you just don't need to play with them. Once you build lists from another perspective...games can actually be very different.
Last game in WB V8 I did was playing a full night goblin list against "normal dwarves" with two special characters. You may have predicted who would likely win...it ended in a tie with barely a few units on the table.
It was yet fun and unpredictable (like when my squigs killed the dwarf general completely by pure luck, before my own general and its unit of 100 night goblins lost the fight against 10 ironbreakers and failed its morale check - they were caught and destroyed while they ran away). Was it fair and balanced ? Well...not sure about that.
I wonder how much of the "chase the strongest meta" stuff comes from people not wanting their purchases to feel invalidated, especially as the game gets more expensive. Tabletop games aren't like video games where if a certain character is broken you just don't use it with your friends - you actually have to spend a good chunk of money (often as much if not more than the cost OF a video game) buying these things, then modelling and painting them.
In systems where there's much better internal and external balance it's a lot easier to just grab what you thinks cool. Compare that to GW-games where it's very much possible to buy an entire army that's as worthless even in casual games. Lil Timmy might start off buying what he thinks looks BADASS but it won't take people who play a lot, competitive or not, to start aligning their pricey purchases with what's actually going to let them have a decent game and not get rolled over.
WFB 3rd edition needed the least number of fixes to make it very workable. It had less of the crazy monsters and magic was almost not worth taking.
My hope is that they draw heavily on this version. No break tests until a unit loses 25%, movement and reserve instead of marching, complex maneuvers to win the game, etc.
I will buy the rules and perhaps some new units. I will never buy anything that is AOS. I picked up 20 cavalry to use in my old armies and they look gigantic and will not rank up.
If they try to enlarge WFB minis to match that will be disappointing.
kenofyork wrote: WFB 3rd edition needed the least number of fixes to make it very workable. It had less of the crazy monsters and magic was almost not worth taking.
My hope is that they draw heavily on this version. No break tests until a unit loses 25%, movement and reserve instead of marching, complex maneuvers to win the game, etc.
I will buy the rules and perhaps some new units. I will never buy anything that is AOS. I picked up 20 cavalry to use in my old armies and they look gigantic and will not rank up.
If they try to enlarge WFB minis to match that will be disappointing.
I agree wholeheartedly, but the magic was, imho even crazier. Like, summoning 2d6 regiments of illusory soldiers, or a piece of terrain to hide a unit in, and it's all managed by a GM so your opponent will never know which soldiers are illusions or which barns have dragons in them? That's the stuff I live for, though.
In my experience, this is the true draw for the Warhammer player: to smash face thanks to arbitrarily having the strongest rules; or to have games hinge on unequally distributed but devastating random mechanics
Also my experience. Also hear the same things.
Balanced games are "boring". The standard GW fan doesn't want balance in my experience. They want to chase the strongest army and crush people with it and have ultimate devastation / brutality with a single roll of the dice.
That was an eye opener for me when I did azyr comp for AOS years ago.
I think your idea of the standard GW fan is different to my idea of the standard GW fan.
Maybe that's the standard GW tournament player, but most people I knew back in the day didn't chase the imbalance.
We can only go off our experiences. Since starting in the 90s, this has been the predominant player that I've known and most of them would also call themselves casual.
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As for players actively wanting imbalance, I haven't encountered one, even online.
There have been a few people even on this board that have said things like too much balance is boring and that the problem with older warhammer (6th ed ravening hordes) was that it was too boring beecause it was balance.
To me that indicates a desire for imbalance because balance is boring.
Also the #1 complaint levied against Azyr point system back in 2015-2016... it was too balanced and boring.
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Like the abused lists :you just don't need to play with them. Once you build lists from another perspective...games can actually be very different.
That requires a community that isn't building lists from the min/max perspective.
Otherwise you're just showing up with a for-fun list getting crushed to prove a point that you dont have to play those lists. I'd say 9 out of 10 players I've ever played with dont like to drag their stuff out to the store knowing they are going to be an enhancement talent to make their opponent look good (which is why they all build really strong lists and then when their faction is nerfed either quit or sell off and buy the newest broken faction)
So that takes me back to my question that I've had for years: if people wouldn't buy the board game where the red token is awesome because its red, where is the pull to a wargame where the "whatever is broken this year" army is busted and wins by virtue of showing up if you aren't optimizing as well? Especially considering how much time you sink into painting and hobbying and how much the stuff costs overall? And if the answer is "because the game isn't the primary reason we play" - then I'd have to ask why would it matter then if the game WAS balanced? For someone who is playing this not really caring as much about the game, I would think that they would be ok either way with either a balanced game or ... whatever word you want to use to describe GW games like 40k and AOS. But those same people that often claim the game is not the primary draw are also usually very vocal about fighting against balance being given more attention.
I'm new to my current area, and after spending 25 years in Louisville being told that it was just that region I can confirm the southwest is equally as competitive in what is being played down at the stores. If not more so. The guys are all super friendly and nice and I have enjoyed hanging out but I know if I want to throw down wargames with them they are bringing their nasty nasty lists and thats what is expected. You can of course choose to bring the gimp non optimized list and I dont think they'd say anything mean to you for it, but I also dont expect them to play down to that because stuff is expensive and most people aren't willing to go out and buy weaker models just to play weaker games with people if they dont have to.
Ravening Hordes 6th edition is my bar for what I want from a wargame balance-wise. Every faction was viable. There were strong and weak lists then, but you didn't have to worry about choosing the wrong $800 faction. You can still have diversity and flavor with balance. You just can't go "oh cool this faction does 5x the normal mortal wounds for the same point cost as this faction that doesn't have anything really going for them". I want a game where every faction is viable and not going to get piledriven off the table and I dont want a game where I have to buy and paint a new full collection every year just so that I can go down to the store and have a fun afternoon where I'm not getting destroyed or destroying my opponent because I or they chose the wrong faction.
The big issue I’ve seen with balance, or specifically chasing balance, was that it was a futile endeavor and a distraction from aspects of the game non-tournament players cared about. It was also always used to stifle any attempt at expanding the lore or miniatures range, always “first balance everything, then make _______”.
Now you have found the entire reason for how I'm confused as to why people shovel money at GW over the last decade+.
We had a lot of player churn. Our average lifespan of players was about 18 months. After that they'd sell off and be done.
