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Skull Pass is now 2 years old so GW has to be thinking ahead to the next Fantasy starter box (Blood Field? Spike Canyon? Death Road? the mind boggles at the options!).

What might go in there?

The Tomb Kings must be getting long in the teeth, 5, 6 years or more? And they`re a good hoard army and easy to paint.
Bretts must also be getting on in years, 5 years? And knights are fun to paint.
Ogres, about the same 5 years, wouldn`t need too many models, would look good in the box, nice contrast with whatever good guys go in.
Elfs or Empire have been redone recently but are kind of the default good guys.

As I collected both Bretonnians & Tomb Kings back in the day, I'd like to see those armies in the 'Death comes to Moussilon' set

Plus I think chilvaric Knights of the Realm would make a great contrast from shambling Skeletons/Chariots and a plastic Screaming Skull Catapult

space marinez huh!

actually a fantasy 40k cross over with chaos dwarves versus squats

Skaven vs. Empire?

Would be cool to bring out new clanrat models. For empire, you could use anoher good army, bretonians for example.

Greets
Schepp himself

High Elves should be up next for the Good Guys.

5th was Brets, 6th was Empire, and 7th is Dwarves. So that leaves High Elves as the obvious choice, as Welves are kind of tainted with their Daemons and sneakiness.

For "evil", 5th was Lizards, 6th was Orcs, and 7th is Gobbos. As High Elves are the good guys, you can't do Dark Elves as the bad guys. Undead and Ogres are too rules-breaky. That leaves Skaven and Chaos (Mortals / Daemons / Beasts). Beasts don't rank normally, and Daemons are too wierd. So either Mortals or Skaven.

I think Skaven is better as Elves are more human-looking.

High Elves vs Skaven!

yea, undead would be a terrible army for teaching combat mechanics, as would the magic involved with them...
ogres with bull charges, different ranking, wounds, etc would also make them very difficult for beginners...

the thing you guys are missing is that it should also be somewhat fluffy as well...

i think it would be cool to see lizards against skaven...
or maybe high elves and dark elves?

High Elves versus Dark Elves would actually make for a good box. If you like Elves: Hey! Guess What? There's 2 kinds in here! Not bad to teach all aspects as they both have good movement, magic, shooting and combat aspects. Both have recently released models/rules and have an interesting story behind it. Good amount of room with painting too as they have a nice spectrum of colors.

Chaos and Wood Elves

Wood Elves vs. Skaven.

Why? Tree-hugging and animal rights are all the rage with the "green" crowd Just make sure the packaging is recyclable

Ifurita wrote:Chaos and Wood Elves

actually, that sounds kinda cool...
(after they re-do beasts, maybe)
or maybe choas and empire?

I do agree that Ogre Kingdoms would be an awkward choice for a Starter box. They're about as different from any other army as they possibly could be. Ogres really aren't a good starting point for the hobby, and probably should be relegated to those of us who actually want to use them (I say this, and Ogre Kingdoms are my only full-on Fantasy Army).

I'd say Warriors of Chaos vs. Bretonians would make for a nice, interesting, generic (enough) starter box. Even if Bretonians have already made the starter box before, Both Chaos and Brets don't have too many funky rules to slog through for a beginner, and it would probably be more reasonable for GW to produce for cheap (as both armies are generally point sinkers). It really wouldn't alienate a newcomer from the rest of the hobby, either, as it would if you stuck them with Ogres or Vampire counts.

That, and consider that 'Good Knights' vs. 'Bad Knights' is probably going to draw more people into the hobby than 'Rats' vs. 'Tree Huggers', or 'Monsters' vs. 'Frenchmen'. Just a thought.

I'd love to see plastic High Elves but they break a very fundamental rule so I'd go with.

Skaven vs. Empire

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Skull Pass is now 2 years old so GW has to be thinking ahead to the next Fantasy starter box (Blood Field? Spike Canyon? Death Road? the mind boggles at the options!).

To go along with 8th Edition.

I'd say Orcs vs Empire.

They literally just did Orcs vs. Empire in 6th Edition.

A little too soon for that?

Think you're missing that the starter box contents is generally in line with the two most imminent or recent army book releases. So whatever books are due for release around the time of 8th will probably make up the starter set.

Bretonnians/Wood Elves? They've done good vs semi-good before with Bretonnians and Lizardmen.

Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken, but don't *all* Fantasy armies break the core rules in different ways to varying extents?

But the Fantasy starter has the objective of teaching new players the fundamentals of Fantasy, so the breaks cannot be too large or the starter forces focus more on the exceptions than the rules. Too many exceptions, and it's hard to teach the basics.

Thus, starter armies need to be buildable from with at least 2 blocks of basic infantry per side, and then 1 or 2 specials that highlight different rules, such as cavalry or monsters.

The other criteria is that the armies generally highlight 2 dimensions of the Warhammer universe:
- good vs. "evil"
- (semi-)humans vs. non-humans
This usually simplifies down to "good humans" vs "evil non-humans".

