I must admit I quite like how unit sizes are restricted in Age of Sigmar. Encouraging to use units in sizes that they are sold makes the game more accessible. The biggest flaw of late editions of WHFB was that you needed multiple boxes to build one large unit which was both cumbersome and expensive. I hope that Old World models will be sold in unit sizes that are usable straight out of box.
Cronch wrote: Assymetrical objectives are in no way limited to "narrative" play, you just need to put more effort into testing and writing the scenarios than "LOL CAPTURE THIS CIRCLE". Both from the designers and the gamers.
Like I said, I only bring it up cause it'd be the best way to ensure core units aren't seen as dead weight you have to take like your least favorite sibling on a road trip, but I have no doubt it'll be "balanced" around symmetrical play only.
PS: "All-comer" lists can also go and die in a nurgle soup filled ditch as far as I'm concerned. They're bad, kill list variety and are a refuge of netlisters.
2nd edition 40k had a great approach to this. Players had their own missions this created a lot of fun encounters.
Whe not limited to narrative play, they tend to be only found in narrative based games nowadays.
I think a lot of this down to tournament play, it had forced game designers to balance the game around symmetrical missions.
jullevi wrote: I must admit I quite like how unit sizes are restricted in Age of Sigmar. Encouraging to use units in sizes that they are sold makes the game more accessible. The biggest flaw of late editions of WHFB was that you needed multiple boxes to build one large unit which was both cumbersome and expensive. I hope that Old World models will be sold in unit sizes that are usable straight out of box.
Yes and no. Oathmark and Age of Fantasy have infantry capped at 20 models and cavalry at 10. The big issue that made WFB so bad in layet editions is the push towards Horde units..
Which required people to go out and buy several boxes. This was made worse because GW had downsized the boxes from 16-20 to 10 models. So if GW return to say 20 infantry in a box, that would be OK. However I doubt they will.
jullevi wrote: I must admit I quite like how unit sizes are restricted in Age of Sigmar. Encouraging to use units in sizes that they are sold makes the game more accessible. The biggest flaw of late editions of WHFB was that you needed multiple boxes to build one large unit which was both cumbersome and expensive. I hope that Old World models will be sold in unit sizes that are usable straight out of box.
This was more an issue with increasing game size (in terms of points), and increasing cost of models than it was with hordes. A player would still have to max out at the average 2500 points per standard/tournament game with or without hordes.
Also, unit fillers were widely used for good reasons--primarily they looked good if done reasonably well (which wasn't hard for most armies) and they cut down on having to buy more models.
The horde rule in game being good or bad is another matter altogether.
hotsauceman1 wrote: So the complaint that everyone has to fight over the same objective?
I think it’s more that the capture and securing of specific battlefield positions wasn’t a part of medieval and early modern warfare. The objective of battle was to force the enemy to quit the field and destroy him in a rout.
Galas wrote: Fantasy IS a Game were if done rigth the táctical depth can make fun just fighting tobthe dead tought asymetrical missions are always cooler
Assymmetrical are really bad for tournament and PUG.
They can be fun for two friends playing a narrative game.
But for a balanced scenario among two players just bringing lists to play is not a good deal.
Galas wrote: Fantasy IS a Game were if done rigth the táctical depth can make fun just fighting tobthe dead tought asymetrical missions are always cooler
Assymmetrical are really bad for tournament and PUG. They can be fun for two friends playing a narrative game. But for a balanced scenario among two players just bringing lists to play is not a good deal.
I disagree. Anyone can go to a board game night and play a game of Risk which not only has asymmetrical missions, but also randomisation in starting positions which can also cause early increases in certain players power (if they start with most of a continent, for example). And through careful play, utilising alliances with other players against those in stronger positions, and focusing on your own objectives, you can win even if you had a weaker starting position.
If a tournament is meant to determine the actual best player, then reacting to and playing to suboptimal goals for your list should be a part of that.
I mean, doing lists that can work in multiple different scenarios actually makes you take more TAC lists, like they do in MESBG.
And is not like a Tournament hasn't a mission package posted before sending the lists. If the game has 12 missions but a tournament will use 5, then you'll prepare for those 5.
jullevi wrote: I must admit I quite like how unit sizes are restricted in Age of Sigmar. Encouraging to use units in sizes that they are sold makes the game more accessible. The biggest flaw of late editions of WHFB was that you needed multiple boxes to build one large unit which was both cumbersome and expensive. I hope that Old World models will be sold in unit sizes that are usable straight out of box.
Galas wrote: I mean, doing lists that can work in multiple different scenarios actually makes you take more TAC lists, like they do in MESBG.
And is not like a Tournament hasn't a mission package posted before sending the lists. If the game has 12 missions but a tournament will use 5, then you'll prepare for those 5.
Yeah, it’s kind of an old debate about balancing tournaments vs individual games. The presence of suboptimal scenarios for certain army concepts can help balance the overall tournament and drive TAC lists if you can ensure everyone encounters suboptimal stuff equally.
But really I think that the move toward symmetry, certainty, choosing secondary objectives etc in games like 40K especially is because the gameplay is so much about army special rules and combos and focused concepts, and players don’t like it when their armies can’t execute them. Meanwhile, asymmetric scenarios in AT for instance work better because the forces are more symmetrical (but not wholly), special rules aren’t a big factor, and gameplay is driven more about what you do activation by activation than what you field.
None of this is a good/bad judgment…just different strokes for different folks. Personally AT scratches my itch right not and 40K feels like it’s racing away from my tastes, but obviously 40K is extremely popular…more than its ever been. It’ll be interesting to see the design approach behind TOW.
Galas wrote: I mean, doing lists that can work in multiple different scenarios actually makes you take more TAC lists, like they do in MESBG.
And is not like a Tournament hasn't a mission package posted before sending the lists. If the game has 12 missions but a tournament will use 5, then you'll prepare for those 5.
Yeah, it’s kind of an old debate about balancing tournaments vs individual games. The presence of suboptimal scenarios for certain army concepts can help balance the overall tournament and drive TAC lists if you can ensure everyone encounters suboptimal stuff equally.
But really I think that the move toward symmetry, certainty, choosing secondary objectives etc in games like 40K especially is because the gameplay is so much about army special rules and combos and focused concepts, and players don’t like it when their armies can’t execute them. Meanwhile, asymmetric scenarios in AT for instance work better because the forces are more symmetrical (but not wholly), special rules aren’t a big factor, and gameplay is driven more about what you do activation by activation than what you field.
None of this is a good/bad judgment…just different strokes for different folks. Personally AT scratches my itch right not and 40K feels like it’s racing away from my tastes, but obviously 40K is extremely popular…more than its ever been. It’ll be interesting to see the design approach behind TOW.
Losing because a player brought the 'wrong' list is in my opinion a hall mark of a bad game, because the game is pretty much desided before players have set up the terrain. If a game takes a few hours to play it is more than likely going to be a bad experience for one player as they get curbed stomped.
A player's decisions on the table coupled with a bit of luck should be what victory hangs on. However I get the feeling that a lot of modern mass combat games are pulling away from this and doubling down on special rules and list building being the path to victory.
Balancing a game for Tournament play is a recipe for disaster I think, it is what morphed WFB into the car crash that was 8th edition. When a system panders to the Tournament crowd it is giving up its friendly fun encounters for cut throat ruthlessness. Tournaments from my experience kill off the spirt of the game, and result in a very narrow approach to gaming, one where units, and missions are ignored as they are seen as bad.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: It also doesn't help that certain editions toned up the grimdarkness of certain factions. 6th edition Brettonia tends to be one of the more commonly cited ones on how a faction can suddenly be changed with it's viewpoints.
Well, that's the fault of Stillman's bland heroic army book. Before that, Bretonnia was even worse: full of decadent nobles, degenerated folk and extreme penury. Chaos worshippers everywhere of course and the cities were mostly slums. It was portrayed as a failed state drowning in it's own depravity. 6th edition army book was quite positive compared to this.
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Soooo. Border Princes. Well, I spot a Nehekarian tomb. And the Harkon emblem looks like the current ruler isn't that much alive (or he/she is a wine connoisseur). There's hope for some Undead stuff.
I'm surprised no one else picked up on the Tomb King icon right at the bottom given how much people complain about them being squatted. Doubt we'll see this any time early in the TOW's release schedule - and only if TOW is a great success but still nice to see them around.
I'm assuming that all the OW factions will get their revival if the game lasts long enough. The order and how much support GW's dumping into this are what's up in the air. If we're talking HH release rates and a starter that's Empire v Empire, we might not see TKs for a decade+, but there's always the chance they wheel out the old molds and drop a massive amount of stuff right off the bat for an initial cash influx.
What I really want GW to do now, though (besides give us more info), is to slap together some MTO waves for the main factions that are obviously going to return so people can get to work on new stuff or fill in some gaps in their collections. I know I'd jump on the chance for a few more boxes of the Boar Boys they only sold for a couple years and could use a sprinkling of other O&G bits to finish things I was always going to get around to "later". Heck, some of the stuff (thinking of the later Tomb Kings releases, specifically) could fit right in with AoS or be converted with minimal effort to work in 40k even for those who aren't interested in the Old World.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: It also doesn't help that certain editions toned up the grimdarkness of certain factions. 6th edition Brettonia tends to be one of the more commonly cited ones on how a faction can suddenly be changed with it's viewpoints.
Well, that's the fault of Stillman's bland heroic army book. Before that, Bretonnia was even worse: full of decadent nobles, degenerated folk and extreme penury. Chaos worshippers everywhere of course and the cities were mostly slums. It was portrayed as a failed state drowning in it's own depravity. 6th edition army book was quite positive compared to this.
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Soooo. Border Princes. Well, I spot a Nehekarian tomb. And the Harkon emblem looks like the current ruler isn't that much alive (or he/she is a wine connoisseur). There's hope for some Undead stuff.
I'm surprised no one else picked up on the Tomb King icon right at the bottom given how much people complain about them being squatted. Doubt we'll see this any time early in the TOW's release schedule - and only if TOW is a great success but still nice to see them around.
Personally I think it doesn't matter, because it isn't unclear if icons on pretty maps are going to translate to anything for the game. The geography lesson is neat, but... something of mechanical substance in terms of factions and gameplay is really needed.
Londinium wrote: I'm surprised no one else picked up on the Tomb King icon right at the bottom given how much people complain about them being squatted.
It's not really surprising to see a Tomb Kings symbol in the northern conquests of Nehekhara? Besides, you answered your own question in the following sentence:
Londinium wrote: Doubt we'll see this any time early in the TOW's release schedule - and only if TOW is a great success but still nice to see them around.
Tomb Kings don't need background. Nehekhara hasn't changed for a couple of thousand years. Going back five hundred years from the End Times is a big deal for the Empire. For Nehekhara, nothing of notice changes.
So as long as we all, GW included, agree that Tomb Kings models aren't happening anytime soon, a symbol on a map just isn't a big deal.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: It also doesn't help that certain editions toned up the grimdarkness of certain factions. 6th edition Brettonia tends to be one of the more commonly cited ones on how a faction can suddenly be changed with it's viewpoints.
Well, that's the fault of Stillman's bland heroic army book. Before that, Bretonnia was even worse: full of decadent nobles, degenerated folk and extreme penury. Chaos worshippers everywhere of course and the cities were mostly slums. It was portrayed as a failed state drowning in it's own depravity. 6th edition army book was quite positive compared to this.
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Soooo. Border Princes. Well, I spot a Nehekarian tomb. And the Harkon emblem looks like the current ruler isn't that much alive (or he/she is a wine connoisseur). There's hope for some Undead stuff.
I'm surprised no one else picked up on the Tomb King icon right at the bottom given how much people complain about them being squatted. Doubt we'll see this any time early in the TOW's release schedule - and only if TOW is a great success but still nice to see them around.
Problem is that icon (like the dwarves and orcs icons scattered about the map) is not a full emblem or whatever you want to call it as is the case for the Border Princes, Empire, Bretonnia, High Elves, Wood Elves, Kislev, etc. The implication here is that the map is acknowledging the existence of these factions but not their importance/relevance - i.e. they won't be playable.
00:00 - 05:14 Intro & Cathay Army Book
05:15 - 08:51 Is The Lore Fully Linked?
08:52 - 10:22 There was only ONE Dragon Emperor
10:23 - 12:58 Who Is The Moon Empress?
12:59 - 20:17 How many Dragon Children? And Who Are They?
20:18 - 22:20 Are Cathay still isolationist? Do they have other bases?
22:21 - 25:58 Are Cathayan Dragons their own species?
25:59 - 27:17 Cathayan Dragons are NOT Gods
27:18 - 29:18 Are There More Dragons in Cathay?
29:19 - 32:00 Where did the Dragon Emperor go? Monkey King take over?
32:01 - 34:24 The Dragon Emperor has a plan
34:25 - 38:51 Dragon Bro
38:52 - 44:04 The Monkey King & Monkey Warriors, Ind and Khuresh Naga
44:05 - 45:45 Nippon?
45:06 - 47:40 Can you tell us about other big cities in Cathay?
47:41 - 50:21 Cathay's relationship with Chaos
50:22 - 53:33 Can you tell us about the Celestial city?
53:34 - 57:33 The lores of Yin and Yang & Dragon Blooded
57:34 - 58:44 Jade Vampires?
58:45 - 1:03:48 Regions of Cathay
1:03:49 - 1:05:09 New Clan Eshin lore?
1:05:10 - 1:08:04 Who is the master artificer?
1:08:05 - 1:10:20 How much of Cathay's lore is now established?
1:10:21 - 1:12:27 Who are Cathay's big enemies?
1:12:28 - 1:14:12 The Great Maw?
1:14:13 - 1:15:58 Dragon Monks?
1:15:59 - 1:19:27 Why does Tzeentch want Cathay?
1:19:28 - 1:24:00 The other dragons and the elements? How powerful are they?
1:24:01 - 1:29:19 When was the Grand Bastion built? Any other info?
1:29:20 -1:31:54 Any well known mortal Cathayans?
1:31:55 - 1:38:49 Magic in Cathay?
1:38:50 - 1:44:41 - Closing thoughts and outro
stonehorse wrote: Losing because a player brought the 'wrong' list is in my opinion a hall mark of a bad game, because the game is pretty much desided before players have set up the terrain. If a game takes a few hours to play it is more than likely going to be a bad experience for one player as they get curbed stomped.
A player's decisions on the table coupled with a bit of luck should be what victory hangs on. However I get the feeling that a lot of modern mass combat games are pulling away from this and doubling down on special rules and list building being the path to victory.
Balancing a game for Tournament play is a recipe for disaster I think, it is what morphed WFB into the car crash that was 8th edition. When a system panders to the Tournament crowd it is giving up its friendly fun encounters for cut throat ruthlessness. Tournaments from my experience kill off the spirt of the game, and result in a very narrow approach to gaming, one where units, and missions are ignored as they are seen as bad.
The problem is that if you build a game for the Narrative players only you shelve it for 2/3 of the player base. Narrative players can play narrative games no matter HOW the system is balanced, they are going to throw that balance out the window for the lolstory of their match up anyway. Narrative play makes pickup games impossible, which throws the casual and competitive players out simultaneously, and does nothing to dispel the WAACs as they will salivate at the chance of having an imbalanced system to exploit from the get go.
8th Ed. WFB was anything but tourney friendly. I'd say WFB stopped being tourney friendly in 7th.