The hardcore competitive guys lasted longer, usually about 3-5 years. But then those guys were chasing the power monkey around the room and were never losing by virtue of playing another power player whose list destroyed theirs, because they were always running the optimal lists to begin with so it was more fun for them.
Admittedly, I was always only a pretty casual player more interested in a dramatic story than a competitive challenge. I never went to tournaments or anything and know nothing of that style of playing. But clearly there are different ways for people to have fun with these games. And different people can be looking for very different things from the game.
I dont even think this is about competitive players. I still don't know anybody, competitive or casual, that would buy a board game where the red token has a huge advantage over the other tokens simply because its red.
For those people the "game" is figuring out that the red piece is best and the gameplay is the filter whereby you see who has won.
The meta is the game for people like that.
It's what 40k and AOS have been fundamentally designed around. Finding buffs, strategems, command points, army bonuses, etc to create a winner. The game itself is a procedural list of commands and actions to determine who has already won.
The fun comes from the joy of crushing your opponents and discovering / creating that winning list. When players say "git good" they're not understanding the fundamental problem with this kind of game design. That problem being that victory isn't determined on the table top tactics, and that I'm being "punished" for bringing something i connect with rather than something that is "good", but that I might not like.
That seems like such an awful game though. Why can't we leave AOS to that game design and let those people enjoy that and let us also have a game decided not by excel-hammer or copy/paste super lists... but through gameplay on the table?
Especially since there is no figuring anything out for 99% of the playerbase.
Its a matter of logging into a forum or facebook group and asking "what smashes face" and just copying that or just watching tournament lists get posted and copying the winning lists.
The big issue I’ve seen with balance, or specifically chasing balance, was that it was a futile endeavor and a distraction from aspects of the game non-tournament players cared about. It was also always used to stifle any attempt at expanding the lore or miniatures range, always “first balance everything, then make _______”.
Be advised that I am the last thing from a tournament player. I am 100% narrative campaign driven. I just dont like games that have bad balance where there is no point in me playing the game because I also dont want to keep buying new armies every year to keep up, and I dont enjoy playing games where we already know who wins when the armies are deployed.
So I'm the last person in the world that is going to try to stifle lore or miniatures. I just want to make sure that the army I buy, paint and collect today isn't gimp and a dud tomorrow. Thats a whole lot of money I feel I flushed down the toilet when that happens.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The big issue I’ve seen with balance, or specifically chasing balance, was that it was a futile endeavor and a distraction from aspects of the game non-tournament players cared about. It was also always used to stifle any attempt at expanding the lore or miniatures range, always “first balance everything, then make _______”.
More like an endless road. Balance never stops, especially in the competitive world where you need to constantly change the metagame to keep things interesting - and not just playing the same lists ad nauseam.
Like the abused lists :you just don't need to play with them. Once you build lists from another perspective...games can actually be very different.
That requires a community that isn't building lists from the min/max perspective.
No, you just have to talk about it with your game partners. If you met friendly people and ask if they'd like to play something differently, some may just agree.
That's what I did and it worked. And now we have a lot of fun !
Ravening Hordes 6th edition is my bar for what I want from a wargame balance-wise. Every faction was viable. There were strong and weak lists then, but you didn't have to worry about choosing the wrong $800 faction. You can still have diversity and flavor with balance. You just can't go "oh cool this faction does 5x the normal mortal wounds for the same point cost as this faction that doesn't have anything really going for them". I want a game where every faction is viable and not going to get piledriven off the table and I dont want a game where I have to buy and paint a new full collection every year just so that I can go down to the store and have a fun afternoon where I'm not getting destroyed or destroying my opponent because I or they chose the wrong faction.
You have an idealized vision of Ravening Hordes, honestly. I remember not all factions were that balanced with each others. It doesn't stop at having the same point values for the same type of units...it's also about internal balance and choice within the different factions.
What it did, though, was offering complete list of armies with very few / barebone special rules others than those you found in the core rules. It was very practical for sure.
Who knows, if the rumor of Old World core book with all the army lists inside is true, it may be something similar.
auticus wrote: That seems like such an awful game though. Why can't we leave AOS to that game design and let those people enjoy that and let us also have a game decided not by excel-hammer or copy/paste super lists... but through gameplay on the table?
Especially since there is no figuring anything out for 99% of the playerbase.
Its a matter of logging into a forum or facebook group and asking "what smashes face" and just copying that or just watching tournament lists get posted and copying the winning lists.
The big issue I’ve seen with balance, or specifically chasing balance, was that it was a futile endeavor and a distraction from aspects of the game non-tournament players cared about. It was also always used to stifle any attempt at expanding the lore or miniatures range, always “first balance everything, then make _______”.
Be advised that I am the last thing from a tournament player. I am 100% narrative campaign driven. I just dont like games that have bad balance where there is no point in me playing the game because I also dont want to keep buying new armies every year to keep up, and I dont enjoy playing games where we already know who wins when the armies are deployed.
So I'm the last person in the world that is going to try to stifle lore or miniatures. I just want to make sure that the army I buy, paint and collect today isn't gimp and a dud tomorrow. Thats a whole lot of money I feel I flushed down the toilet when that happens.
There are also ENTIRE games designed around this paradigm, the difference is typically that they aren't inherently competitive. That design philosophy works in Path of Exile where you're trying to find a cool new build to break the game, it's not cool when you're wrecking timmy's eldar just because he chose what he liked. The inherently competitive nature of being a wargame is what makes that interaction fail, rather than games being build around metas themselves. Players end up losing through no fault of their own because your power is inextricably tied to what your opponent chooses to bring.
From a balance point of view, when I compare Ravening Hordes 2000-2003 6th edition warhammer with:
5th edition warhammer
7th edition warhammer
8th edition warhammer
AOS any edition
It was the best balanced time period for GW games. It was a lot of fun because everyone at our table felt they had a chance. Its been a very very long time since everyone at the table felt like they had a chance without having to ask people to not break the game.
No, you just have to talk about it with your game partners. If you met friendly people and ask if they'd like to play something differently, some may just agree.
I hear thats pretty common in the EU. In the States its not that easy to pull off.
We have guys here that will tell you that their army is newb / casual friendly. What you find out later is they call it that because its only placing middle ranks in tournaments, so to them thats a friendly list.
But against a for fun list it still destroys them lol.
Everyone has their own ideas of what toning down is. I need the rules to be balanced instead of hoping for someone's good will because I liked the gimp army. That was my life from 2015-2019 until I got out of AOS because I loved slaves to darkness but their book was so god awful that I shelved that entire army permanently.
After I left AOS they got a new book and it has a decent build in it but that was 4-5 years of having one of the worst books that ever existed in the almost 40 years of warhammer/40k books existing.
Enough about balance though. I know most people dont care about it. For me thats going to be the #1 thing I'm watching for if I want to invest again in a GW game. I just recently purged 18 fully painted GW armies on my move to clean out space, and if I get back into a game again I dont want my investment to be invalidated and have models sitting in cases never used again.
When viability concerns necessitate tuning down a list or just dealing with a loss, one side ultimately does not get to play what it wants. In that instance you're just exchanging the person who has to take a list that they may not want to take. In those instances both sides CANNOT both get what they want and both play with what they want. It creates conflict.
Sledgehammer wrote: When viability concerns necessitate tuning down a list or just dealing with a loss, one side ultimately does not get to play what it wants. In that instance you're just exchanging the person who has to take a list that they may not want to take. In those instances both sides CANNOT both get what they want and both play with what they want. It creates conflict.
Precisely. Its split up many a campaign and event i've been a part of over the past many years.
It is a scale of how much.
Care enough to be bothered. Care enough to not shovel money at the machine either way even if the game is grotesquely imbalanced (looking at you 40k and aos) To me that is "dont care about it".
NinthMusketeer wrote: See though, just because you can't have fun in the current balance state doesn't mean no one can. And again, you know that.
Yeah, it just means that one person gets to have fun and the other gets stomped. Thus creating an inherently antagonist paradigm whereby players that either build around power, or lucked into it, determine the steps you have to take to participate in the game. Either dictate to them what they should bring if you want a fair match, or be dictated to by the game itself via power.
NinthMusketeer wrote: See though, just because you can't have fun in the current balance state doesn't mean no one can. And again, you know that.
Right but my statement was "I know most people dont care about it." not "I know most people dont care about it and are playing it despite not having any fun with it".
Which is true. Most people dont care about it, or care enough about it to not continue to shovel money at GW. Because they have fun with the bad balance and dont care much about it.
I fully admit I cannot understand how that is possible, or how people enjoy a game where they sit down and one side already knows they are going to crush the other. Thats why I like to generate the discussion. To get a better understanding.
To date I still have not gotten close to understanding though. The usual "just play with people that dont break the game" seems to be #1 answer.
I fully admit I cannot understand how that is possible, or how people enjoy a game where they sit down and one side already knows they are going to crush the other. Thats why I like to generate the discussion. To get a better understanding.
To date I still have not gotten close to understanding though. The usual "just play with people that dont break the game" seems to be #1 answer.
This game as well as many others perform much better when a game master builds both armies and then 2 or more players command those forces.
I have run many games at local cons and they performed fantastic, with huge battles coming down to a few critical die rolls and epic heroic moments abounding. The reason is that I built the armies to be able to compete toe to toe, with no one side having overwhelming advantages.
The issue you are having attaining balance is that each player has purchased and built their own army. With no idea what they are going to be facing and with just the general plan to make it as powerful as possible.
We ran a tournament for Fantasy Rules! in which a buddy and me took 12 armies and players just walked up, randomly got an army and played. I think there is no better test of a player's skill than this.
To ask 12 players to build armies and then think they will be able to compete is a difficult challenge for sure.
If you do not want a game master try this- one player builds both armies and play 2 games switching sides and averaging victory scores. If there is time for only a single game one player builds both armies and sets up the battle and then the guest looks over the set up and chooses side.
It is really all in what you like. I tend to build a well-rounded, combined arms force. With missile, melee and cavalry troops supplemented with some artillery or magic. They mostly get crushed by the " one trick pony" armies. But let me know what trick I am facing and I have enough models to compensate.
If my combined arms force meets another combined arms force then things get tricky as we have to win on the table.
But the hobby is now much more than playing. It is buying, painting and organizing "your" army. I ran a demo game once with someone who refused to use my painted troops and instead used their own bare plastic models. Some of which were not even completely assembled. I was assisting in that demo so just let them do it the way they wanted. I think my help was in owning a pick up truck..................
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Maybe that's the standard GW tournament player, but most people I knew back in the day didn't chase the imbalance.
Eh, it isn't binary. Most don't chase it but they will prefer the stronger units in their chosen army to weaker ones, which is entirely understandable. As for players actively wanting imbalance, I haven't encountered one, even online.
Yeah, it's not one or the other. I more meant most folk in my group didn't spend a lot of time maxing the potential of their army, instead favouring units they liked over units that were mathematically superior, and even if they did max out an army if the edition changed they mostly didn't try updating their army to stay "current". A common occurrence was people would buy, build and paint a regiment to find out after a couple of games that they sucked.
I was the odd one out in that I did enjoy playing around with the statistics to find out how my unit would do against a certain enemy unit, which inevitably leads you to figure out which units suck before you've bought them.
But in the end, I don't think we really know what a "standard" GW fan was, and by "standard" I mean whoever made them the most money.
WHFB was such a global game, all we can do is extrapolate from our local groups and what we see online, both of which are just small samplings of the broader WHFB community.
I've been impressed how many people of met outside of wargaming (through school or work) who when I go to their house they have a pile of WHFB models on top of their cupboard, the usual question being "oh, do you play Warhammer" and the response being "no, I just have a few models that I never got around to painting". It wouldn't surprise me if people like that made GW the most amount of money, lol.
This game as well as many others perform much better when a game master builds both armies and then 2 or more players command those forces.
I've done that before and yeah you can definitely make that work a lot better. In fact, that was how wargames ran in the 80s and early to mid 90s.
Thats a very very hard sell now a days though.
I wish the community was a bit more creative. It took a long time of playing the same handful of armies against each other that we had the idea of playing a game, then swapping armies and playing a 2nd game. After a while that led us to realise certain armies were just crap, and we started playing games with asymmetric points values.
This is back in the days of 5th edition.
If you only ever play PUGs then that's not an option.