I do agree about the listbuilding phase, which is why I personally went back to editions that are much harder to listhammer.
What's the chances that GW release the 8th Edition Cathay book as a special edition at some point in TWW3's lifespan? or even as part of a Collectors Edition or something. We all knew that they'd statted the Cathayan units for 8th to help out with developing the video game but from what Andy Hall has revealed and said in that interview they've basically written a whole book. Would be a shame for that to go to waste, just need to commission some artwork to go along with it.
More realistically it's probably more likely to form the core of a Cathayn TOW book, although dependent upon how the rules change in that game, there would need to be a rework of the rules.
I'm also liking how much in depth the Cathay lore seems now that Andy Hall has revealed more of it, plenty of closed door mysteries and hints at darker lore and less altruistic motives for the dragons. Goes a long way to dealing with my initial misgivings that Cathay was a little bit too 'good'. Now if they could could just darken up the art style a little, Cathay would be great.
Excuse my ignorance, and apologies if this was discussed upthread, but ... have the Border Princes always been left as a blank spot for your own campaigns? And as a place for displaced nobles from all over to come and set up shop?
Most of my WFB knowledge comes from 4th and 5th edition, with a smattering of 6th. The 5th edition Bretonnian book says the BP were claimed by Bretonnia long ago by crusading knights who decided to stop there instead of continue on to Araby (because the crusade was already over by then). The Princes are therefore descended from Bretonnians.
That's the only detailed reference to the BP I can find in my books, though. Most other background from that era ignores the area. Unless I've missed something.
Is this something that was later retconned? I know the Bretonnian background has gone through a lot of whiplash and mood swings over the years. I don't have the 6th ed Bret book to compare.
stonehorse wrote: Losing because a player brought the 'wrong' list is in my opinion a hall mark of a bad game(...)
List building is a form of gameplay optimisation. If someone refuses to optimise in a competitive environment, they have no right to complain about losing.
Zenithfleet wrote: Excuse my ignorance, and apologies if this was discussed upthread, but ... have the Border Princes always been left as a blank spot for your own campaigns? And as a place for displaced nobles from all over to come and set up shop?
Most of my WFB knowledge comes from 4th and 5th edition, with a smattering of 6th. The 5th edition Bretonnian book says the BP were claimed by Bretonnia long ago by crusading knights who decided to stop there instead of continue on to Araby (because the crusade was already over by then). The Princes are therefore descended from Bretonnians.
That's the only detailed reference to the BP I can find in my books, though. Most other background from that era ignores the area. Unless I've missed something.
Is this something that was later retconned? I know the Bretonnian background has gone through a lot of whiplash and mood swings over the years. I don't have the 6th ed Bret book to compare.
It's always been a bit of a melting pot as far as I recall; even in 5th Edition there were elements from Bretonnia and the Empire mixed together. The text in the 5th Ed Bret book does mention that Tybalt's crusade force did pick up knights and other forces from the Empire as it attempted to pass through the region so it wasn't exclusively a Bretonnian establishment even at its inception. Given it's essentially pioneer country by Old World standards it's not too hard to see why you'd get figures from all over trying to stake a claim and that, even if they were originally a majority, the Bretonnian lines probably got eroded over time and displaced by Imperials. We do have Sven Carlsson (from Shadow of the Horned Rat) as an example from the 4th/5th edition and that's certainly no Breton-esque name.
stonehorse wrote: Losing because a player brought the 'wrong' list is in my opinion a hall mark of a bad game(...)
List building is a form of gameplay optimisation. If someone refuses to optimise in a competitive environment, they have no right to complain about losing.
And this attitude is exactly why "competitive" players shouldn't be allowed nice things.
stonehorse wrote: Losing because a player brought the 'wrong' list is in my opinion a hall mark of a bad game(...)
List building is a form of gameplay optimisation. If someone refuses to optimise in a competitive environment, they have no right to complain about losing.
And this attitude is exactly why "competitive" players shouldn't be allowed nice things.
It's more complex than that.
It's more about creating a game system where there are sensible viable choices which can produce different lists that will work in different ways on the tabletop to give different styles of strategy and a chance to use different models within each army. Ergo so that there are multiple ways to victory.
Then ensuring that the power disparity between a decent list and a good list and a great list is subtle rather than night and day different. That way, at the list building stage, the power variations are slight, which means building a good list gives advantages but its not the case of it being an automatic win/loss situation
Of course there will be cases where there are terrible lists and that is just part of the game.
The issue is when you have a power disparity closer to, say, Magic the Gathering. Where a good list and great list have such vast power differences that sometimes the only win for the good list is the great list getting a lack of mana/optoins through purely the chances of shuffling.
In MTG that's ok to a degree, because the game length is fast so if you lose its not a vast investment of time. Furthermore you don't have to make and paint your cards prior to the game so the investment is slightly less. IT can still be an issue in smaller or very niche populations. Casual players in competitive MTG circles often don't have as much fun gaming because of the vast power disparities.
For a wargame its even more important to reduce the power difference because games last for hours and take many hours prior to even just build let along paint. The investment is far greater all round
Sadly some people loudly like ot have a huge "I win" button in armies. IT makes it simple to build a great list and then have a huge power advantage .
stonehorse wrote: Losing because a player brought the 'wrong' list is in my opinion a hall mark of a bad game(...)
List building is a form of gameplay optimisation. If someone refuses to optimise in a competitive environment, they have no right to complain about losing.
And this attitude is exactly why "competitive" players shouldn't be allowed nice things.
Despite his use of the term 'competitive' it isn't a competitive exclusive problem. Its entirely possible to bring two fluff bunny lists, one of which is fun and capable, the other completely unfun and terrible.
Kicking the problems to 'competitive players are awful' solves no problems whatsoever.
I wonder if the End Times will be an expansion pack or the final plot of Total War 3. Seems to be the main reason you'd be secretive about the dates.
That would also make a lot of sense for the end of a trilogy, and the last Total Warhammer.
Tastyfish wrote: I wonder if the End Times will be an expansion pack or the final plot of Total War 3. Seems to be the main reason you'd be secretive about the dates.
That would also make a lot of sense for the end of a trilogy, and the last Total Warhammer.
I would prefer that they did not myself - I could see if they were going for Total War: Age of Sigmar (which IMO would be awesome).
Alot of stuff (sometimes contradictory) happens around 2500 IC.
Tastyfish wrote: I wonder if the End Times will be an expansion pack or the final plot of Total War 3. Seems to be the main reason you'd be secretive about the dates.
That would also make a lot of sense for the end of a trilogy, and the last Total Warhammer.
The shitstorm that would ensue if End Times content was prioritised against other content (regardless of whether it's the case - internet people would see it that way) means I doubt we'll see an End Times expansion pack. If End Times was going to be used, then TWW3 was the perfect opportunity to do it and CA went out of their way to explicitly say End Times will not be in base TWW3.
Personally I think that CA won't be able to do a total war warhammer game for a long time after Warhammer 1-3. The amount of ground they've covered is staggering for such a game, but at the same time by the time they finish its pretty much going to be a complete game.
What I think we will see is
1) Perhaps a Saga game. This is what CA likes to do between big projects and whilst they aren't always their most popular they are smaller projects that keep their staff busy between the big ones. I could see them doing a few key races or such in a Warhammer Saga experience.
2) Age of Sigmar Total War. I honestly expect this. It lets CA return to the fantasy setting which has done them ever so well; whlist at the same time having total freedom to expand the game and add new factions, new forces and new twists on old ones. It's also great for GW as it pairs with an actual game they make right now.
I did feel that End Times was going to be part of Total War Warhammer, but it seems its not at present. They might cover it in a Saga game or just blow past it and do Age of Sigmar.
I'd be more surprised if they don't return to the GW franchise setting or if they did Warhammer Classic again. At least I'd not expect a new Warhammer series game from them until a new engine comes along or 10-20 years pass.
They could easily do one or more Warhammer Total War: Time of Legends as Saga games
Focussing on:
Sundering and War of Vengeance period: High and Dark Elves, Dwarfs, Daemons.
Rise of Nagash: Nekehara (city staes vs the Undead (various factions), Cathay and Dark Elves on the periphery
Rise of Sigmar: Smaller scale but the Human tribes, Greenskins, Daemons, Chaos, Dwarfs and Undead.
Plus a direct tie in with The Old World would not be that difficult - new characters for human, beastmen, greenskin factions but most of the rest would not need much change.
That said it wouldn't happen soon. CA games take a good while to develop and there would be at least 1 saga and 1 main game release between any fantasy releases.
I could well see a Medieval 3 or even a Three Kingdoms 2 appear on the horizon before any talk of an Age of Sigmar or return to the Old World. So yep its not going to b any any time soon.
True they could do a 40K game considering that it basically runs on a similar system to most fantasy battles. And there's ample room in the market for a big large scale battle system and who knows CA might want to play with it and things like trench warfare in a setting that won't basically spark as much controversy for them as WW1/2 - though saying that there's so many games about those eras (esp WW2) that its likely not really much of an issue outside of a few special release considerations for the German market.
They'll have milked Warhammer 2 for almost five years - well, four and a bit - I'm sure they can milk 3 for just as long, particularly if GW allows them copy their homework for places like Ind, Nippon, etc (and vice versa?)
I feel like 'milking it' is an inaccurate sentiment. They have released a LOT of content over that period, both paid and unpaid. Quality, polished content that really shows the level of effort behind it both visually and mechanically. They haven't just been throwing out bunches of meaningless cosmetics or re-skins and calling it DLC.
Well, "polished" is in the eye of the beholder - this is CA after all who spent years saying they couldn't do a Jabberslythe, right up until the moment they did - but broadly yes, I agree with you. They haven't "milked" the game. They've expanded upon it, greatly.
Not without missteps, and there are still flaws in the game that they hope to address with the third game, but certainly the end result as TWW2 comes to the end of its life is greater than the sum of its original parts.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Well, "polished" is in the eye of the beholder - this is CA after all who spent years saying they couldn't do a Jabberslythe, right up until the moment they did - but broadly yes, I agree with you. They haven't "milked" the game. They've expanded upon it, greatly.
Not without missteps, and there are still flaws in the game that they hope to address with the third game, but certainly the end result as TWW2 comes to the end of its life is greater than the sum of its original parts.
It wasn't so much that they said they couldn't do it so much that it would cost as much as the entire art budget for the age of charlemagne dlc.Thus why they brought forth a few of the usual community's memes themselves when that unit finally came to pass.
But yeah out of all the games they've made the DLC for Total War hasn't really had any issues compared to some of the others. There's been some slight missteps surely but nothing that is out of place.
That said it wouldn't happen soon. CA games take a good while to develop and there would be at least 1 saga and 1 main game release between any fantasy releases.
This bears repeating.
Ever since the sudden announcement (and it was very sudden) that no further work on Three Kingdoms would happen, we have no idea what Creative Assembly is doing in the "big historical" game realm. The information they've revealed in the past suggests that they likely have a team working on a non-Saga historical game. But whatever it is, it's far enough off that we haven't even got a vague hint of what it might be.
Whatever CA decides to do with its Warhammer team after this is so far off as to not really even be worth considering at this point.
That border princes map is gorgeous! So much room for campaigns and creating unique armies. The best part of this is fleshing out the world. Love the focus on the much smaller factions.
They’ve referenced Cathay getting 8th rules so I’m wondering if they are bringing all the old (which I think there were 3 - Beastmen, Skaven, and Brets) up to date and then releasing 8th rules for the new armies while they continue developing the rules for Old World.
I took it more as CA built their game referencing the 8th edition books so making them a Cathay book with that edition's approach was done to help them integrate them.
nathan2004 wrote:They’ve referenced Cathay getting 8th rules so I’m wondering if they are bringing all the old (which I think there were 3 - Beastmen, Skaven, and Brets) up to date and then releasing 8th rules for the new armies while they continue developing the rules for Old World.
No, that seems very unlikely.
Eldarain wrote:I took it more as CA built their game referencing the 8th edition books so making them a Cathay book with that edition's approach was done to help them integrate them.
At the very bottom, sounds like they are developing 8th rules for Cathay
In the great lore interview with Andy Hall (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQEOEpgPBuU) it was mentioned, that GW made a Cathay armybook for CA as a reference for creating the faction.
I hope we get to see that book at some point. I would love to read those rules and the whole lore background.
nathan2004 wrote: They’ve referenced Cathay getting 8th rules so I’m wondering if they are bringing all the old (which I think there were 3 - Beastmen, Skaven, and Brets) up to date and then releasing 8th rules for the new armies while they continue developing the rules for Old World.
They also had a full 6th Ed. Chaos Dwarfs book ready to go that was squatted to make way for Ogre Kingdoms. By your logic should they not release that as well?
nathan2004 wrote: They’ve referenced Cathay getting 8th rules so I’m wondering if they are bringing all the old (which I think there were 3 - Beastmen, Skaven, and Brets) up to date and then releasing 8th rules for the new armies while they continue developing the rules for Old World.
They also had a full 6th Ed. Chaos Dwarfs book ready to go that was squatted to make way for Ogre Kingdoms. By your logic should they not release that as well?
I'd be interested to read it, if only to see how the Chorfs were going to fit into the game at that stage.
nathan2004 wrote: They’ve referenced Cathay getting 8th rules so I’m wondering if they are bringing all the old (which I think there were 3 - Beastmen, Skaven, and Brets) up to date and then releasing 8th rules for the new armies while they continue developing the rules for Old World.
They also had a full 6th Ed. Chaos Dwarfs book ready to go that was squatted to make way for Ogre Kingdoms. By your logic should they not release that as well?
I'd be interested to read it, if only to see how the Chorfs were going to fit into the game at that stage.
As someone who still plays 6th I have a much deeper vested interest in seeing it put out. That doesn't mean GW should be in any way obligated to do so, though. Still, it'd be neat to take the time to put out some maybe online only books for each edition, sort of filling the gaps. That way those people who still occasionally play those editions could have access. Hell, make it part of the Warhammer+ package so I have to pay for their service to have access. I'd do it.
GW should, if they had any intereset of get old things going again
but they don't need to and specially with doing all new with TOW they won't support any old version with unreleased stuff
different to Mortheim were you get all those kind of things that were planned but never made, semi-offical from the designers
nathan2004 wrote: They’ve referenced Cathay getting 8th rules so I’m wondering if they are bringing all the old (which I think there were 3 - Beastmen, Skaven, and Brets) up to date and then releasing 8th rules for the new armies while they continue developing the rules for Old World.
They also had a full 6th Ed. Chaos Dwarfs book ready to go that was squatted to make way for Ogre Kingdoms. By your logic should they not release that as well?
Has that ever been confirmed? I've heard that rumour a few times now and it makes no sense why they wouldn't have just printed it for White Dwarf content if they decided not to publish it as a book. Also GW usually creates the miniature lines around the same time as the Army Books as they influence each other back and forth and we've never seen any 6ed Chaos Dwarf minis.
You just got your answer as to why they wouldn't print it. This wouldn't be the first or last time GW shelved something with little to no reasoning behind it. I'm guessing that they decided the investment wasn't worth it.
nathan2004 wrote: They’ve referenced Cathay getting 8th rules so I’m wondering if they are bringing all the old (which I think there were 3 - Beastmen, Skaven, and Brets) up to date and then releasing 8th rules for the new armies while they continue developing the rules for Old World.