It also shows the importance of a strong community, if you're struggling to even find a regular opponent then it makes it hard to try out things like that. As time went on most of my original gaming group dropped out, very few new additions to the group and before GW killed 8th most of my local community had moved to other games.
After the initial shock for seeing and army for the first time and the total war models beeing very much three kingdoms inspired... I like it.
If theres a land of magic in warhammer fantasy is proper is cathay with their monkey beastmen and terracota armies and dragon emperor that summoned a demon-meteorite to kill all the ogres.
They look pretty cool, I did giggle at the actual 1:1 earthbender though.
The only thing I wasn't too keen on were those giant golems, they moved too much like a normal person and had no sense of weight to them.
I think GW is probably feeling quite apprehensive about the ROI for bringing back the Old World.
GW loves to be positioned as "inimitable" when it comes to sculpts and with AoS they looked to fuse both trademarked names with highly idiosyncratic/peculiar army designs in order to stake out some unequivocal "this territory is ours" design space.
However with the Old World they will have to return to a more "generic" or "open" fantasy theme and I think will have a hard time meeting some of their desired sales metrics.
For anything humanoid for example we will have a great deal more selection with creating armies out of perry miniatures, mantic, conquest, reaper, privateer press and so on. There is a lot of choice and opportunity to make amazing bespoke armies (that is good for us consumers). But from GWs perspective every Empire/Bretonnia/Chaos army on a tabletop that is not comprised exclusively of GW minis is a lost sales and diminished return on capital. They'll be whipping the poor GW shop employees to get out the microscopes an examine everyone's armies at Official Warhammer Events to make sure model heresy is not taking place on their watch!
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Cathay has been a part of the setting for years and this is just how they were established as being. These aren't all some entirely new units that have suddenly taken the setting towards a different fantasy style. Here's what a Cathay warrior looked like before all this. Cathay having things like living terracota soldiers, magic warrior monks, monkeymen, giant magical dog statues, lightning unicorns and similar things was already part of the setting.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Unlike the originality of Bretonnia, the Empire, the vampire counts... chaos warriors?
I mean. I love my fantasy but... of course fantasy china looks like china just like fantasy france and fantasy holy roman empire look like those countries. Is perfectly fine to not like asian fantasy or their aesthetic mothivs, etc.... Their have their own thing, specially china, that is not as popular in western media as japan.
Also you have some respect for the Pandaren. Pandaria was a gorgeous continent and Pandaren and Mogu and Hozen and Jinyu have some of the best lore written for that universe.
I also have to say that since the first, Karl Franz trailer, this is probably my second favourite one. The shot of her jumping with the music, hmhmhmmh. *Cheff kiss*
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Wouldn't be surprised to not see you reply as this is a post that looks just like those people that enjoy to contradict people and go away with no efford, but anyway.
Generic east asian? Because Brettonia, Empire, Vampire Counts, High Elves, Tomb Kings, Norsca and Lizardmen are not copypast from France, England, Germany, Egypt, Nordic/Celtic and Mayincatec archetypes/stereotypes, right? Right?
Calling WoW generic when arguably it spearheaded some of the most anti-stereotypical motfis and themes for mainstream media? like reedeming and entire race of evil orcs and making an entire faction of monsters not the actual bad guys of the game?
Also, Thunderbarge? What about Black Arcs? Sure, those don't fly, but they are mobile, floating cities in a boat, and you know what else floats, but in the air? a giant pyramid. Oh, and there are giants too, and BONE giants, which are not that different from golems, not to mention rock constructs pulled together by big Waaagh! energy.
Gregor Samsa wrote: I think GW is probably feeling quite apprehensive about the ROI for bringing back the Old World.
GW loves to be positioned as "inimitable" when it comes to sculpts and with AoS they looked to fuse both trademarked names with highly idiosyncratic/peculiar army designs in order to stake out some unequivocal "this territory is ours" design space.
However with the Old World they will have to return to a more "generic" or "open" fantasy theme and I think will have a hard time meeting some of their desired sales metrics.
For anything humanoid for example we will have a great deal more selection with creating armies out of perry miniatures, mantic, conquest, reaper, privateer press and so on. There is a lot of choice and opportunity to make amazing bespoke armies (that is good for us consumers). But from GWs perspective every Empire/Bretonnia/Chaos army on a tabletop that is not comprised exclusively of GW minis is a lost sales and diminished return on capital. They'll be whipping the poor GW shop employees to get out the microscopes an examine everyone's armies at Official Warhammer Events to make sure model heresy is not taking place on their watch!
Hasn't stopped them still making IG minis, and they still produce most of the Empire minis...
I like very much how they seem to be pulling from earlier versions of Warhammer for inspiration in designing new models for Cathay and the other new races we will see represented in WtOW. Like they've already confirmed the same is being done with the rules writing which gives me hope for this project being done right. If they lean mostly on 6th ed rules and give a way to scale down games so you don't have to paint 500 models for a decent size game, this will be successful I think. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia is what history has shown me.
kodos wrote: Cathy is in Total War, nothing new here as this was already known
Nothing new here? They just gave the biggest reveal and mass information about Cathay that has ever been in Warhammer.
Well, we also have seen the biggest reveal and mass information about Vampires of the Pirates Coast that has ever been in Warhammer (with no real new units anyway as the concepts were already there before), but still for Total War: Warhammer, not Warhammer: The Old World.
lets talk again after we have seen some 28mm renders, Rules or Book Layouts
Sorry I forgot that "News and Rumours" is only meant for discussions of available products or ~20 page long discussions of how GW hiring someone for their law dept will destroy the HHHobby before I posted these apparent non-news *shrug*
kodos wrote: Cathy is in Total War, nothing new here as this was already known
Nothing new here? They just gave the biggest reveal and mass information about Cathay that has ever been in Warhammer.
Well, we also have seen the biggest reveal and mass information about Vampires of the Pirates Coast that has ever been in Warhammer (with no real new units anyway as the concepts were already there before), but still for Total War: Warhammer, not Warhammer: The Old World.
lets talk again after we have seen some 28mm renders, Rules or Book Layouts
As specfically stated in the video and the Warhammer Community site - this is a joint development for both Total War AND Warhammer the Old World, therefore the new lore, images and concepts IS relevant to both.