They also had a full 6th Ed. Chaos Dwarfs book ready to go that was squatted to make way for Ogre Kingdoms. By your logic should they not release that as well?
Has that ever been confirmed? I've heard that rumour a few times now and it makes no sense why they wouldn't have just printed it for White Dwarf content if they decided not to publish it as a book. Also GW usually creates the miniature lines around the same time as the Army Books as they influence each other back and forth and we've never seen any 6ed Chaos Dwarf minis.
Well, that's basically why. If they decided to not pursue an updated miniatures line, they wouldn't do a book. Even back then, they weren't going to print something just so people could use the old metal Chaos Dorfs.
Despite what people are saying, it does make sense, particularly at the time- GW's line of thought was that books existed to push models. Without a corresponding model line, there wasn't anything to push.
The confusion comes from miscommunication. For example, when Tony said "ready to go" that is in an 'internetese' dialect, in conventional English it means "designed". His statement would actually translate as "they had a Chaos Dwarfs army book designed, but it was cancelled and Ogor Kingdoms took the release slot" which while only slightly different in phrasing makes sense.
Of course this is still speculation with no evidence.
It would never fly in the current GW era of no rules for models that don't exist.
The rules are just a mechanism to push model sales, so why would they put out content that won't create sales of current models and which, if anything, would just create demand for their third party competitors?
Instead we'll just get yet another primaris lieutenant.
If the rumored AoS compatible Chaos Dwarfs comes to fruition it could be a fun thing to add.
A serious expansion of the Vault would be great. I've been rereading the 5th/6th era books and it's been wonderfully nostalgic and given me motivation to start new forces.
Woa there, let's not get ahead of ourselves to suggesting GW would actually implement such an idea! Gaining a swathe of benefits for little to no cost isn't something GW is interested in unless said benefits can be represented by a number in the accounting.
My understanding is the 8th ed Cathay rules were put together specifically to support Total War Warhammer and not something they just had on the shelf. They aren't going to release it and it wasn't made for release, it was made because all the other factions in the Total War franchise were built using 8th edition army rules as reference to stat them out and assist the devs with figuring out how a unit was supposed to perform, etc. Statting them out using a different ruleset (a hypothetical newly designed Old World ruleset, for example) would be useless because you are no longer comparing apples to apples.
chaos0xomega wrote: My understanding is the 8th ed Cathay rules were put together specifically to support Total War Warhammer and not something they just had on the shelf. They aren't going to release it and it wasn't made for release, it was made because all the other factions in the Total War franchise were built using 8th edition army rules as reference to stat them out and assist the devs with figuring out how a unit was supposed to perform, etc. Statting them out using a different ruleset (a hypothetical newly designed Old World ruleset, for example) would be useless because you are no longer comparing apples to apples.
I would imagine the timeline, lore and everything else will form part of the armybook for the Old World - after all its a book no Warhammer fan has and many will want - I certainly do
RazorEdge wrote: I do not thing we will see Cathay that soon after WHtoW get released, maybe after 4-5 Years taht.
They will stay on the classic WHFB Factions for the first Years.
I don't see why they'd go through all the effort of developing an entire new faction as one of the first few things done, to the point it gets shown off to us early on, and then decide to just not bother for half a decade.
Tastyfish wrote: I wonder if the End Times will be an expansion pack or the final plot of Total War 3. Seems to be the main reason you'd be secretive about the dates.
That would also make a lot of sense for the end of a trilogy, and the last Total Warhammer.
Time and time again they said End Times won't happen in TW.
Which just seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
There are tons of great units from around that time - Blight Knights, Storm Fiends, Morghasts, Maggoth mounts - and lots of characters that would be great, from the Gottkin to the introduction of Mortarchs.
Doesn't mean those units won't make it in. Some are specific to the End Times, but others were the usual filling of stuff that was backdated to having been around just not in army books. Blightkings, for example. We can even see in Khorne that Blood Warriors are in, and they were an AoS model release.
I'd rather CA did their own spin on Warhammer World than blindly follow GW's terrible take on it. So far, even though I don't enjoy the actual games that much, their characterization and plot is miles ahead of GW's usual level.
CA is doing Stan Lee's Warhammer while GW is/was Rob Liefeld.
I'm not saying everything GW did with warhammer is bad. I'm saying what other companied do with it is usually better. And yes, they are doing their own thing, within scope of license. Like any creator, they put their own spin on things, and their spin is imo better than gw's basic spin.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Doesn't mean those units won't make it in. Some are specific to the End Times, but others were the usual filling of stuff that was backdated to having been around just not in army books. Blightkings, for example. We can even see in Khorne that Blood Warriors are in, and they were an AoS model release.
They're modelled after the Skullcrusher riders, not Chaos Mari- sorry, Blood Warriors.
Cronch wrote: I'm not saying everything GW did with warhammer is bad. I'm saying what other companied do with it is usually better. And yes, they are doing their own thing, within scope of license. Like any creator, they put their own spin on things, and their spin is imo better than gw's basic spin.
Does this characterization of 3rd parties doing better than GW extend to fluff implementation in gameplay? Because when I played Total Warhammer I found Dwarfs to be unrepentant oathbreakers. That was not very immersive.
Cronch wrote: No, that's still GW. Will King was like, the only one remotely worth reading in that pile (I should know, I had an embarrassing amount as a kid)
Point is, let CA do their own thing, so far it's more fun, inventive and coherent than anything GW produced for the setting.
Also games, esp games like Total War style, dn't really have strong stories. A huge part of it is just setting a scene and the story mostly happens in your own mind.
So if you don't quite notice that you can easily feel the story is outstanding because your mind is filling in all the little details and such and your play adds to that
Geifer wrote: Does this characterization of 3rd parties doing better than GW extend to fluff implementation in gameplay? Because when I played Total Warhammer I found Dwarfs to be unrepentant oathbreakers. That was not very immersive.
Like I said, better take on the setting in general. GW's take on warhammer is the least interesting and most restrictive so yeah they fail on that account for me.
Cronch wrote: I'm not saying everything GW did with warhammer is bad. I'm saying what other companied do with it is usually better. And yes, they are doing their own thing, within scope of license. Like any creator, they put their own spin on things, and their spin is imo better than gw's basic spin.
It should be noted that the lead writer for the TWW games is Andy Hall, a previous long term GW employee who still has strong ties to the studio, GW themselves wrote all the new Cathay/Kislev lore and GW have final approval for anything done in the games. There's not really much of a CA vs GW divide when it comes to the actual lore, it's all had heavy GW involvement up to the point of GW outright writing the new lore/units. When it comes to lore this isn't really a strong 'CA spin'.
There's enough to make it feel fresher than the usual copy-paste-material from one edition codex to the next that GW did with old world back when it existed tbh.
Geifer wrote: Does this characterization of 3rd parties doing better than GW extend to fluff implementation in gameplay? Because when I played Total Warhammer I found Dwarfs to be unrepentant oathbreakers. That was not very immersive.
Like I said, better take on the setting in general. GW's take on warhammer is the least interesting and most restrictive so yeah they fail on that account for me.
So a better take is to ignore one of the most fundamental characteristics of the race? Curious
Geifer wrote: Does this characterization of 3rd parties doing better than GW extend to fluff implementation in gameplay? Because when I played Total Warhammer I found Dwarfs to be unrepentant oathbreakers. That was not very immersive.
Like I said, better take on the setting in general. GW's take on warhammer is the least interesting and most restrictive so yeah they fail on that account for me.
It's a bit hard for anyone to to discuss if you don't give any examples or elaborate on in what way you think its "better". Just saying " It's better" is quite meaningless.
Cronch wrote: There's enough to make it feel fresher than the usual copy-paste-material from one edition codex to the next that GW did with old world back when it existed tbh.
Ahh you're comparing the battletome level lore more so than the actual written black library books?
I'd say that might well be true (I don't have generations of different battletomes to compare) since most Battletomes aren't a story they are a scene setter for the faction. So sometimes they will be mostly the same edition to edition because the scene is still the same; but sometimes there will be shifts and changes.
Geifer wrote: Does this characterization of 3rd parties doing better than GW extend to fluff implementation in gameplay? Because when I played Total Warhammer I found Dwarfs to be unrepentant oathbreakers. That was not very immersive.
Like I said, better take on the setting in general. GW's take on warhammer is the least interesting and most restrictive so yeah they fail on that account for me.
It's a bit hard for anyone to to discuss if you don't give any examples or elaborate on in what way you think its "better". Just saying " It's better" is quite meaningless.
Think of it like the weeb that thinks anything from Japan is automatically superior to anything Western. Same sort of mentality. Some are "GW can do no wrong", Cronch is "GW can do no right."
BREAKING!
We will see a preview for Warhammer The Old World at the beginningw of next Year, this one will be bigger than those we saw in the past and since the Game was the first Time announced in November 2019.
This preview will be a bit more precise about the Game.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Probably to tie it in with the launch of TWW3.
Yeah a full on preview of the game a few weeks after the launch of TWW3 makes perfect marketing sense. If they could get the game out for Xmas 2022 even better, although I highly doubt they'll be able to hit that target given what's happened over the last 18 months.
Geifer wrote: Does this characterization of 3rd parties doing better than GW extend to fluff implementation in gameplay? Because when I played Total Warhammer I found Dwarfs to be unrepentant oathbreakers. That was not very immersive.
Like I said, better take on the setting in general. GW's take on warhammer is the least interesting and most restrictive so yeah they fail on that account for me.
It's a bit hard for anyone to to discuss if you don't give any examples or elaborate on in what way you think its "better". Just saying " It's better" is quite meaningless.
Think of it like the weeb that thinks anything from Japan is automatically superior to anything Western. Same sort of mentality. Some are "GW can do no wrong", Cronch is "GW can do no right."
GW doesn't seem to be able to anything right recently though.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Let me put it this way; the only thing that separates Blood Warriors from Warriors of Khorne is a fancy name. They're the same thing.
No it's aesthetics. These and these are not the same. They have similar symbols, but their aesthetic is different. The Warriors of Khorne in TWW3 are those guys, but on foot. They're not AoS Blood Warriors.
Wow. Has it really been TWO YEARS since they announced this? And still basically no information, except that it's going to use 28mm (well, 32 probably) miniatures on square bases. I mean, I guess they did say it would probably be three years or more away.
I wouldn't say no to some solid information. After two years GW should have something to show.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wow. Has it really been TWO YEARS since they announced this? And still basically no information, except that it's going to use 28mm (well, 32 probably) miniatures on square bases. I mean, I guess they did say it would probably be three years or more away.
Honestly? Given the size of recent vampire models I'm not sure we can even call what GW does 32mm scale anymore.
That's only true if you believe those vampires are the normal size of a human in the setting. It could be the vampire line was designed by someone who made a mistake in scaling, but that's less likely since most of GW's stuff now is computer designed so if there's a scale issue its seconds to change the height of something. Thus we have to assume either GW is upscaling and started with Vampires or these vampires are bigger than normal humans.
Like you say, it might just be some weirdo designer's idea that vampirism makes you grow a head or two taller than the plebs* and everything else will be whatever could be considered normal for GW humans. It's not just vampires, though. Sister of Battle are taller than Genestealer Neophytes (a comparable, contemporary human model) and closing the gap to Primaris that have been made to represent Marines standing taller than normal humans. I found that dodgy at the time since there is no lore basis for recruiting only the tallest girls at the Schola Progenium. The champion of the new Vampire skeletons is 34mm tall to the top of his skull, in a pose that is anything but standing straight. For some reason Tomb Kings skeletons ended up noticeably different in size to Vampire Counts skeletons, for no good reason.
GW doesn't use scale in any, umm, let's call it scientifically sound way. It's hard to say if some models are simply outliers by mistake or if they are deliberately designed to be that exact size. Simply put, GW has done nothing to inspire confidence in me that they can produce to a standard in terms of size and scale. Hence the wariness.
*Is it like that in AoS? If it is, it completely escaped my notice.
To be honest scale is a minefield and its not just GW - even 3D designers in the 3D print world have exceptionally variable concepts of scale. Not even just the height of things but the proportions as well.
I like to think that you pay competent professionals to get it right instead of letting them do whatever and expect the customers to deal with the outcome. I'm old-fashioned like that.
Geifer wrote: I like to think that you pay competent professionals to get it right instead of letting them do whatever and expect the customers to deal with the outcome. I'm old-fashioned like that.
Pay?
COMPETENT?
PROFESSIONALS?
Sir, Games Workshop is just a multi-billion company and the monopolistic juggernaut of the tabletop gaming. I don't think they can afford that without losing 0.00001% of their profits for the current quarter. Think of the shareholders! Oh, the inhumanity!
Obviously I'm describing a general principle rather than the exact situation at GW that I wish it applied to.
That said, I don't think it's wrong to attribute a good bit of competence to the model designers. Pretty models are GW's bread and butter and they wouldn't be making such huge profits if they weren't capable of consistently making desirable, good quality models. Doesn't mean they don't also produce duds. Doesn't mean they don't also get details wrong. Competence is a sliding scale, not a binary choice.
It's been 2 years since announcement and we still don't really know what this even is. They've clearly put a lot of work into it with designing entire new factions, lore and rules supposedly similar to WHFB, if after all this it ends up being a relatively small thing that just gets some nice resin models a few times a year that'll be a bit of a disapointment. It is a forgeworld project so I'm not expecting it to get the same level of attention as AoS or 40k, but I just hope it's still a substantial return to the setting.
Geifer wrote: Obviously I'm describing a general principle rather than the exact situation at GW that I wish it applied to.
That said, I don't think it's wrong to attribute a good bit of competence to the model designers. Pretty models are GW's bread and butter and they wouldn't be making such huge profits if they weren't capable of consistently making desirable, good quality models. Doesn't mean they don't also produce duds. Doesn't mean they don't also get details wrong. Competence is a sliding scale, not a binary choice.
Not to some people it seems as I've seen so, so many people who act like regardless of what GW does, it's always the wrong thing.
Mentlegen324 wrote: It's been 2 years since announcement and we still don't really know what this even is. They've clearly put a lot of work into it with designing entire new factions, lore and rules supposedly similar to WHFB, if after all this it ends up being a relatively small thing that just gets some nice resin models a few times a year that'll be a bit of a disapointment. It is a forgeworld project so I'm not expecting it to get the same level of attention as AoS or 40k, but I just hope it's still a substantial return to the setting.
Yeah, GW has no small legacy to consider if they want to do Fantasy justice with The Old World.
I liked to think, back before this whole pandemic nonsense got in the way of everything, that with Specialist Games getting actual plastic kits to work with and talk of a second factory going online, that GW might not use that exclusively to better support the main games but also to up plastic kit allocation for Forge World to make mass combat games like Horus Heresy and, ostensibly, The Old World more palatable to the average player. It was of course nothing more than baseless wishful thinking. Still, considering how it was so often said that Horus Heresy was held back by being an all resin game and the two plastic boxed sets selling like crazy when they came out, it's nice to believe GW got the hint and might work that into their plan for The Old World.
But yeah, with how little we know of the game at this point I'd happily settle for a solid presentation of what the game will even look like before I worry about the material of the models. Plenty of time for joy or disappointment afterwards.
Mentlegen324 wrote: It's been 2 years since announcement and we still don't really know what this even is. They've clearly put a lot of work into it with designing entire new factions, lore and rules supposedly similar to WHFB, if after all this it ends up being a relatively small thing that just gets some nice resin models a few times a year that'll be a bit of a disapointment. It is a forgeworld project so I'm not expecting it to get the same level of attention as AoS or 40k, but I just hope it's still a substantial return to the setting.
Geifer wrote: Obviously I'm describing a general principle rather than the exact situation at GW that I wish it applied to.
That said, I don't think it's wrong to attribute a good bit of competence to the model designers. Pretty models are GW's bread and butter and they wouldn't be making such huge profits if they weren't capable of consistently making desirable, good quality models. Doesn't mean they don't also produce duds. Doesn't mean they don't also get details wrong. Competence is a sliding scale, not a binary choice.
Not to some people it seems as I've seen so, so many people who act like regardless of what GW does, it's always the wrong thing.
I'd say the fact that GW said you'll be able to use your old models in the FAQ a few months back indicates that we're probably not looking at just a small scale thing, if the reveals of Kislev/Cathay and even Bretonnians being highlighted didn't already. If it was going to be Empire + a few friends, they'd have been much more circumspect about making such statements to avoid pissing off Elf players etc.
Everything is pointing that this being a rather broad re-release of the WHFB world. The important question though, as you've touched upon is the whole resin/plastic issue. There's no way that this thing will be anything more than a minor success if they go 100% resin. You've got to think that they'll be aggressively trying to convert TWW players, at best with plastic prices that's still a challenge, with resin prices there's no chance. I've just begrudingly paid more for a single Kroxigor than I did for my entire Lizardmen Blood Bowl team and I've been a GW fan since the late 90s, casual players will take one look at Forge World prices and run a mile.
streetsamurai wrote: It will be a disaster if this is a mostly resin release. Cant even imagine the price of a whole army
Not that much different to current AoS or 40k prices
just compare, 10 metal Steel Legion models are sold for 30€, 10 Cadian plastic models are sold for 35€
expect a full army to cost a 800-1000€, same as a 40k army costs, different materials won't change anything here a full plastic army won't be cheaper
You're not mistaken, just went and looked ar fw prices, and they are a bit more expensive than gw one, but not overwhelmingly so. Just goes to show how crazy gw prices have gotten in the last few years
Mentlegen324 wrote: It's been 2 years since announcement and we still don't really know what this even is. They've clearly put a lot of work into it with designing entire new factions, lore and rules supposedly similar to WHFB, if after all this it ends up being a relatively small thing that just gets some nice resin models a few times a year that'll be a bit of a disapointment. It is a forgeworld project so I'm not expecting it to get the same level of attention as AoS or 40k, but I just hope it's still a substantial return to the setting.
Geifer wrote: Obviously I'm describing a general principle rather than the exact situation at GW that I wish it applied to.
That said, I don't think it's wrong to attribute a good bit of competence to the model designers. Pretty models are GW's bread and butter and they wouldn't be making such huge profits if they weren't capable of consistently making desirable, good quality models. Doesn't mean they don't also produce duds. Doesn't mean they don't also get details wrong. Competence is a sliding scale, not a binary choice.
Not to some people it seems as I've seen so, so many people who act like regardless of what GW does, it's always the wrong thing.
I'd say the fact that GW said you'll be able to use your old models in the FAQ a few months back indicates that we're probably not looking at just a small scale thing, if the reveals of Kislev/Cathay and even Bretonnians being highlighted didn't already. If it was going to be Empire + a few friends, they'd have been much more circumspect about making such statements to avoid pissing off Elf players etc.
Everything is pointing that this being a rather broad re-release of the WHFB world. The important question though, as you've touched upon is the whole resin/plastic issue. There's no way that this thing will be anything more than a minor success if they go 100% resin. You've got to think that they'll be aggressively trying to convert TWW players, at best with plastic prices that's still a challenge, with resin prices there's no chance. I've just begrudingly paid more for a single Kroxigor than I did for my entire Lizardmen Blood Bowl team and I've been a GW fan since the late 90s, casual players will take one look at Forge World prices and run a mile.
The problem is that while we know the rules will be similar to WHFB, and they've made new factions and lore, neither of those really exclude that it might be something comparable to 30k in terms of the attention it gets and how they go about it. I think it needs to be something at the least equivalent to Necromunda with a mix of plastic and resin kits, combined with a big focus on Black Library novels like the Horus Heresy got. If it turns out to be something primarily resin, that gets a fairly small amount of releases, that is sort of hidden out the way (like how the Horus Heresy stuff doesn't even get a category on the GW site) and is treated like a niche secondary product, that would be such a let down.
All the hyping up of it they've done, the TW:W3 stuff, the WHFB rules and new lore and square bases, and that that they clearly know how excited people are for it has me hope it's done in a substantial way, but at the same time it being a Forgeworld Project that we still know almost nothing about, that obviously isn't going to be a mainline game like 40k or AoS, does give a bit of worry about it. In terms of lore it might be substantial, but it needs more than just that.
Overread wrote: Old World had lore books before the Internet existed. I don't think political intrigue or fantasy stories are anything new to Old World
Yes, blowing the dust off things always goes down well at a pitch meeting.
Overread wrote: Old World had lore books before the Internet existed. I don't think political intrigue or fantasy stories are anything new to Old World
Yes, blowing the dust off things always goes down well at a pitch meeting.
There's only 7 series not in an omnibus that I can see
Several stand alone stories that might get compiled or even added into omnibus yet to be published.
Gotrek and Felix is now entirely in Omnibus editions
Darkblade is following and likely only has one more collected edition to release
After that there's a handful of short stories which could easily get combined into a few collected works (and chances are a few already in omnibus editions would slip in here and there).
Almost all the rest is in big collected editions, efficient for printing and publishing and also for keeping digitally on the shelf and for making it easy to get people into the long running stories that were written.
And that's likely not the complete works, that's just what I could find and collate from the BL website.
It’s been a few decades since I read any Warhammer fantasy novels, were they full of sex and politics? Or does that need to be updated for a modern audience?
Joyboozer wrote: I’m still not convinced it’s anymore than just an attempt to create a world of fantasy political intrigue in a sad attempt at courting a Netflix show.
Joyboozer wrote: It’s been a few decades since I read any Warhammer fantasy novels, were they full of sex and politics? Or does that need to be updated for a modern audience?
Just what are you on about? You think the whole reason they're doing this it to make it into some sort of Game of Thrones-like setting just to get someone to make a show? It's quite absurd if that's what you think this will be. Do you think 40k novels need to be "updated for a modern audience" with "sex and politics" too?
Yes, I think that’s exactly what they’re doing, and no I don’t think it’s needed or wanted. But I think it’s what we’ll get. There’s no information other than the focus on the different kingdoms, and I think the relaunch will be aimed at the GoT, Witcher crowd.
This is getting back toward those "maybe its warmaster scale" kinds of discussion that happened when GW only showed a square base and a logo for the game.
Yes you can take what currently we know - which is about one or two lines of text - and predict almost anything from that.
Sex is something GW has never really put into their stories in any graphic detail and I don't see it happening any time soon. Politics have been in the setting forever - its all over the place. Heck the Vampire novels are full of backstabbing political elements.
Joyboozer wrote: Yes, I think that’s exactly what they’re doing, and no I don’t think it’s needed or wanted. But I think it’s what we’ll get. There’s no information other than the focus on the different kingdoms, and I think the relaunch will be aimed at the GoT, Witcher crowd.
And do you not realize that both those are aimed at more mature audiences from the start, while Warhammer is a setting primarily aimed towards teens? Regardless of that, absolutely nothing we've seen or has been implied about it so far in any way suggests it'll be a wildly different take from that of 40K, AoS or WHFB before it or it in any way will be how you suggest, so just why do you believe that?
One very small part of the project that was already established as being a place for exiled lords and such within WHFB, that as they're now expanding upon the history of the setting are adding a little more of interest? That makes you feel like they're changing the complete tone and approach of the entire setting because....?
The entirety of every faction within the warhammer fantasy setting concerns backstabbing and political infighting, it's half the lore of some factions.. I don't get what you're getting at?
I think this “Warhammer” will be very human centric and focused on the human kingdoms like all modern fantasy. Coincidentally, all the releases information GW has released has focussed on the human kingdoms (and the humans with pointy ears) and I haven’t seen anything to convince me this isn’t the case.
I want a Warhammer where the monstrous races are just as central as the human ones, my favourite settings in Warhammer were always the ones that didn’t involve the human kingdoms. I don’t think this version of Warhammer is aimed at me.
Even if it is focus entirely on human factions, the internal politicking of the Warhammer Empire and all the politics that come with it, have existed since well before GOT came out. The 4e Empire Army book came out 3 years before GOT, substantial chunks of the lore were knocking around in the RPG in the late 80s and previous versions of WHFB. I don't think GW are doing anything different with the setting or focusing on any specific areas in order to try and attract GOT/Witcher fans, they're presenting what's always been there and always been core to the setting.
If anything their #1 target is lapsed rank and file players that departed for KOW etc and #2 is converting TWW players that don't play AOS. Existing GW fans that love WHFB are already baked in. GW are struggling to even get 40k onto TV, judging from the lack of progress with Eisenhorn, and 40k is FAR more popular and mainstream than WHFB. I doubt they're using a WHFB relaunch as a way to get on TV.
Joyboozer wrote: I think this “Warhammer” will be very human centric and focused on the human kingdoms like all modern fantasy. Coincidentally, all the releases information GW has released has focussed on the human kingdoms (and the humans with pointy ears) and I haven’t seen anything to convince me this isn’t the case.
I want a Warhammer where the monstrous races are just as central as the human ones, my favourite settings in Warhammer were always the ones that didn’t involve the human kingdoms. I don’t think this version of Warhammer is aimed at me.
So just Skaven fighting Lizardmen in Lustria or what? There isn't a lot of Warhammer that doesn't involve humans in the old world.
I mean they said in one of the articles "we want people to be able to use their armies straight away" so just because there's no info on other races doesn't mean there isn't going to be any?
Joyboozer wrote: I think this “Warhammer” will be very human centric and focused on the human kingdoms like all modern fantasy. Coincidentally, all the releases information GW has released has focussed on the human kingdoms (and the humans with pointy ears) and I haven’t seen anything to convince me this isn’t the case.
I want a Warhammer where the monstrous races are just as central as the human ones, my favourite settings in Warhammer were always the ones that didn’t involve the human kingdoms. I don’t think this version of Warhammer is aimed at me.
We know almost nothing about every faction except how Kislev and Cathay looked at the time because of the concept art for those. We've only had the briefest mentions of Bretonnia, Orcs, Elves, Dwarfs, Vampires and even the Empire so far, with their appearances thus far mostly consisting of little more than some names and icons on a map or at the most a character name and some brief lore for the time period. It isn't just the non-human armies that haven't received much information.
It seems like the focus for the new stuff is mostly human-centric. Which makes sense, since orcs, chaos, skavens, beastmens, vampires and ogres are already playable by using the aos/old.whfb minis. Will be interesting to see that they do with elves and dwarves, since the minis released for them in aos are too different from the whfb aesthetic they had for the most part
streetsamurai wrote: It seems like the focus for the new stuff is mostly human-centric. Which makes sense, since orcs, chaos, skavens, beastmens, vampires and ogres are already playable by using the aos/old.whfb minis. Will be interesting to see that they do with elves and dwarves, since the minis released for them in aos are too different from the whfb aesthetic they had for the most part
Geifer wrote: I like to think that you pay competent professionals to get it right instead of letting them do whatever and expect the customers to deal with the outcome. I'm old-fashioned like that.
This has never been the standard in wargaming. Even historical wargaming deals with non-scales like 15mm or 25mm which are at best vague guidelines.
1:24, 1:72 are scales, 28mm/32mm is not a scale cause it doesn't reference the real world measurements in any way. GW could of course start doing that, but it actually wouldn't prevent scale creep for anything but humans, since they're the only constant to which you can apply IRL scale measurements.
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: Can you really call it a scale creep if most miniatures are a head or two taller than their previous iterations that they're directly following up on?
That's more of a scale sprint at that point.
I donlt really mind - people are idfferent sizes and shapes in reality so I mix and match tbh
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: Can you really call it a scale creep if most miniatures are a head or two taller than their previous iterations that they're directly following up on?
That's more of a scale sprint at that point.
I donlt really mind - people are idfferent sizes and shapes in reality so I mix and match tbh
People are diffrent shapes and sizes to the degree that one supposed human can be over twice the size of another supposed human? Because GW is really horribly inconsistent with their scale, even when they're not doing a scale sprint.
People are diffrent shapes and sizes to the degree that one supposed human can be over twice the size of another supposed human?
I mean...we do have the Pygmy tribes in Congo, and that's ignoring dwarfism and giantism that can afflict individuals.
Also, the khorne boy is a souped-up champion of a god of violence, hardly "Joe Average".
Wha-Mu-077 wrote: Can you really call it a scale creep if most miniatures are a head or two taller than their previous iterations that they're directly following up on?
That's more of a scale sprint at that point.
I donlt really mind - people are idfferent sizes and shapes in reality so I mix and match tbh
People are diffrent shapes and sizes to the degree that one supposed human can be over twice the size of another supposed human? Because GW is really horribly inconsistent with their scale, even when they're not doing a scale sprint.
*Remembers the old arguments about how chaos warriors in the fluff were supposed to be huge on account of the power of the gods making them not just unnaturally strong but bigger than unmarked mortals, even other chaos worshippers, yet the (at the time) ancient chaos warriors kit was full of dudes smaller than the (new) marauders*
Thing is, Slaughterpriests are described as being that big in the fluff. They tower over normal men, they are undeniably more than human. The comparison has also been deliberately selected to misrepresent; the male slaughterpriest is standing upright and on a tactical rock, the female human is hunched over in a 'lurking' pose. Whoever made that image is definitely attempting to mislead people, I would be wary of anything from that source.
To actually compare scale creep it needs to be apples to apples. A good possibility would be the plastic marauder kit (5th? Edition WHFB) to the new darkoath savages; they are both generic Chaos barbarians with upright poses. Released decades apart, any trends of scale creep should be obvious. One could also compare high elves to Lumineth, though some adjustment may be needed to account for headwear.
Long gap between them.
I’d also use the other Crimson Court guy, as this one is bigger as he’s the big brute one, so a bit less of a perfect example. But yeah basically big differences..
That older model was from their hamhands phase. It was not a good phase.
The head size speaks to the philosophy regarding vampires changing; they used to be base human size but GW has since elected to make them larger (in the same sense Chaos characters are). So the character is actually bigger, in addition to the scale creep. He's also the 'big enforcer guy' of his warband and on a bit of a thicker base, but those obviously only account for a fraction of the difference.
For the record, the old vampire model isn't as ham handed as the pic looked. The bone coloured part was the fencing style hilt of the sword, not his hand.
Hastily taken pic.
Not up to the sculpting standards of nowawdays, but at least it fits in with my Warhammer armies, Kings of War armies etc... unlike the newer Primaris Vampires.
Y’all see this? I’m super hopeful for this game, I know it’s GW but I think they are addressing the core issues with 8th requiring a million models before you could start playing meaningful games. Could be wrong but I’m optimistic, Warhammer armies project will just have to hold me over until 2023 or 2024.
H.B.M.C. wrote: For those who didn't play WFB, can someone please explain the main difference between 7th and 8th?
I remember friends talking about the minimum amount of models needed to form a rank changing from 4 to 5, but I don't know when that took place.