This iteration of Grand Cathay is a Warhammer Studio creation through and through. Everything from preliminary concept sketches and special character design to how the army performs on the battlefield was established by the same teams working on the wider Warhammer settings. In fact, the Warhammer Studio went so far as to establish each and every unit for use on the tabletop, including stats and special abilities.** These numbers were then expertly translated and transposed by the technomancers at Creative Assembly, who deftly wove them into a rich campaign in this never-before-seen part of the Warhammer world
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Wouldn't be surprised to not see you reply as this is a post that looks just like those people that enjoy to contradict people and go away with no efford, but anyway.
Generic east asian? Because Brettonia, Empire, Vampire Counts, High Elves, Tomb Kings, Norsca and Lizardmen are not copypast from France, England, Germany, Egypt, Nordic/Celtic and Mayincatec archetypes/stereotypes, right? Right?
Calling WoW generic when arguably it spearheaded some of the most anti-stereotypical motfis and themes for mainstream media? like reedeming and entire race of evil orcs and making an entire faction of monsters not the actual bad guys of the game?
Also, Thunderbarge? What about Black Arcs? Sure, those don't fly, but they are mobile, floating cities in a boat, and you know what else floats, but in the air? a giant pyramid. Oh, and there are giants too, and BONE giants, which are not that different from golems, not to mention rock constructs pulled together by big Waaagh! energy.
Whiners gone whine.
.
Thw Old World Aesthetic as I experienced it was gritty and realistic. Not super clean techno vibrant cities with flying boats. The color palette should be muted and there should be dirt and flies, etc. I'm totally ok with Cathay being inspired by historical east Asia with some light fantasy, but it should be grounded in reality. I would have thought the East Asia stuff would be Nippon, with Cathay being much more Indian/Arabic in influence but whatever.
Yes, WoW was genre defying when it came out 15+ years ago. Today nearly all fantasy properties ape the clean, sky is the limit, no real bad guys thing (they are just misunderstood! Humans are the real monsters!).
It is boring and generic because it has been done a thousand times now.
If you took these designs and told me "this is from a Chinese MMO by a small time studio" I would totally believe you.
Cite all the rare units or things that only appeared in the lore/artwork from WHFB that you want. You will never convince me that the game at its zenith in 6th edition wasn't about ranks of soldiers (of various races) killing each other with steel. Yes there were some high fantasy elements on the battlefield and I loved them. I like a little mustard on my sandwiches too. But you can't give me a bowl of mustard with bits of bread and cheese inside and tell me it is a sandwich.
When it came time to design them for the next instalment in the blockbuster Total War: Warhammer series, the Warhammer Studio team leapt at the chance to bring Cathay into the fold. Andy Hoare, the emperor of all things Old World, has more.
This iteration of Grand Cathay is a Warhammer Studio creation through and through. Everything from preliminary concept sketches and special character design to how the army performs on the battlefield was established by the same teams working on the wider Warhammer settings.
In fact, the Warhammer Studio went so far as to establish each and every unit for use on the tabletop, including stats and special abilities.** These numbers were then expertly translated and transposed by the technomancers at Creative Assembly, who deftly wove them into a rich campaign in this never-before-seen part of the Warhammer world.
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Wouldn't be surprised to not see you reply as this is a post that looks just like those people that enjoy to contradict people and go away with no efford, but anyway.
Generic east asian? Because Brettonia, Empire, Vampire Counts, High Elves, Tomb Kings, Norsca and Lizardmen are not copypast from France, England, Germany, Egypt, Nordic/Celtic and Mayincatec archetypes/stereotypes, right? Right?
Calling WoW generic when arguably it spearheaded some of the most anti-stereotypical motfis and themes for mainstream media? like reedeming and entire race of evil orcs and making an entire faction of monsters not the actual bad guys of the game?
Also, Thunderbarge? What about Black Arcs? Sure, those don't fly, but they are mobile, floating cities in a boat, and you know what else floats, but in the air? a giant pyramid. Oh, and there are giants too, and BONE giants, which are not that different from golems, not to mention rock constructs pulled together by big Waaagh! energy.
Whiners gone whine.
.
Thw Old World Aesthetic as I experienced it was gritty and realistic. Not super clean techno vibrant cities with flying boats. The color palette should be muted and there should be dirt and flies, etc. I'm totally ok with Cathay being inspired by historical east Asia with some light fantasy, but it should be grounded in reality. I would have thought the East Asia stuff would be Nippon, with Cathay being much more Indian/Arabic in influence but whatever.
Are you aware Japan (Nippon) and China (Cathay) are diffrent countries, with thousand of years of distinct history and culture to each other, most of which were filled with hating each other? Lumping them both togather in a generic East Asian faction would look kinda dumb and off, like if Bretonnia and the Empire were folded into one generic "Western European" faction.
When it came time to design them for the next instalment in the blockbuster Total War: Warhammer series, the Warhammer Studio team leapt at the chance to bring Cathay into the fold. Andy Hoare, the emperor of all things Old World, has more.
This iteration of Grand Cathay is a Warhammer Studio creation through and through. Everything from preliminary concept sketches and special character design to how the army performs on the battlefield was established by the same teams working on the wider Warhammer settings.
In fact, the Warhammer Studio went so far as to establish each and every unit for use on the tabletop, including stats and special abilities.** These numbers were then expertly translated and transposed by the technomancers at Creative Assembly, who deftly wove them into a rich campaign in this never-before-seen part of the Warhammer world.
Yes, and they didn't confirm they would be meant as miniatures so far.
"They went so far as to establish each and every unit for use on the tabletop" is actually saying something ; if they were intended to be miniatures for the game, then why mentionning they went "so far" to do so ? That's pretty much the first thing GW does when making miniatures, actually. Sounds more like to me they were meant for Total War Warhammer 3 and they made rules for 8th edition so that they can capture "the best feeling" as to translate them into the video game.
When it came time to design them for the next instalment in the blockbuster Total War: Warhammer series, the Warhammer Studio team leapt at the chance to bring Cathay into the fold. Andy Hoare, the emperor of all things Old World, has more.
This iteration of Grand Cathay is a Warhammer Studio creation through and through. Everything from preliminary concept sketches and special character design to how the army performs on the battlefield was established by the same teams working on the wider Warhammer settings.
In fact, the Warhammer Studio went so far as to establish each and every unit for use on the tabletop, including stats and special abilities.** These numbers were then expertly translated and transposed by the technomancers at Creative Assembly, who deftly wove them into a rich campaign in this never-before-seen part of the Warhammer world.
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Wouldn't be surprised to not see you reply as this is a post that looks just like those people that enjoy to contradict people and go away with no efford, but anyway.
Generic east asian? Because Brettonia, Empire, Vampire Counts, High Elves, Tomb Kings, Norsca and Lizardmen are not copypast from France, England, Germany, Egypt, Nordic/Celtic and Mayincatec archetypes/stereotypes, right? Right?
Calling WoW generic when arguably it spearheaded some of the most anti-stereotypical motfis and themes for mainstream media? like reedeming and entire race of evil orcs and making an entire faction of monsters not the actual bad guys of the game?
Also, Thunderbarge? What about Black Arcs? Sure, those don't fly, but they are mobile, floating cities in a boat, and you know what else floats, but in the air? a giant pyramid. Oh, and there are giants too, and BONE giants, which are not that different from golems, not to mention rock constructs pulled together by big Waaagh! energy.
Whiners gone whine.
.
Thw Old World Aesthetic as I experienced it was gritty and realistic. Not super clean techno vibrant cities with flying boats. The color palette should be muted and there should be dirt and flies, etc. I'm totally ok with Cathay being inspired by historical east Asia with some light fantasy, but it should be grounded in reality. I would have thought the East Asia stuff would be Nippon, with Cathay being much more Indian/Arabic in influence but whatever.
Are you aware Japan (Nippon) and China (Cathay) are diffrent countries, with thousand of years of distinct history and culture to each other, most of which were filled with hating each other? Lumping them both togather in a generic East Asian faction would look kinda dumb and off, like if Bretonnia and the Empire were folded into one generic "Western European" faction.
I mean, GW mixed Poland and Russia in Kislev and is not like those two countries don't have their own... history for say the least But you are right, how can one claim the moral high horse about whats proper WHFB and say that cathay should be arabic or indian when you have... Araby and the Kingdom of Indi.
kodos wrote: Cathy is in Total War, nothing new here as this was already known
Nothing new here? They just gave the biggest reveal and mass information about Cathay that has ever been in Warhammer.
Yeah, but he’s talking about Cathy, not Cathay. Huge difference. Cathy has been in WHTW since the “Ugh, Coffee” expansion and highlighted throughout the “Ack, Need Cute Shoes” saga event.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: Some people cannot grasp that both High Fantasy and Low Fantasy can exist in the same setting.
More like they can't accept their view on Warhammer Battle isn't the only official one, as usual. Man, do I remember these guys always talking about low fantasy RPG being the ONLY iteration of Warhammer universe ever when it was actually the high fantasy one that was at its origins.
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Wouldn't be surprised to not see you reply as this is a post that looks just like those people that enjoy to contradict people and go away with no efford, but anyway.
Generic east asian? Because Brettonia, Empire, Vampire Counts, High Elves, Tomb Kings, Norsca and Lizardmen are not copypast from France, England, Germany, Egypt, Nordic/Celtic and Mayincatec archetypes/stereotypes, right? Right?
Calling WoW generic when arguably it spearheaded some of the most anti-stereotypical motfis and themes for mainstream media? like reedeming and entire race of evil orcs and making an entire faction of monsters not the actual bad guys of the game?
Also, Thunderbarge? What about Black Arcs? Sure, those don't fly, but they are mobile, floating cities in a boat, and you know what else floats, but in the air? a giant pyramid. Oh, and there are giants too, and BONE giants, which are not that different from golems, not to mention rock constructs pulled together by big Waaagh! energy.
Whiners gone whine.
.
Thw Old World Aesthetic as I experienced it was gritty and realistic. Not super clean techno vibrant cities with flying boats. The color palette should be muted and there should be dirt and flies, etc. I'm totally ok with Cathay being inspired by historical east Asia with some light fantasy, but it should be grounded in reality. I would have thought the East Asia stuff would be Nippon, with Cathay being much more Indian/Arabic in influence but whatever.
Are you aware Japan (Nippon) and China (Cathay) are diffrent countries, with thousand of years of distinct history and culture to each other, most of which were filled with hating each other? Lumping them both togather in a generic East Asian faction would look kinda dumb and off, like if Bretonnia and the Empire were folded into one generic "Western European" faction.
I mean, GW mixed Poland and Russia in Kislev and is not like those two countries don't have their own... history for say the least
But to be fair, the only Polish thing about Kislev is their various Not-Hussars.
I mean it's unlikely I'll get either the video game or the minis (well maybe some minis) but I am impressed.
My one worry is if GW can restrain their worst instincts. For example do they have actual Chinese speakers working on the project and making sure the names actually make sense and aren't just Chinesey word mushs, or even worse, terrible puns.
I think the only name we got was Nan Gao ("southern heights" if I'm not mistaken) a perfectly cromulant Chinese name, though an odd one for the Northern Province.
Yeah, yeah this is fantasy Cathay, not China but it does matter.
Using Precolumbion Americans as inspiration for the Lizardmen was cool. Till they started naming folks Grimlock and Tick Tack Toe...
Let's just hope GW can resist their more... immature instincts with this expansion. Cause reading about General Egg Fu Yong just ain't even funny.
And I can already hear the CCP's screed about insulting a billion Chinese...
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Wouldn't be surprised to not see you reply as this is a post that looks just like those people that enjoy to contradict people and go away with no efford, but anyway.
Generic east asian? Because Brettonia, Empire, Vampire Counts, High Elves, Tomb Kings, Norsca and Lizardmen are not copypast from France, England, Germany, Egypt, Nordic/Celtic and Mayincatec archetypes/stereotypes, right? Right?
Calling WoW generic when arguably it spearheaded some of the most anti-stereotypical motfis and themes for mainstream media? like reedeming and entire race of evil orcs and making an entire faction of monsters not the actual bad guys of the game?
Also, Thunderbarge? What about Black Arcs? Sure, those don't fly, but they are mobile, floating cities in a boat, and you know what else floats, but in the air? a giant pyramid. Oh, and there are giants too, and BONE giants, which are not that different from golems, not to mention rock constructs pulled together by big Waaagh! energy.
Whiners gone whine.