4-5 per rank was 6th-7th IIRC.
Biggest changes 7th-8th were fixed distance going to random charge distances and the introduction of Steadfast (unit with most ranks takes break tests on unmod LD)
This moved the focus from Cav/Monster to ranked units. As the edition evolved Monstrous Infantry/Cav became viable through sheer murder power. Magic was altered but as it was powerful across both editions in different ways I'd rank that as less of a change as the above.
Y’all see this? I’m super hopeful for this game, I know it’s GW but I think they are addressing the core issues with 8th requiring a million models before you could start playing meaningful games. Could be wrong but I’m optimistic, Warhammer armies project will just have to hold me over until 2023 or 2024.
Doesn't seem credible in the slightest to me, for a few reasons; primiarily it's a rumour that originated from Faeit212, and the last part (that the posting there leaves out) doesn't make the slightest bit of sense at all.
It claims that the main reason for Cathay and Kislev is because they're intended for TW:W3, for the purpose of "advice" and to "show how both Games are "interlocked" based on the same Artworks and as part of World Building" and that they're not really going to be part of The Old World tabletop for a long time. The idea that, as one of the first things for their new hyped project that's a return to a beloved setting that they know fans are really excited for, they'd go through all the effort of designing two basically new fully fledged factions - one of which is in effect entirely unnecessary as no one expected Cathay to be part of it - primarily to connect the video game to the setting because they currently have no actual desire to turn those into miniatures for their new game yet, and that they then decided it would be a great idea to show off this non-existent stuff that will remain as just artwork for presumably years as some of their first teases about the new setting rather than showing something relevant to what it will actually involve. Just how is that idea meant to be believable?
There's also how, yknow, they've actually said those concepts were done for The Old World rather than made because of TW:W3.
Eldarain wrote: Biggest changes 7th-8th were fixed distance going to random charge distances and the introduction of Steadfast (unit with most ranks takes break tests on unmod LD)
This moved the focus from Cav/Monster to ranked units. As the edition evolved Monstrous Infantry/Cav became viable through sheer murder power. Magic was altered but as it was powerful across both editions in different ways I'd rank that as less of a change as the above.
Its not that 8th required a million models. The model count for 8th was nearly the same for my armies as 7th or 6th. It was that ONE UNIT contained nearly 75% or so of the total model count in 8th because of the steadfast rule. Whereas the 6th and 7th ed armies had a ton of MSU units but still overall the model count for the whole army was nearly the same for a lot of people.
8th edition's biggest changes were:
* steadfast (if you had more models in your unit than your opponent in a battle, it counted as stubborn) I liked the rule at first... until the players began abusing it and basically you made massive death star blob unit that contained almost all of your models in one unit. (my first time seeing this was actually skaven and it was twin units of skaven slaves at 200 models a piece for each unit) - but then you had high elves dancing around with an 80 model strong white lions or swordmaster unit with all their wizards smashed into it with banner of the world dragon making them immune to magic (they had a 2+ ward save vs any magic) and things like that. And flanking didn't matter, so people would literally just shove these massive units forward and not care. The only thing that mattered was if you had more models than your opponent in the battles. Oh you flanked me? Thats horrible... (sarcasm voice) except I'm stubborn on a 10 and 99 times out of 100 there's a BSB somewhere letting me reroll.
* random charge distance instead of fixed charge distance. I actually liked this because I got tired of 7th edition's "dance" where the two battle lines shuffled around each other until someone made a mistake and got within charge range.
* magic - the six-dice-for-the-win was introduced in 8th and they also brought back the massive nuke spells on top of that. The result of double six was always irresistable force and a weak turd of a miscast (the miscast table was very benign unless you rolled a 2-4 on 2d6 so no one cared about it and chucked those six dice at their daddy spells hoping for the double six to show up).
7th edition at the tournament level was "cavalry hammer" where everyone fielded armies of all MSU cav (unless you were dwarfs because you had none) and each side looked like a checkerboard of a bunch of small cav units, while 8th edition was cram all of your wizards into one mega blob death star and go belly smack it in the middle of the table until one side failed a break check and ran and ended the game (or six diced Irresistable force the kill spell that wiped out most of the enemy in one go and ended the game)
Eldarain wrote: Biggest changes 7th-8th were fixed distance going to random charge distances and the introduction of Steadfast (unit with most ranks takes break tests on unmod LD)
This moved the focus from Cav/Monster to ranked units. As the edition evolved Monstrous Infantry/Cav became viable through sheer murder power. Magic was altered but as it was powerful across both editions in different ways I'd rank that as less of a change as the above.
That doesn't sound that bad... what am I missing?
It wasn't. Auticus described some of the issues of the first half of the edition well. Once the bulk of the books were out there were more varied strats and the 6 dice spells (especially some army specific ones) worked decently as a hard counter to the 50+ blocks.
8th being the polar opposite of the current release schedule was awful though. It was something insane like 9+ months from the edition launching and the first army book releasing. This gave a pretty bad first impression as the entire game was using books from a very different edition for an extended period.
Eldarain wrote: Biggest changes 7th-8th were fixed distance going to random charge distances and the introduction of Steadfast (unit with most ranks takes break tests on unmod LD)
This moved the focus from Cav/Monster to ranked units. As the edition evolved Monstrous Infantry/Cav became viable through sheer murder power. Magic was altered but as it was powerful across both editions in different ways I'd rank that as less of a change as the above.
That doesn't sound that bad... what am I missing?
It's hard to describe without really getting into the dynamics of the game, suffice it to say multiple layers of different factors added up. Steadfast was a big part; units got a massive benefit for having more ranks than an opponent. The horde rule was also a notable factor, where a third rank of models could make supporting attacks if the unit was 10-wide. This essentially meant an effective size of 40+ to utilize, as at less than 30 models one would not be getting the full benefit.
Magic played a part; almost everyone gained access to spells that would delete a third to half a unit with a single cast (no, not an exaggeration), so units needed to be big enough that they had the models to benefit from the above two rules after getting hit by such a spell.
Many units that were previously elite MSU style, metal models where players were not expected to run more than 15 in a unit, became plastic and less points. Combined with the above, something like a 40-man unit of elite infantry was a good way to go. The problem? Those models were $50-$60 for ten. On the other hand, monetarily cheaper basic infantry generally found a unit size of 50+ desirable.
The end result was building an army often meant spending hundreds of dollars buying multiples of the same kit to fill out a single unit. That was a both a sticker shock up front and a drag to actually do, to say nothing of armies that could or even needed to run multiple such units.
It absolutely ruined 7th. 7th WHFB might have been the most egregious edition for books that torpedoed an entire era. I feel like Vampires/Dark Elves and Daemons were the three that really sank it.
Funnily enough no one where I was played any of those so I quite enjoyed 7th only hearing the tales of woe years later.
The 7th edition dark elves and daemon (edit: and vampires--knew I forgot one) books were both broken but it was just standard run-of-the-mill broken. Abilities too strong, point costs too low, etc. Summoning as a mechanic wasn't a thing back then.
There have been multiple points of time and armies where daemon summoning in AoS has been broken though.
Olthannon wrote: I'd look to Blood Bowl for the look of new fantasy models rather than AoS.
Why? Apart from being sports teams, they’re also deliberately tongue-in-cheek (especially the star players) and slightly cartoonish.
I’d say look to TWW3 for the look of future WFB models.
That might be the case for Cathay and perhaps Kislev's newer models because we haven't seen the miniatures for them before. The total war computer models right now don't look that much like their tabletop counterparts. How they are realised in total war is not the same as the miniatures.
Whereas Blood Bowl is still tabletop Warhammer fantasy even though it's an alternative timeline. Obviously ignore the fact that they're sports teams, look more at the design styles. Particularly the teams that came out with the updated game, the imperial nobles and the black orcs. It's not a given obviously, but if you want to see testers for new fantasy, that's where to start. I think what we will see is a bit of blending. Where they will give most of the "classic" range a similar look to what it was, perhaps newer models for new armies like Cathay will have a touch more of the AoS vein to them.
Which is fine, because that's how Warhammer has always been. The "Old World" armies looked quite different to them what do come from that there "New World".
I'm particularly interested to see what will happen to the Dwarf minis, considering what happened to those poor sods.
Although I wasn't in Warhammer at the time, looking back and talking with a few folk, one thing that happened with 7th and 8th editions was the "screw you" effect. Where you used to be getting 16 - 20 figures in a box and then that ended up being 5 - 10 and yet you ended up paying more money. And as pointed out, although the army sizes didn't change too much, that made it feel like it was much more difficult to get started, particularly with horde armies. Of course for people who had been playing Fantasy for a while, they've amassed a collection and it's only a few new models to buy on releases, fine. But it turned away new players and older players didn't buy as much, meaning less money for GW.
Eldarain wrote: Biggest changes 7th-8th were fixed distance going to random charge distances and the introduction of Steadfast (unit with most ranks takes break tests on unmod LD)
This moved the focus from Cav/Monster to ranked units. As the edition evolved Monstrous Infantry/Cav became viable through sheer murder power. Magic was altered but as it was powerful across both editions in different ways I'd rank that as less of a change as the above.
That doesn't sound that bad... what am I missing?
There's a lot I have issue with regarding random charge length, and all those rules the poster brought up were brought about to compensate for the garbage increase in lethality of units during 7th. The problem was, however, that each new book was written to fully exploit those rule changes.
7th killed my momentum with WFB, 8th motivated me to sell 8 of the 12 armies we had. I would have sold 10 but my brother advised me to hold on to two of them so we could just go back to 6th. The new rules are going to have to lean a LOT more toward 6th than 8th if they want me buying in for anything more than chasing down bases and kits I need.
Olthannon wrote: I'd look to Blood Bowl for the look of new fantasy models rather than AoS.
Why? Apart from being sports teams, they’re also deliberately tongue-in-cheek (especially the star players) and slightly cartoonish.
I’d say look to TWW3 for the look of future WFB models.
That might be the case for Cathay and perhaps Kislev's newer models because we haven't seen the miniatures for them before. The total war computer models right now don't look that much like their tabletop counterparts. How they are realised in total war is not the same as the miniatures.
Whereas Blood Bowl is still tabletop Warhammer fantasy even though it's an alternative timeline. Obviously ignore the fact that they're sports teams, look more at the design styles. Particularly the teams that came out with the updated game, the imperial nobles and the black orcs. It's not a given obviously, but if you want to see testers for new fantasy, that's where to start. I think what we will see is a bit of blending. Where they will give most of the "classic" range a similar look to what it was, perhaps newer models for new armies like Cathay will have a touch more of the AoS vein to them.
Which is fine, because that's how Warhammer has always been. The "Old World" armies looked quite different to them what do come from that there "New World".
I'm particularly interested to see what will happen to the Dwarf minis, considering what happened to those poor sods.
Although I wasn't in Warhammer at the time, looking back and talking with a few folk, one thing that happened with 7th and 8th editions was the "screw you" effect. Where you used to be getting 16 - 20 figures in a box and then that ended up being 5 - 10 and yet you ended up paying more money. And as pointed out, although the army sizes didn't change too much, that made it feel like it was much more difficult to get started, particularly with horde armies. Of course for people who had been playing Fantasy for a while, they've amassed a collection and it's only a few new models to buy on releases, fine. But it turned away new players and older players didn't buy as much, meaning less money for GW.
I once again need to reiterate that people don't just get 1 army unless you price them out of multiples. Solid battalions like they used to have with 2 foot regiments, a cav unit, and a war machine/monster/whatever would be a real gateway to get people in. Add on regiments from there, but having what is essentially a playable skirmish force in one box will do more for WTOW than anything will right now.
I would like my fantasy to be about the infantry with supporting cavalry and monsters and elite (With the exceptions of armies like bretonnia, dwarfs, etc...)
The horde rules were way too good for infantry units, but in previous editions infantry was too weak vs cavalry.
I believe a middle ground could be achieved. A good thing they should do is to put cap in the maximun number of miniatures a unit can have like a Swordmaster of Hoett unit could be 5-20 miniatures or something like that, as in 40k.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Ok that makes more sense. Thanks for the explanation.
I also heard that Ward's Daemon Codex also kinda broke things with Daemon Summoning?
Summoning was never a problem, but the Daemon Codex was just on a different level, like place the army on the table and do nothing the whole game but rolling dice when you get charged or to resolve magic and you still win against 1/2 of the other armies (and we tried exactly that)
But I also have to say that I really don't know anybody who played the original 7th Edi from GW without a community FAQ/Comp as the Edition was broken by default right from the beginning and GW did not wanted to fix even minor mistakes
as an example, Beastmen moved in Skirmish Order and had the special rule to rank up in close combat to get the regular bonus for fighting like R&F formations.
and for not giving them a too big advantage the ranked exactly 4 wide by the rules to limit the possible attacks
with 7th, minimum width was increased to 5 models but the rule was kept the same and the only answer we got via FAQ from GW was, "we don't make any mistakes, this works is it should be"
so if Old World is based on 7th, it might be that the new rules are very different from what people remember 7th Edition was, not only because of different comb systems to keep the books in line, but also because of different community FAQ/Erratas around to resolve rulebook mistakes
Galas wrote: I would like my fantasy to be about the infantry with supporting cavalry and monsters and elite (With the exceptions of armies like bretonnia, dwarfs, etc...)
The horde rules were way too good for infantry units, but in previous editions infantry was too weak vs cavalry.
I believe a middle ground could be achieved. A good thing they should do is to put cap in the maximun number of miniatures a unit can have like a Swordmaster of Hoett unit could be 5-20 miniatures or something like that, as in 40k.
I used the houserules where spears basically had the pike rules from 5th and 6th. If cav charged spear units head on the spear units fought first with +1 S. Gave a decent counter to cav, enough where someone deciding to go all cav would be putting some risk on the table. The thing with that ruleset is... if you charge ... you go first. It gave a huge advantage to charging (which is why so many people switched to all cavalry armies since you had the speed and if you didn't have the speed you had to be able to handle being charged, something a lot of armies' infantry just couldn't do very well).
While charging first means attacking first, its really hard to balance out cavalry other than to make them cost more in points (which was something GW didn't want to do and led to what we had)
Solid battalions like they used to have with 2 foot regiments, a cav unit, and a war machine/monster/whatever would be a real gateway to get people in. Add on regiments from there, but having what is essentially a playable skirmish force in one box will do more for WTOW than anything will right now.
I'm thinking that's exactly how they'll do it. Plus an army v army starter box. Army size and rules will be similar to 6th edition I would guess, plus some new rules and some stuff from other editions as they mentioned in one of the articles.
Solid battalions like they used to have with 2 foot regiments, a cav unit, and a war machine/monster/whatever would be a real gateway to get people in. Add on regiments from there, but having what is essentially a playable skirmish force in one box will do more for WTOW than anything will right now.
I'm thinking that's exactly how they'll do it. Plus an army v army starter box. Army size and rules will be similar to 6th edition I would guess, plus some new rules and some stuff from other editions as they mentioned in one of the articles.
I would weep tears of joy if it happened like that...
I know that this is sort of by the by, but Duncan Rhodes has cracked out his Bretonnians and is currently reconfiguring them for use in TOW (returning them to square basing). I know he's still in touch with folk and friends at GW; maybe he knows something is pending on the horizon... a man can dream, a man can dream.
streetsamurai wrote: I think that all the old armies will have some kind of rules, a la legacy rules for aos. Don't think they'll all be supported though
"We want people to be able to use their old armies if they wish, or to start new ones, or to add new miniatures to old armies – whatever they want." ... is what they at least wrote on WarCom
Is no one going to comment on the last part of that rumour set, which is the most absurd part of it?
Those Kislev and Cathay previews are misinterpreted by some people. They do
serve more like an advice for Total War and should show how both Games
are "interlocked" based on the same Artworks and as part of World Building
for the TT Game. Also they will show that the new WHFB Game will be not
focused on the territories of the Empire as in the past. Those faction will
come for The Old World but not from the very beginning.
That alone makes the whole thing very hard to believe regardless of the rule side of things.
nathan2004 wrote: I mean they are designing those factions from the ground up whereas chaos, empire, etc have all been around a while. Makes sense to me.
For one of the first teases of their new hyped project that's a beloved return to a classic setting (beyond showing us icons on the map), they show us two effectively new factions that have no actual relevance to the tabletop miniature releases for a long time - one of which is entirely unexpected and not 'needed' - that they made primarily for the TW:W3 video game as "advice" to "interlock" the settings before showing anything that will actually be involved with the miniatures side? Just how does that make any sense?
The Total War Warhammer Computer games were planned as a Trilogy from the Beginning and long before they at GW had the idea for WoT (TW:W firstly announcement was 2014?) . I guess those Artworks exist much longer than those WoT previews imply.
RazorEdge wrote: The Total War Warhammer Computer games were planned as a Trilogy from the Beginning and long before they at GW had the idea for WoT (TW:W firstly announcement was 2014?) . I guess those Artworks exist much longer than those WoT previews imply.
They were made for The Old World, though. They've said that themselves.
and they also said that those were made for 8th Edition army books to have a base for the Total War game as this is based on 8th
so if they design TOW from ground up with 7th as base and throw in some converted 8th Edi army that never saw play before, even GW knows that this won't end up well
of course we can believe that they are going to kill the system right of with the first 2 army books just because we saw some teaser for Total War
Independent of any BoLS clickbait I could see Cathay being a faction that is only meant to be put into production down the line. It has been noted many times how disjointed GW acted during the release of Total Warhammer, ending Fantasy before its release and not doing any tie ins to cash in on its commercial success. I could see GW figuring that since Cathay is shown for Total Warhammer anyway, they might as well use the opportunity to throw out an article or two with some artwork to remind people The Old World exists and it's totally going to have all that neat stuff people loved about the video games. It's an easy way to fill their quota of half a preview per year for the game.
It would be funny not to see Kislev, though. With how the maps they introduced the project with have been Empire and Empire adjacent so far you'd think a goal for launch and post-launch was to give the game more variety than just dudes with feathers and puffy sleeves. Kislev fits that pretty well as it is to be a fully developed faction. It also allows GW to sell new models that don't have many legacy equivalents in circulation. Seems somewhat farfetched to have Kislev wait a long time for its release.
Don't forget GW of the age when TW Warhammer went live was under Kirby during the whole "we don't need consumer feedback" era of thinking and when almost all sales and investment options were compared to marine investment and returns - which meant they came up short.
GW today seems far more broadly aware that they can't just milk marines and that by doing so they actually created competing markets for themselves that 3rd parties were taking up and "poaching" customers away. They are also much more aware of consumer feedback and how important it is that it filters up the company to the top end. Sure it doesn't mean they do everything the consumers want, but I think they are more open to feedback and aware of it - and considering that since they've adopted even some basic change,s their profits went through the roof and they've hit their max production output time and time again - I think there's enough financial reward for them to continue these more positive business practices.
Overread wrote: Don't forget GW of the age when TW Warhammer went live was under Kirby during the whole "we don't need consumer feedback" era of thinking and when almost all sales and investment options were compared to marine investment and returns - which meant they came up short.
GW today seems far more broadly aware that they can't just milk marines and that by doing so they actually created competing markets for themselves that 3rd parties were taking up and "poaching" customers away. They are also much more aware of consumer feedback and how important it is that it filters up the company to the top end. Sure it doesn't mean they do everything the consumers want, but I think they are more open to feedback and aware of it - and considering that since they've adopted even some basic change,s their profits went through the roof and they've hit their max production output time and time again - I think there's enough financial reward for them to continue these more positive business practices.
...really.
I haven't particularly noitced, they seem to be milking Marines harder than ever, and whenever they take into account customer feedback they seem to apply it with a cruel, Monkey Paw-esque twist.
"New Ork boyz? Sure! Monopose and without enough weapons for any loadout."
"New Firstborn models? Sure! Completly out of scale with all of your existing ones!"
At the same time we have multiple specialist games that are no longer one-shot-wonder boxed sets. Necromunda, AT and AN are all stand alone games and of them Necromunda is basically expanding to be supported in much the same way as a "core" game. With fleshed out faction books and more.
The only hiccup we've really had there was Cursed City which was a huge mess and honestly shocking that GW didn't give at least SOME message as to things going wrong compared to Blackstone Fortress.
There's no shortage of dumb stuff to dislike, but GW has also made or brought back a lot of stuff in recent years that under Kirby would have been unthinkable. Got to take the good with the bad.
And then relentlessly complain about the bad because why wouldn't you?
Id be surprised if cathay is one of the faction released at day 1. Hopefully we get at least 4. Kislev and empire seems like a given, and if guess we get at least one flavor of elves, plus an evil faction (probably chaos)
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Geifer wrote: There's no shortage of dumb stuff to dislike, but GW has also made or brought back a lot of stuff in recent years that under Kirby would have been unthinkable. Got to take the good with the bad.
I think the roundtree era shows how incredibly incompetent kirby was. He's.not doing an incredible job imo, yet, he seems like god gift to gamers (and investors) compared to the totally inept kirby
streetsamurai wrote: Id be surprised if cathay is one of the faction released at day 1. Hopefully we get at least 4. Kislev and empire seems like a given, and if guess we get at least one flavor of elves, plus an evil faction (probably chaos)
I'd expect empire and orcs as a given, as they are classic warhammer fantasy. Chaos is also probably likely. Then I'd expect dwarfs or an elf, possibly high flavoured.
I think the roundtree era shows how incredibly incompetent kirby was. He's.not doing an incredible job imo, yet, he seems like god gift to gamers (and investors) compared to the totally inept kirby
Kirby was chairman of GW from late 90s till what, 2014? He literally made GW into a massive business. Seems like he was pretty competent until only recently (well.6 years ago)
A lot of it was because of the lotr boom. I guess he deserves some credit for it, but it came at the expense.of gutting all of gw original ip, bar 40k, and alienating a.big segment of his customers.i think gw thrived in spite of him, not because of him
The LOTR boom finally ending after the movies and the price of Pewter skyrocketing around 2007 are both contributing factors.
Then they had to get off pewter, which lead to Finecast. Which in and of itself isn't bad. The problem came because resin is toxic. Its one thing to sell it to experienced hobbyists buying from Forge World, but the target demo for WHFB and WH40K starts younger. So they used a resin that was non-toxic, which was of significantly poorer quality and lead to bubbles and details being damaged.
Added to that were the price hikes. GW started finecast to save money on metal, and metal was already more expensive than the plastic equivalent. But then the jacked the price on Resin WAAAAAY higher than metal. That turned a bunch of people off GW as well, including myself who really started to pull back from the hobby around that time.
Also the whole attitude of "We are a premium model company, not a game company." Mentality really hurt the games as well, and the rules really showed it.
I think it would be a huge mistake for them to wait on Cathay and Kislev. Not only are those the most exciting things to happen to Warhammer Fantasy since the addition of Tomb Kings, but leading with armies for the Grognards—who already own all the Empire, Dwarfs, Orcs, Chaos and Elves they could use—is a sure way to sabotage early sales and mask the true potential of the setting.
I think Bretonnians will for sure be part of the first release, they are the most in need of new models and they were the second? faction map to be released. Everyone who is a fan of fantasy wants to see new Brets so I figure that is pretty much a given.
I don't see elves being right at the start, as much as I'd love some new High Elves for my army, I just don't quite see it right at the start. Much like the Tomb Kings banner in the border princes map, I think that's just a "hey you can use your armies straight away" thing.
I think the roundtree era shows how incredibly incompetent kirby was. He's.not doing an incredible job imo, yet, he seems like god gift to gamers (and investors) compared to the totally inept kirby
Kirby was chairman of GW from late 90s till what, 2014? He literally made GW into a massive business. Seems like he was pretty competent until only recently (well.6 years ago)
He was decent in the 90s - the idea of starter box sets with two armies, the rulebook and everything needed to play was something that he pushed. Then around the middle of the 00s once the LOTR boom was over, he turned into an absolutely idiot, so many shortsighted idiotic things were done by GW from that period up until Rountree took over. Look at how the share price has skyrocketed since 2016.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think it would be a huge mistake for them to wait on Cathay and Kislev. Not only are those the most exciting things to happen to Warhammer Fantasy since the addition of Tomb Kings, but leading with armies for the Grognards—who already own all the Empire, Dwarfs, Orcs, Chaos and Elves they could use—is a sure way to sabotage early sales and mask the true potential of the setting.
Agreed you want to sell us stuff we don't have not stuff we already have
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think it would be a huge mistake for them to wait on Cathay and Kislev. Not only are those the most exciting things to happen to Warhammer Fantasy since the addition of Tomb Kings, but leading with armies for the Grognards—who already own all the Empire, Dwarfs, Orcs, Chaos and Elves they could use—is a sure way to sabotage early sales and mask the true potential of the setting.
Agreed you want to sell us stuff we don't have not stuff we already have
Yeah, a 2 army starter set with Kislev vs Norsca/ChaosUndecided or Cathay vs Daemons/Vampiretes/Ogres would be an easy route to go.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think it would be a huge mistake for them to wait on Cathay and Kislev. Not only are those the most exciting things to happen to Warhammer Fantasy since the addition of Tomb Kings, but leading with armies for the Grognards—who already own all the Empire, Dwarfs, Orcs, Chaos and Elves they could use—is a sure way to sabotage early sales and mask the true potential of the setting.
Kislev was described to us as "one of the factions that’s in the works for the return of Warhammer’s Old World" and that the concept art is for models, so I think the rumour of them and Cathay being done as TW:W3 "advice" doesn't hold up too well.
RazorEdge wrote: The rumor never said that Kislev and Cathay are "advice-only" factions.
It claims we're only really being shown previews for them because of TW:W3, rather than them being something with direct relevance to TOW TT/miniature side at this time. It says fans are misinterpreting what they're for with them not being intended as miniatures for quite a while and that Kislev and Cathay previews are more "advice for Total War" that "show how both Games are "interlocked""
There's a big difference between Kislev and Cathay. Not only in lore proximity to the conventional factions but in terms of historical production; Kislev never had a book but did get a full army list and several miniature kits for WHFB. They were an entirely playable faction at one point.
The longer we are in this holding pattern for any sort of formal press release of the game with shots of the models and clarity of the exact nature of the rules, the more ridiculous naysay garbage gets spouted in here by people who I'm starting to think just want this to flop.
*GW sends out the "... even squares" post followed by the logo
THIS THREAD: "It won't be squares, don't get your hopes up." "This will be an AOS port, not a return to WFB." "This will be Warmaster for AOS." "This will be Warmaster relaunched."
*GW releases press release stating that NONE of those things are true
THIS THREAD: "It'll still be AOS rules." "I'm still thinking it's Warmaster." "They won't bring back old factions."
*GW states old factions ARE coming back as well as Kislev and Cathay designed explicitly for W:TOW and TW:W3
THIS THREAD: "There's no way they release those two armies for this edition." "They will just port over AOS models." "I can't see them releasing Cathay and Kislev for this edition." "The old armies aren't coming back, the map is nothing but a picture."
GODS this is so annoying. WFB is coming back, it'll be in the normal scale, it'll be on squares, there will be rules for ALL the older factions as well as the new ones, and you won't lose your AOS in order W:TOW to come out.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think it would be a huge mistake for them to wait on Cathay and Kislev. Not only are those the most exciting things to happen to Warhammer Fantasy since the addition of Tomb Kings, but leading with armies for the Grognards—who already own all the Empire, Dwarfs, Orcs, Chaos and Elves they could use—is a sure way to sabotage early sales and mask the true potential of the setting.
I haven't often met wargamers who considered their collection for any army truly "finished". Do I need a second Forest Dragon? Definitely not. Would I buy a nice looking new plastic one? Certainly. Would a Chaos player gladly shelf the ugly old Marauders in favour of a few new units? Probably. Would Dwarf, Empire, or Greenskin players enjoy getting some additional sets of the boxes that have been out of production for ages now? Presumably, yes. Heck, I'd be as excited to buy a set of currently OOP models as I'd be for a set of new sculpts in some cases.
That said, I'd certainly expect Kislev to appear fairly early on, quite possibly in a launch box (having a new faction in there could be a big draw... though it's no guarantee for success). While Cathay may be fancy and new, I couldn't care less about them. I'm more excited about redone High Elf core troops or even just bringing Glade Riders or Empire Archers back into production than anything in that line. Over time, I might grow to like Cathay just like I basically like any other WHFB faction in some way or another, but currently they're just... a thing. And not (yet) a Warhammer thing. Relaunching an old game and universe by focussing on things that were not a part of the old game and barely of the universe would be an interesting strategy, but not one that'll draw me in.
Yeah I was going to say new models for the older armies in plastic with the new sculpting tech would offer a lot. My old dwarf army started in 3rd ed and I added to to it continually whenever better sculpts came out. Bar the Ironbreakers and Hammerers the older dwarf plastics aren't great. You put up new dwarf sculpts the quality of the Kharadron range and Gotrek I'd be all over them!
I definitely think they'll use the opportunity to bring new models out - Norse Dwarfs for example as well as Cathay and Kislev but they can bring back a lot of old players by bringing updated fish kits for their old collections.
Not sure if Kislev or Cathay would feature in a starter set as they are unproven as collected factions. That said the concepts for Total War looks amazing and they can tease them to gauge the appeal.
They could also bring back Regiments of Renown as ways of adding old armies, plus the older timeline of the setting helps too.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think it would be a huge mistake for them to wait on Cathay and Kislev. Not only are those the most exciting things to happen to Warhammer Fantasy since the addition of Tomb Kings, but leading with armies for the Grognards—who already own all the Empire, Dwarfs, Orcs, Chaos and Elves they could use—is a sure way to sabotage early sales and mask the true potential of the setting.
I never understand the "Fantasy died because grogs don't buy new models!" thing. If that were true then no model company would ever release new, updated sculpts. GW would never have released Primaris because surely all those Marine players would never rebuy a whole army, right? Or another example, surely all of those CSM players will never use the new, updated models and stick to the 2001 plastics? But every army I see now is 90% Primaris, or Chaos armies are 100% using the new plastics.
I'm sure a lot of people will say "I'm just going to use my old Fantasy models and not buy the updated ones" but like with all things when it comes to GW and their products, the fanbase has shown it has the impulse control of a meth addict left alone in a cook lab.
GODS this is so annoying. WFB is coming back, it'll be in the normal scale, it'll be on squares, there will be rules for ALL the older factions as well as the new ones, and you won't lose your AOS in order W:TOW to come out.