.
Thw Old World Aesthetic as I experienced it was gritty and realistic. Not super clean techno vibrant cities with flying boats. The color palette should be muted and there should be dirt and flies, etc. I'm totally ok with Cathay being inspired by historical east Asia with some light fantasy, but it should be grounded in reality. I would have thought the East Asia stuff would be Nippon, with Cathay being much more Indian/Arabic in influence but whatever.
Yes, WoW was genre defying when it came out 15+ years ago. Today nearly all fantasy properties ape the clean, sky is the limit, no real bad guys thing (they are just misunderstood! Humans are the real monsters!).
It is boring and generic because it has been done a thousand times now.
If you took these designs and told me "this is from a Chinese MMO by a small time studio" I would totally believe you.
Cite all the rare units or things that only appeared in the lore/artwork from WHFB that you want. You will never convince me that the game at its zenith in 6th edition wasn't about ranks of soldiers (of various races) killing each other with steel. Yes there were some high fantasy elements on the battlefield and I loved them. I like a little mustard on my sandwiches too. But you can't give me a bowl of mustard with bits of bread and cheese inside and tell me it is a sandwich.
You mean the game with undead mummies with giant living constructs.
Or the game with lizard people.
Or the game with........rat men with mad science.
Or what about a game with literal demons. If you want a game with low fantasy, the boat left a long time ago.
I hear ASOIAF is good and low fantasy, you can try that
Gallahad wrote: My word, those look terrible. Generic east Asian fantasy right at home in World of Warcraft.
Absolutely nothing of the aesthetics of the Old World in my opinion.
Why does everything have to be so generic these days? It just seems like all artists are clones of each other.
Hope the AOS crowd enjoys this at least with flying ships and giant golems, etc. This army would easily be at home in Age of Sigmar.
Wouldn't be surprised to not see you reply as this is a post that looks just like those people that enjoy to contradict people and go away with no efford, but anyway.
Generic east asian? Because Brettonia, Empire, Vampire Counts, High Elves, Tomb Kings, Norsca and Lizardmen are not copypast from France, England, Germany, Egypt, Nordic/Celtic and Mayincatec archetypes/stereotypes, right? Right?
Calling WoW generic when arguably it spearheaded some of the most anti-stereotypical motfis and themes for mainstream media? like reedeming and entire race of evil orcs and making an entire faction of monsters not the actual bad guys of the game?
Also, Thunderbarge? What about Black Arcs? Sure, those don't fly, but they are mobile, floating cities in a boat, and you know what else floats, but in the air? a giant pyramid. Oh, and there are giants too, and BONE giants, which are not that different from golems, not to mention rock constructs pulled together by big Waaagh! energy.
Whiners gone whine.
.
Thw Old World Aesthetic as I experienced it was gritty and realistic. Not super clean techno vibrant cities with flying boats. The color palette should be muted and there should be dirt and flies, etc. I'm totally ok with Cathay being inspired by historical east Asia with some light fantasy, but it should be grounded in reality. I would have thought the East Asia stuff would be Nippon, with Cathay being much more Indian/Arabic in influence but whatever.
Yes, WoW was genre defying when it came out 15+ years ago. Today nearly all fantasy properties ape the clean, sky is the limit, no real bad guys thing (they are just misunderstood! Humans are the real monsters!).
It is boring and generic because it has been done a thousand times now.
If you took these designs and told me "this is from a Chinese MMO by a small time studio" I would totally believe you.
Cite all the rare units or things that only appeared in the lore/artwork from WHFB that you want. You will never convince me that the game at its zenith in 6th edition wasn't about ranks of soldiers (of various races) killing each other with steel. Yes there were some high fantasy elements on the battlefield and I loved them. I like a little mustard on my sandwiches too. But you can't give me a bowl of mustard with bits of bread and cheese inside and tell me it is a sandwich.
You mean the game with undead mummies with giant living constructs.
Or the game with lizard people.
Or the game with........rat men with mad science.
Or what about a game with literal demons. If you want a game with low fantasy, the boat left a long time ago.
I hear ASOIAF is good and low fantasy, you can try that
Too late, they have dragons and magic. I assume their defintion of low fantasy is "poorly-equipped humans stabbing other poorly-equipped humans or mindless monsters in the mud".
I mean it's unlikely I'll get either the video game or the minis (well maybe some minis) but I am impressed.
My one worry is if GW can restrain their worst instincts. For example do they have actual Chinese speakers working on the project and making sure the names actually make sense and aren't just Chinesey word mushs, or even worse, terrible puns.
I think the only name we got was Nan Gao ("southern heights" if I'm not mistaken) a perfectly cromulant Chinese name, though an odd one for the Northern Province.
Yeah, yeah this is fantasy Cathay, not China but it does matter.
Using Precolumbion Americans as inspiration for the Lizardmen was cool. Till they started naming folks Grimlock and Tick Tack Toe...
Let's just hope GW can resist their more... immature instincts with this expansion. Cause reading about General Egg Fu Yong just ain't even funny.
And I can already hear the CCP's screed about insulting a billion Chinese...
GW has not done it for any other faction but just used the words that sound cool and "typical" for that language in English
Why can't GW just tell us if they are planning to release all this video game stuff for W:TOW? They suggest they might, when they write about how all the work was done by the same team and brand the images with the W:TOW logo. But they don't tell us anything about the actual game or what the plans for it are.
I know the game is a long way off but why even announce it if they can't talk about it yet? The first announcement was made 22 months ago and so far all we know for sure is that we will be able to use our old models and that they are working on a new map.
Cathay is probably more old school warhammer than kislev for example.
You have the big centerpiece model, the Terracota Golem. Everyone has one of those so no surprise. And your dragons, but dragons are dragons whatever.
But your cannons are pulled by ox's, you have photos or other units like a giant jade bowl in a wagon pulled by horses. You have flying kyrins but thats isn't different from pegasi. And the flying balloons have 0 magic or advanced technology to them but typical chinese imaginery with gunpowder.
You just need to imagine in your mind all the different units shown in this trailer in your 5th warhammer fantasy miniature style and it looks extremely warhammery to me. I'm picturing the Terracota Golem in a 40mm base with a limping size and with the gun dao over is head with the two arms upwards like some kind of cheerleader and the dragon general done in white metal and 5 parts that DON'T STICK TOGETHER for the life of me that ends up looking like a garden snake full of crack. And 40-50 little chinese soldiers with constipated faces and racistly exaggerated factions. Just as I remember.