I've even seen a guy who insists that TOW is only a publicity stunt to boost Total War. His reasoning:
- WHFB is dead and GW would obviously never bring it back as it "hurts" aos and 40k.
- It has been a while since the first announcement and for now there are only a few maps and concept art for the video game.
- No minis after 2 years = not going to happen.
- WH community is just poking the old grognards for fun.
Absolutely mindblown by the logic.
Anyway, I can see them launching the game without Kislev or Cathay for starters. Those need to be done from zero, so lots of time and work. If they focus on the rules and a few kits to repackage the whole thing, it could be out way sooner.
I wonder how time-consuming it really is sculpt-wise seeing as most of the models can be ripped from TW:WH and adjusted in whatever program they use probably? They're not painstakingly hand-sculpting each one after all.
VBS wrote: I've even seen a guy who insists that TOW is only a publicity stunt to boost Total War.
It is unheard of for GW to announce a game so far ahead of time, so I don't doubt that choice was a publicity stunt. It's a bit of a stretch to say the whole thing was a publicity stunt and they're not actually working on a game, but I don't blame someone for thinking that way. Vapourware is a thing and it could happen here, as unlikely as that may be at this point.
Cronch wrote: I wonder how time-consuming it really is sculpt-wise seeing as most of the models can be ripped from TW:WH and adjusted in whatever program they use probably? They're not painstakingly hand-sculpting each one after all.
They can make most infantry units just by taking a single model and copying it a few times and adjusting it slightly each time.
Kind of like the entire Space Marine line, but on a smaller scale.
Just Tony wrote: GODS this is so annoying. WFB is coming back, it'll be in the normal scale, it'll be on squares, there will be rules for ALL the older factions as well as the new ones, and you won't lose your AOS in order W:TOW to come out.
I agree with all of that, even if the last one is disappointing...
Just Tony wrote: GODS this is so annoying. WFB is coming back, it'll be in the normal scale, it'll be on squares, there will be rules for ALL the older factions as well as the new ones, and you won't lose your AOS in order W:TOW to come out.
I agree with all of that, even if the last one is disappointing...
No need to be an ass just because people like something you don't. But it is concerning they seem to leaning so human-centric at the off. If it does turn out to be Empire, Cathay, Kislev and Brettonia at launch, it will make it very dull.
Cronch wrote: I wonder how time-consuming it really is sculpt-wise seeing as most of the models can be ripped from TW:WH and adjusted in whatever program they use probably? They're not painstakingly hand-sculpting each one after all.
Yes and no.
3D for games is very different to 3D for STLs and 3D printing. First up you've got to fix the files to even print and then you can still have a lot of issues. Video games often have a lot of parts that are designed which simply flow into each other. Armour that just vanishes into other bits of armour. This is generally ok for video games like TW because even zoomed in everything is moving so its a bit hidden and the game isn't trying to mimic perfect motion of armours and body parts. However its still you very much see with a still sculpt if chunks of armour are just vanishing into other chunks etc...
Finally GW doesn't 3D print as a product, they use masters yes, but the actual product is cast plastic. That means its got to be designed and detail sculpted so that it will work with plastic injection moulding. TW designs don't even have to consider that so they will have overhangs and angles and such that would be a nightmare to work with. Heck even with 3D printing if you're not careful you can end up with insanely difficult to support areas or access with a paint brush and such.
Honestly its likely a lot easier for GW to just let their designers work from the ground up than it is to try and rework designs that just aren't made for cast model production.
Cronch wrote: I wonder how time-consuming it really is sculpt-wise seeing as most of the models can be ripped from TW:WH and adjusted in whatever program they use probably? They're not painstakingly hand-sculpting each one after all.
Yes and no.
3D for games is very different to 3D for STLs and 3D printing. First up you've got to fix the files to even print and then you can still have a lot of issues. Video games often have a lot of parts that are designed which simply flow into each other. Armour that just vanishes into other bits of armour. This is generally ok for video games like TW because even zoomed in everything is moving so its a bit hidden and the game isn't trying to mimic perfect motion of armours and body parts. However its still you very much see with a still sculpt if chunks of armour are just vanishing into other chunks etc...
Finally GW doesn't 3D print as a product, they use masters yes, but the actual product is cast plastic. That means its got to be designed and detail sculpted so that it will work with plastic injection moulding. TW designs don't even have to consider that so they will have overhangs and angles and such that would be a nightmare to work with. Heck even with 3D printing if you're not careful you can end up with insanely difficult to support areas or access with a paint brush and such.
Honestly its likely a lot easier for GW to just let their designers work from the ground up than it is to try and rework designs that just aren't made for cast model production.
Not only is all of this true (Adeptus Titanicus has similar issues but along a different axis) but it is also prudent from a legal perspective to make sure that the sculptors work directly from in-house concept art. Derivative copyright and trademarks are a thing and a major headache to untangle should an agreement expire without a defined settlement. This is how Coca-Cola lost the trademark to one of their own logos to an artist they hired to do work for them. Admittedly that was mostly viable because of a timing mix-up that allowed the original trademark to expire but that really only proves that mistakes happen and can have significant consequences.
Ahh yes that's very true, whilst CA needs the GW licence to make and sell TW Warhammer; GW would need a licence from CA to use CA's actual designs for them. That just creates a messy cycle of potential legal issues in the future and might even cost GW more in the short term to buy that licence for manufacture and sale of designs; than it would just to pay in-house staff to work for them on the designs.
Just Tony wrote: GODS this is so annoying. WFB is coming back, it'll be in the normal scale, it'll be on squares, there will be rules for ALL the older factions as well as the new ones, and you won't lose your AOS in order W:TOW to come out.
I agree with all of that, even if the last one is disappointing...
No need to be an ass just because people like something you don't. But it is concerning they seem to leaning so human-centric at the off. If it does turn out to be Empire, Cathay, Kislev and Brettonia at launch, it will make it very dull.
I doubt it will be that human-centric, even thought the maps (and other art) they've shown give that impression. For starters, some kind of two-faction launch box seems a given, and I can't see them 1) putting in two human factions (even 40k is typically more diverse than that, despite always including Marines), and 2) almost any combination of armies is a more iconic match-up than some version of those 4. Admittedly, point 2) is historically variable (Dwarfs v Night Goblins, yes, Brets v Lizardmen... erm, not quite so much), but it seems a logical strategy for the relaunch. Empire versus Orcs could be a nice shout: iconic armies, classic match-up, nostalgia from the 6th edition box, updated sculpts for the old and OOP Orcs, as well as for the little-loved State Troops (new ones obviously need some puffed sleeves and less zombie-esque facial sculpts).
Another thing, the whole map focus is of course also due to the nature of things - if Beastmen and Skaven were more into openly settling in places, their coats of arms might well have appeared. The Wood Elves were depicted prominently on the Bretonnia map too, while they also highlighted the High Elven outposts, and Dwarfs and Greenskins were also clearly shown on several maps.
Overread wrote: Ahh yes that's very true, whilst CA needs the GW licence to make and sell TW Warhammer; GW would need a licence from CA to use CA's actual designs for them. That just creates a messy cycle of potential legal issues in the future and might even cost GW more in the short term to buy that licence for manufacture and sale of designs; than it would just to pay in-house staff to work for them on the designs.
I'd be surprised if GW don't have some clauses in their contracts with CA that assets developed for and from GW products remain GW's property.
But I don't even know if most WHFB would be computer models to begin with, when did GW start using CAD?
I don't know much about pre-CAD injection moulding, but wouldn't they make a master of the entire sprue, then a machine would replicate that onto a mould? Or maybe they'd make the inverse of a sprue to be copied?
VBS wrote: I've even seen a guy who insists that TOW is only a publicity stunt to boost Total War.
It is unheard of for GW to announce a game so far ahead of time, so I don't doubt that choice was a publicity stunt. It's a bit of a stretch to say the whole thing was a publicity stunt and they're not actually working on a game, but I don't blame someone for thinking that way. Vapourware is a thing and it could happen here, as unlikely as that may be at this point.
It was undoubtedly a publicity stunt considering it was announced about a month after Kings of War 3.0 was. It worked because now most rank and file talk has turned to "I'm only playing [KoW/Oathmark/Conquest/9thAge] until TOW is out!"
Overread wrote: Ahh yes that's very true, whilst CA needs the GW licence to make and sell TW Warhammer; GW would need a licence from CA to use CA's actual designs for them. That just creates a messy cycle of potential legal issues in the future and might even cost GW more in the short term to buy that licence for manufacture and sale of designs; than it would just to pay in-house staff to work for them on the designs.
I'd be surprised if GW don't have some clauses in their contracts with CA that assets developed for and from GW products remain GW's property.
But I don't even know if most WHFB would be computer models to begin with, when did GW start using CAD?
I don't know much about pre-CAD injection moulding, but wouldn't they make a master of the entire sprue, then a machine would replicate that onto a mould? Or maybe they'd make the inverse of a sprue to be copied?
Pre-CAD the sculpts were manually cut into the die using a milling machine slaved to a 3:1 pantograph - hence the old “3 up” masters that occasionally appear - then the runners and vents were cut afterwards. Of course they had experience and some mathematical tools to assist in developing the layout but it was nowhere near as precise as today. And yeah, occasionally a runner just wouldn’t work properly so they had to re-cut it and block off the channels. Leaving room for that was part of why the old sprues were so empty (the other being injector pressure limits).
These days the whole thing is pre-calculated and simulated before cutting the whole thing as a single automated run.
(Source:- talking to one of the tool room guys at games day ‘96 so please allow for fuzziness of memory)
Hm, predicting what the starter factions will be...
I'm betting Empire vs Greenskins. Two iconic yet average (relatively speaking) factions, strong availability for resculpts that should be both hard to mess up and are in need of resculpts anyways, and as a side benefit lines up nicely for miniatures getting crossover use in AoS.
Overread wrote: Ahh yes that's very true, whilst CA needs the GW licence to make and sell TW Warhammer; GW would need a licence from CA to use CA's actual designs for them. That just creates a messy cycle of potential legal issues in the future and might even cost GW more in the short term to buy that licence for manufacture and sale of designs; than it would just to pay in-house staff to work for them on the designs.
I'd be surprised if GW don't have some clauses in their contracts with CA that assets developed for and from GW products remain GW's property.
But I don't even know if most WHFB would be computer models to begin with, when did GW start using CAD?
I don't know much about pre-CAD injection moulding, but wouldn't they make a master of the entire sprue, then a machine would replicate that onto a mould? Or maybe they'd make the inverse of a sprue to be copied?
Pre-CAD the sculpts were manually cut into the die using a milking machine slaved to a 3:1 pantograph - hence the old “3 up” masters that occasionally appear - then the runners and vents were cut afterwards. Of course they had experience and some mathematical tools to assist in developing the layout but it was nowhere near as precise as today. And yeah, occasionally a runner just wouldn’t work properly so they had to re-cut it and block off the channels. Leaving room for that was part of why the old sprues were so empty (the other being injector pressure limits).
These days the whole thing is pre-calculated and simulated before cutting the whole thing as a single automated run.
(Source:- talking to one of the tool room guys at games day ‘96 so please allow for fuzziness of memory)
Yeah, I thought it was something along those lines, as I've seen 3 ups and I've also seen "prototype" sprues (full sprues) of model aircraft that weren't metal and I assumed were masters from which metal moulds were cut.
Though I figured to make a mould you'd need your master to be an inverse of the actual part, so maybe you sculpt a master, then make a separate mould off that then machine the mould off that? And some parts are hollow, so I guess you'd need a separate master that has the internal shape to be cut into the other half of the mould?
I think Empire in the starting box is a given, there's also the civil war happening in the timeline so I figure there will be upgrade sprues abound for the specific factions.
Cathay vs Kislev would be fun, if only for the “wait, but, how" factor. Which is easy; Kislev is closer to Cathay, because the world gets narrower at the top. :p
RazorEdge wrote: Empire vs. Orcs
Empire vs. Chaos
Kisley vs Chaos
Empire & Kislev vs Chaos
Those are the most realistic starter Sets - in my oppinion. One of them will comming for sure.
I'm not particularly convinced. We've bizarrely heard nothing about non-human armies. I don't think they'll go so far as to do none, but there focus so far leaves us completely in the dark as to their intentions when it comes to their release model or flagship product.
Cronch wrote: I wonder how time-consuming it really is sculpt-wise seeing as most of the models can be ripped from TW:WH and adjusted in whatever program they use probably? They're not painstakingly hand-sculpting each one after all.
Yes and no.
3D for games is very different to 3D for STLs and 3D printing. First up you've got to fix the files to even print and then you can still have a lot of issues. Video games often have a lot of parts that are designed which simply flow into each other. Armour that just vanishes into other bits of armour. This is generally ok for video games like TW because even zoomed in everything is moving so its a bit hidden and the game isn't trying to mimic perfect motion of armours and body parts. However its still you very much see with a still sculpt if chunks of armour are just vanishing into other chunks etc...
Finally GW doesn't 3D print as a product, they use masters yes, but the actual product is cast plastic. That means its got to be designed and detail sculpted so that it will work with plastic injection moulding. TW designs don't even have to consider that so they will have overhangs and angles and such that would be a nightmare to work with. Heck even with 3D printing if you're not careful you can end up with insanely difficult to support areas or access with a paint brush and such.
Honestly its likely a lot easier for GW to just let their designers work from the ground up than it is to try and rework designs that just aren't made for cast model production.
Don't forget that TW:WH models are pretty low poly compared to anything you'd want to print, with most of the detail created via clever textures and bump mapping. It takes a *lot* of work to turn them into anything printable. Take it from someone who's printed a whole bunch of spawn from the game.
Honestly, I just thought of using the existing WHTW models to base the sculpts on for GW sculptors so the baseline is done and the minis look like what most potential players are familiar with, not that GW would literally print them out...
RazorEdge wrote: Empire vs. Orcs
Empire vs. Chaos
Kisley vs Chaos
Empire & Kislev vs Chaos
Those are the most realistic starter Sets - in my oppinion. One of them will comming for sure.
I'm not particularly convinced. We've bizarrely heard nothing about non-human armies. I don't think they'll go so far as to do none, but there focus so far leaves us completely in the dark as to their intentions when it comes to their release model or flagship product.
Now this is a dangerous thought, but would it be inconceivable to think that since GW more than likely still has molds from older kits that some of the previous starter sets or plastic kits could be easily thrown in? If that's the case, then you have the last three WFB starter sets easily ported in. Granted the last two had the sprues so intertwined that the factions couldn't be separated out, but it leaves the possibility. Hell, it leaves the possibility for multiple "versus" sets if they so see fit. Some have some problematic loadouts, like the lone Troll, but it's still plausible.
Island of Blood was one of the best wargame starters of all time. That stuff looked as good if not a hell of a lot better than countless kits still on GWs lineup.
MajorWesJanson wrote: A big question is how far back did GW use the cad design software for making sprues, how many of the old warhammer kits are digital?
Every Release after the Orc and Goblin release in the early 7th Edition. They were the first release with Cad Miniatures and the only with an mix.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Island of Blood was one of the best wargame starters of all time. That stuff looked as good if not a hell of a lot better than countless kits still on GWs lineup.
I'd put money on an Empire vs Orcs starter box. They're fairly easy to understand and popular factions and a match up that happens often in the fluff. Chaos would be a contender but for the fact that the timeline is set before the Great War against Chaos, so Chaos shouldn't be front and centre but lurking just off stage. From a fluffy perspective Chaos warrior warbands entering the Empire should be few and far between at this time.