Basically this:
Spoiler:
Tell me this army doesnt look warhammer, and tell me you cannot picture all the units in this trailer done in that style.
GW has not done it for any other faction but just used the words that sound cool and "typical" for that language in English
why should they care
Well first off GW's French and German factions always seemed to me to have a good bit of linguistic and historic verisimilitude (I don't speak either language though) probably because French and German speakers are a bit easier to find in Nottingham.
But their Mesoamerican faction got little more than joke names, like no one even bothered cracking open a book.
And then there's the Chinese Communist Party.
Ug.
The CCP (like Fox News) bases a lot of its credibility on creating outrage. They routinely blacklist celebrities, companies, even whole countries for things like putting Taiwan on a list of countries, visiting the wrong shrine in Japan or not telling their version of history. So I would imagine that, at the very least, this game will get accusations of cultural appropriation, and if GW gives in to more juvenile tendencies, it could get GW and Total War blacklisted in China. And honestly the whole idea gives me a headache just thinking about it.
I find these designs pretty boring. Maybe they'll be more interesting if/when they are translated to miniatures, but this doesn't look all that exciting.
Thw Old World Aesthetic as I experienced it was gritty and realistic. Not super clean techno vibrant cities with flying boats. The color palette should be muted and there should be dirt and flies, etc. I'm totally ok with Cathay being inspired by historical east Asia with some light fantasy, but it should be grounded in reality. I would have thought the East Asia stuff would be Nippon, with Cathay being much more Indian/Arabic in influence but whatever.
Saruoan already showed you flying boats in "gritty and realistic" in a color palette. Do you really need more? If you are as Old School as you claim, you already know that Cathay is China, India is Ind, Arabia is Araby, don't you? Or do you think China = Japan?
Gallahad wrote:Yes, WoW was genre defying when it came out 15+ years ago. Today nearly all fantasy properties ape the clean, sky is the limit, no real bad guys thing (they are just misunderstood! Humans are the real monsters!).
Warcraft III and WoW both never said that humans are the real monsters, which shows me that you never experienced the franchise, putting "WoW" as a derogatory term rather than something on true terms, pretty much like the populous used to gave crap to Twilight despite not having actually reading it or having actual experience with the franchise.
Gallahad wrote:It is boring and generic because it has been done a thousand times now.
If you took these designs and told me "this is from a Chinese MMO by a small time studio" I would totally believe you.
What would happen if Warhammer ever got an MMORPG, if only...
Gallahad wrote:Cite all the rare units or things that only appeared in the lore/artwork from WHFB that you want. You will never convince me that the game at its zenith in 6th edition wasn't about ranks of soldiers (of various races) killing each other with steel.
Quite the conundrum, isn't it?
A bunch of ratpeople armed with large sticks trying to kill heavily armoured, massive, greenskin hoolingans, where the ratpeople is supported with supressing fire of magic stone bullets and literal lighting. Is that is far more realistic that a flying boat which happens to be property of the faction that has achieved mechanized flying?
Gallahad wrote:Yes there were some high fantasy elements on the battlefield and I loved them. I like a little mustard on my sandwiches too. But you can't give me a bowl of mustard with bits of bread and cheese inside and tell me it is a sandwich.
In a world of naked reanimated dead, lizard folk, goatmen, mongolian ogres and ironclad dwarfs?
Taste buds, eyes, maybe even synesthesia and misconceptions in general messing around?
People can choose to die at hills.
But some people failed at geography classes and misclassified where they went and instead go to die at places as flat as a plateau or as concave as a volcano.
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: Some people cannot grasp that both High Fantasy and Low Fantasy can exist in the same setting.
More like they can't accept their view on Warhammer Battle isn't the only official one, as usual. Man, do I remember these guys always talking about low fantasy RPG being the ONLY iteration of Warhammer universe ever when it was actually the high fantasy one that was at its origins.
Theres clearly a difference between warhammer in 6th and in 8th in the composition of how the armies worked.
Actually, 4-5th were more like 8th than 6th because those were hero hammer and monster hammer editions, the only difference is that GW lacked the technology to make big monsters back then.
But as I said, what they have shown from Cathay looks even more "restrained" than Kislev.
They don't look warhammer? If for you warhammer is the empire and dwarfs thats ok. But theres nothing realistic and gritty about high elves or lizardmen. 0 skulls, 0 mud. They were as shiny and polished as they were.
Because when you make a whole fantasy universe you need THEMES. And when you make a product like warhammer, you don't try to make the whole universe appeal to everybody, because thats futile. Impossible. What you do, is you create a ton of stuff , each one with their own personality, and if you do it right like GW did with their universes, is extrange the people that doesnt find something they really like.
Like in 40k. Not many people will like Black Templars, Orks, Craftwolrds Eldar and Tau. They are very different armies. But they appeal to different groups of people. And is very ... I don't know, to believe that all factions should appeal to my personal tastes.
Hmm, I'm not a big AoS or fantasy nerd/fan but a human faction being that effective with magic, isn't that usually the realm of elves or the lizard men, death factions in the setting etc?
Anyway, I understand the concept behind the faction, and don't find it lazy as such (it is established in the lore for a long time after all), but I do find the design aesthetic fairly boring... There isn't enough of a twist on the regular faction look to what you may actually expect historically.
The picture from above with the gnarly jagged sword is far more interesting than what looks like fairly conventional historic homage to ancient far eastern troops.
! There's too much bitching and backbiting and not enough news or even speculation. I'd love to see more human civilizations explored more, but I'm also dead keen on seeing more empire/european humans stuff. I might be a bit biased because I've just started cobbling together some second hand goblins metals, but I really hope they bring back some classic greenskins too - the hill goblins and the old-style orcs, and I'd love if they brought a Total War-esque re-deux of classic characters like Skarsnik. Vampire Pirates have come up, too, and I think that'd be excellent to see in the new tabletop game, love the look of them in Total War, and I feel like they really make a lot of sense in a more confined geographical setting like TOW, as opposed to the infinite, broad scope of 
This divorce has the potential to work out great for everyone. Enjoy your bird chariots.