Empire vs Empire would probably make a lot of sense given the timeline but it makes no commercial sense, so that's out of the reckoning.
As a wildcard, I'd pick Kislev popping up in some form considering they were the first faction to have artwork revealed but I suspect that's probably a product of the TWW3 development happening simultaneously.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Island of Blood was one of the best wargame starters of all time. That stuff looked as good if not a hell of a lot better than countless kits still on GWs lineup.
The High Elf Prince on Griffon to this day is one of the best sculpts they've ever produced.
I really hope when they’re writing the background for the Empire someone takes the opportunity to officially add the term Goldswords into the lore as a unit of two handed sword wielding men who were extremely expensive to employ.
Joyboozer wrote: I really hope when they’re writing the background for the Empire someone takes the opportunity to officially add the term Goldswords into the lore as a unit of two handed sword wielding men who were extremely expensive to employ.
Mr_Rose wrote: Cathay vs Kislev would be fun, if only for the “wait, but, how" factor. Which is easy; Kislev is closer to Cathay, because the world gets narrower at the top. :p
Also but...why?
Hoping for Kislev or Cathay vs Chaos - mainly because might get new Ulrika model (Human and vampire for extra awesomeness) or Miao Ying (human and Dagon) like we had with Morathi
Mr_Rose wrote: Cathay vs Kislev would be fun, if only for the “wait, but, how" factor. Which is easy; Kislev is closer to Cathay, because the world gets narrower at the top. :p
Also but...why?
Hoping for Kislev or Cathay vs Chaos - mainly because might get new Ulrika model (Human and vampire for extra awesomeness) or Miao Ying (human and Dagon) like we had with Morathi
If one box had Cathay and Kislev, it would be a box to buy. Kislev and chaos…I’ll see what the Kislev half goes for. Oh, a lot. And the actual Kislev release wave will be even more ridiculously priced? Cool cool cool.
And no, I don’t consider “just sell the chaos half (for peanuts)” an appealing option.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Island of Blood was one of the best wargame starters of all time. That stuff looked as good if not a hell of a lot better than countless kits still on GWs lineup.
And then it came back as a set for AoS for 65€.
Good times.
And then went out of production again, sad times T-T
Joyboozer wrote: I really hope when they’re writing the background for the Empire someone takes the opportunity to officially add the term Goldswords into the lore as a unit of two handed sword wielding men who were extremely expensive to employ.
The Empire has already a Unit with Greatswords.
Yes. A unit of the miniatures was so expensive to buy they were dubbed goldswords by the community.
MajorWesJanson wrote: A big question is how far back did GW use the cad design software for making sprues, how many of the old warhammer kits are digital?
Every Release after the Orc and Goblin release in the early 7th Edition. They were the first release with Cad Miniatures and the only with an mix.
I know the Battle for Skull Pass troll was CAD, because it has the same base torso as the (much) later plaguebearer kit.
'We will see a preview for Warhammer The Old World at the beginningw of next Year, this one will be bigger than those we saw in the past and since the Game was the first Time announced in November 2019.
This preview will be a bit more precise about the Game.
The Ruleset for Warhammer the Old World will be 7th Edition to the core,
but with smaller influences from the 5th, 6th and 8th Editions. They
understood that the 8th was too big in the sense of Army building, even for
GW Games.
The Core Rules are more or teaser completed and work on the Starter Sets
written content and early expansions will soon starting but Miniatures are
still in Work
There will be a new concept of Expansions Books and three Compendium-like
Tomes for 8th Edition Armies before The End Times in a format like Ravening
Hordes from the early 6th Edition.
It looks like that the concept of Armybooks will stay and continue and The
Old World becomes something like the 9th Edition WHFB.'
'We will see a preview for Warhammer The Old World at the beginningw of next Year, this one will be bigger than those we saw in the past and since the Game was the first Time announced in November 2019.
This preview will be a bit more precise about the Game.
The Ruleset for Warhammer the Old World will be 7th Edition to the core,
but with smaller influences from the 5th, 6th and 8th Editions. They
understood that the 8th was too big in the sense of Army building, even for
GW Games.
The Core Rules are more or teaser completed and work on the Starter Sets
written content and early expansions will soon starting but Miniatures are
still in Work
There will be a new concept of Expansions Books and three Compendium-like
Tomes for 8th Edition Armies before The End Times in a format like Ravening
Hordes from the early 6th Edition.
It looks like that the concept of Armybooks will stay and continue and The
Old World becomes something like the 9th Edition WHFB.'
My issue with this is that it implies the rules have come before the miniatures, which would be in stark contrast to what has been reported, and so far as I can tell, evidenced over the last decade at least.
The whole "models before rules" kind of is the normal when GW is adding models to existing games and armies.
However in that case its more talking about the specific rules for the models themselves rather than the rules for the game itself, which is already established and running.
I'm sure that when GW is making a brand new game the rules almost have to come before the models because the rules will define key aspects of how the factions will work and thus what models are needed to make the game work. What scale, what style (free form or rank and file has a big impact on sculpts), what structure. There's no point in the designers releasing 20 character models and 1 infantry for a game that's about rank and file infantry with a few characters.
I suspect that rules came first in establishing a baseline for how the game would function at its core. Then likely concurrent rule and model development so that the creative staff could be guided by the core structure of the game. After that's established then the creative staff are likely more free to do what they want and add in wild-card releases
We've always heard that GW is design led in that models come then rules; however its clear that there are also elements of rules leading models in so far as "you guys are going to work on SoB for a big SoB release" kind of deal.
Depends on the faction I suppose.
The Empire should be pretty much fine since the only kits it really lost were Characters, the Warshrine, and Archers. Freeguild still have 17 units on the Webstore and many of those are core Empire units.
Obviously, Kislev, Brettonia, and Cathay are all going to need new kits so there's that. The map IIRC had some Dorfs and Wood Elves but those ranges have been gutted to fit into CoS. In fact, the only two factions that seem to have retained most of their rosters are the Dark Elves (split into about 4 subfactions but still) and the Empire. Even WHFB Orcs are pretty much gone with only some Gloomspite and Bonesplitterz left.
I think its naive to assume that GW started designing a new ruleset set in a new time period only to rerelease its existing back catalog of old and dated sculpts that nobody bought when they were still considered state of the art.
chaos0xomega wrote: I think its naive to assume that GW started designing a new ruleset set in a new time period only to rerelease its existing back catalog of old and dated sculpts that nobody bought when they were still considered state of the art.
How much do you think ancient races like the High Elves changed in a few hundred years? Do you suspect Chaos or Beastmen differed greatly before Karl Franz came about? Did the fine folks down in Khemri go through a massive Nu Wave fashion change just before Franz hit the scene, and all collectively decided to ditch their 1920's Flapper style and switch to more Ancient Egyptian themes? Or is it more likely that they were Ancient Egyptian themed 100, 200 even 500 years prior to Fancy Franz?
chaos0xomega wrote: I think its naive to assume that GW started designing a new ruleset set in a new time period only to rerelease its existing back catalog of old and dated sculpts that nobody bought when they were still considered state of the art.
Several of those sets are STILL BEING SOLD for Sigmar. You know that, right?
With a mold that has already "paid for itself", there is little investment to pull it out of storage and bang out some sprues. They've rereleased stuff from 3rd/4th Edition through Revell, so I'd say the chances of them having the capacity to rerelease WFB boxed sets is pretty high.
As for not buying back then? Blame the 8th Ed. meta for that. gak was selling like hotcakes during 6th and mid to late 7th. It wasn't until the boxed sets were dropped to about half the model count for the exact same price overnight that did the damage.
chaos0xomega wrote: I think its naive to assume that GW started designing a new ruleset set in a new time period only to rerelease its existing back catalog of old and dated sculpts that nobody bought when they were still considered state of the art.
Yean, id be rather surprised if they do so,.bar maybe for the less popular army (khemri) which would get sold direct only
Doing 7th makes sense as 6th was a complete rules set with several expensions and Erratas (and is still around) while 8th is the one most community rules are based on
So 7th Edi with Index books, adding rules for all models that came prior EndTimes, to have something for people to start.
It is something no one really has, it will be different enough to what people played during that time and after (as 7th was the comp-edition, not a lot people played the original rules)
Going with Index and rules without models is a must to get as many people into the game with the initial hype and keep them long enough until they buy in a full new army with the new army books
GW has done this with Horus Heresy and should know how those things work
Yet, I don't think they know why the game started failing with 7th, what the problem with 7th were and that most people already used a community version of the game to play during that time
while most local hardcore tournament players from 7th already make jokes about the game as how easy it was to cheat, as soon as you need to make adjustments to the official rules because some of the old "copy&paste" mistakes are still there, the big "hype" won't be there until the new armies with new models are released (and than it could be too late)
So 7th Edi with Index books, adding rules for all models that came prior EndTimes, to have something for people to start.
It is something no one really has, it will be different enough to what people played during that time and after (as 7th was the comp-edition, not a lot people played the original rules)
Could you say more about what made 7th comp-ed and what challenges that made for friendly pick up games etc.
I feel that the lure of having an "official" and "current" game being released will be a draw for many old timers and new players as well. Not sure if the 9th age and similar fan versions players will go en masse back to The Old World, but I dont really see them growing much either on the tournament scene as long as GW is publishing a real game with models.
So 7th Edi with Index books, adding rules for all models that came prior EndTimes, to have something for people to start.
It is something no one really has, it will be different enough to what people played during that time and after (as 7th was the comp-edition, not a lot people played the original rules)
Could you say more about what made 7th comp-ed and what challenges that made for friendly pick up games etc.
For friendly and pick up games it was more difficult to find games with default rules rather than comp
This was also the time were GW refused to make Errata/FAQ (while playing a different game, as the famous tactics articles in WD named equipment or rules that was not there in the published game, while ignoring those that were) so the main thing was to have a community Errata/FAQ which extended to change unit rules (like with Beastmen were the rule to rank up did not work) or added 0-1 restrictions on some to keep the books in line
The main comp in German speaking countries was Lore of Akito with basic adjustments (in the beginning, at the end of 7th it had armies in 3 categories were catA played with 2000 points and catC with 2450 points so that those had a chance) while the different tournaments had their own scenario packs and further restrictions if needed
Just Tony wrote: 7th? This is an odd play for the Trade Federation...
I was thinking the same thing. People like 6th, and people like 8th, but I've never heard of anybody playing 7th except when 7th was live.
7th was especially bad because of the armybooks at the time; the core rules were somewhat between 6th and 8th in some ways at least, so not that terrible a place to start from if the contemporary armybooks will be heavily updated.
That said, this feels like a bit of a non-rumour. No real testable details or major unexpected things, aside from the statement on design stages, but that one is difficult to interpret (after the start, there will be continuous development of both rules and models, obviously). Furthermore, "this one will be bigger than those we saw in the past and since the Game was the first Time announced in November 2019" seems a strange statement from someone with supposed insider knowledge, as it appears to rely on the former announcement date as an argument rather than independent knowledge of these matters. Yes, it's high time they give more details, but they could have done that a year ago and it might equally well take another 6 months before we learn something worthwhile. Saying we'll get a Ravening Hordes style temporary solution for older armies is one of the safest rumours I can imagine, and numerous people have predicted that from the start. "Armybooks will stay"? Well, I'd say so, they even do that for Necromunda these days. GW loves selling books.
"The Old World
I have some (not so positive" Rumors) about Warhammer - The Old War...
As said in an earlier mail, there will be no miniature previews before mid
2022.
Model Ranges are already in the Work, but the most progressing Part of the
Reboot is the Backstory and the Freerooms they have because the different
timeline.
Early Factions for the Game will be no brainers and all time community favs
like the Empire, Orcs and Goblins, Dwarfs and Chaos. Those factions are
focused the most but others are in the work, but do not expect Cathay or
other niche factions too early, those will need years after the reboot to
come to light.
Release could be Summer 2023, but that Date isn't finally set. Covid
brought more trouble for GW than everyone believes...
New Edition Timelines
They're also internal changes for Warhammer the Old World. The main Studio
is more involved in this project, which was the idea of the oldest Studio
Members.
Also the established release shedule for GW in the last years is mostly
obsolete thanks to Covid: They can't no longer bring new Editions every
three years.
via a solid source on Faeit 212 Parts 1 and 2
I got informations about those "Compendium" Books for Warhammer The Old
Word.
Those Compendiums will timeline-wise set in the old WHFB Timeline include Rules for all Units from 8th Edition Army Books before the End Times was released. Characters inclusive but no Nagash or Glottkin etcetera.
New Rulebook, Army Books and Expansions will then set in the new Timeline of Warhammer The Old World.
-this was our source in the comment sections from Part 1! So always a good place to look and join in on the conversations.
The Books will also include rules for all Characters and Units before The End Times was released and set in the old Timeline of WHFB."
BobtheInquisitor wrote: So, they’re putting off the new miniatures until after the game has already failed into abandonment? That’ll bring the customers.
Remember, GW released AoS months after the first trailer for Total War Warhammer was dropped. They are adept at dodging free marketing and advertisement opportunities.
More solid information right from Games Workshop is, that they are hiring a Graphic Designer and a Miniature Designer aswell, for both Horus Heresy, Blood Bowl and Warhammer: The Old World.
'At Games Workshop we are looking for people who will do their best to understand the needs of the company and to put those needs first when they are at work. Because of this we believe that what you are like, hence the attitude you show to work and the way you choose to behave is even more important than your skills or experience.'
... I kind of get what they mean with the last sentence, but pretty sure skills are more important than the way you behave, for a result based job like graphic design.
no, as skills can be learned but your devotion to the company cannot
they don't want someone who is good but not 100% loyal to GW and rather take someone who would pay to work for them but need training
for the most important part about those, it is confirmed that TOW will me a Specialist Games Studio Game, among 3 other games so will have similar attention and production slots as the other 3
If the cover letter isn't suitable you won't even get an interview. GW looks for people with the drive and interest first (the live and breathe aspect), then they see if you're up to scratch in the interview.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: So, they’re putting off the new miniatures until after the game has already failed into abandonment? That’ll bring the customers.
Remember, GW released AoS months after the first trailer for Total War Warhammer was dropped. They are adept at dodging free marketing and advertisement opportunities.
They are. This being said, I would put money on a fairly sizable TOW update around a few weeks to a month after TWW3's release.
This. And it's always the same person with german-speaking background not able to write nouns without starting with a capital letter... There may even be some true information in it but the messages (like the Horus Heresy ones) are so... how would one person know all this? Feels bloated with guesswork
Gert wrote: In fact, the only two factions that seem to have retained most of their rosters are the Dark Elves (split into about 4 subfactions but still) and the Empire. Even WHFB Orcs are pretty much gone with only some Gloomspite and Bonesplitterz left.
Orcs still have Black Orcs, too. But yes, without normal Orcs an Goblins the army lost its core - not every one wants to play Night Goblins.
Other factions that are ready to play with their remaining models are Skaven (nearly full range), Beastmen (too, lost only their special characters) and Vampire Counts (well, Zombies and Skeletons are new - don't know how good they fit in a regiment - but Ghouls and Wights are still there and it shouldn't be a problem to use new Blood Knights, Dire Wolves and Black Coach on fitting square bases). Ogre Kingdoms too, but the timeline might be to early to see them as whole armies.