So within that context, Skaven vs Empire isn't bad. The only problem is that it's been done before (Mordheim). Same with Orks vs Empire (6th Ed). With back-to-back greenskins in 6th and 7th, along with an overload of Empire starters in the 6th Ed. era, I think it's safe to say we can rule both of those out for a while. Dwarves were great for Skull Pass, but I don't thing it makes sense to double down on them. Hence, High Elves.

High Elves, in their blue-trimmed white and silver are pretty much canonical "good guys", no matter how you look at them. The Elves have Spears, Archers, and Cavalry to start, and an Eagle-rider would be a nice varied start.

Now a Fluff excuse for the matchup isn't bad. And the more I think about it, Daemons is starting to grow on me as the enemy. There are 2 distinctly different flavors of core infantry available in plastic, and adding Furies would be enough to complete the enemy force.

You also want to get armies that would be fairly balanced numbers wise.

I started WH with the empire vs. orks box and found that the numbers were identical. 1 CC unit of 18, 1 ranged unit of 16, 1 general on horse/boar and 1 warmachine/chariot. This meant that all the aspects other than magic were covered, the armies looked good faced up against each other and were actually a good starting point. I you go with 1 senario in mind too much you end up with a nice story to introduce the rules, but no usable force at the end. Unbalanced numbers is the only reason to fault High Elves vs. Skaven really, as if both were lead by a hero level CC general and a wizard equiv. then all aspects of the game would be covered, as there would be a few nice blocks of infantry, and the force would be balanced for playing games for real.

The problem I saw with battle for skull pass was that the dwarves looked really outnumbered and were less useable after you had finished with the introduction. And if GW just use 'off the shelf' minatures it would be cheaper for them as well as they don't have to do much extra work!

Another point with the starter set is this - include the rulebook!!! In the empire vs orks box you got the main rulebook. The small, simplified rulebooks would make me feel like I couldn't be trusted with the big book yet, a sort of "thats for big boys" situation. The fact that I was 12 when I got the set shows that it was still ok for a younger person to use. Plus a really big book looks impresive on the shelf, especially for a young kid! The box set also had a small supplement that went through the art of shooting and closecombat for complete beginners. ie. rolling to hit and wound, armour saves etc.

All in all I felt - and still do feel - that the box set I started with offered great value for money and a good introduction to the hobby.

WeeHessy

Chrysaor686 wrote:They literally just did Orcs vs. Empire in 6th Edition.

A little too soon for that?

Not really considering the new models they have lined up to go in there.

Ah, Brimstone is dropping enigmatic hints.

Please say they have Halberdiers that don't need a PHD in Spatial Physics in order to get them to rank up properly.

I say Lizardmen vs. Lizardmen, that way I can bulk up my army for cheap!

Skaven vs. Lizardmen is even better and fluffy, but a bit unorthodox for the newbie.

And a lot of special rules were just cut out of the starting game. That dwarfs hate all greenskins for example, or that they flee and pursue 2d6-1...

Greets
Schepp himself

But what would the name be for these match ups? I'm going to agree that High Elves are likely to be the next set of 'Good' guys. Not sure who they'll be facing though, Khemri, Skaven & Chaos Mortals are distinct possibilities ( a revamped Chaos Dwarf would be cool a la Dark Eldar in 40K3) but what would they cal it?

Battle on Witch Mountain?
Conflict at Death Canyon?

Is there anything left to be done for Orcs and Empire? I mean they can just use the 6th edition stuff again or redo it with skulls (x2) but I don`t see them doing that.

Skaven make some sense since they`re a hoard army who`d benefit from more cheap models. Same with tomb kings.

Past Boxed sets have been:
High Elves vs. Goblins (orcs?)
Bretonnians vs. Lizardmen
Empire Vs. Orcs
Dwarfs vs. Goblins.

So I would think some combo of those armies would be the way to go; they're all good armies that are relatively (aside from maybe lizardmen) 'simple' (i.e. few wacky moving parts, like complicated magic), scale up well, and (again, with the exception of lizardmen) follow the standard fantasy genre (it's easier to sell newbies on dwarfs vs. elves or humans vs. orcs than lizardmen vs. angry minotaurs).

Brimstone wrote:

Chrysaor686 wrote:They literally just did Orcs vs. Empire in 6th Edition.

A little too soon for that?

Not really considering the new models they have lined up to go in there.

Am I only one who read Brimstone's post? I feel like Sam in Quantum Leap, he's Al and I'm the only one who can see him

Brimstone, are you going to use your powers of invisibility for good or evil?

@WeeHessy: I don't see a problem with asymmetrical forces, and 6th Ed being matched is unusual. I think it's good to show how Fantasy balances quality vs quantity.

For Good: Empire, HE, and Brets have a chance (Though Brets may be seen as haveing to much cav, and HE might be discarded due to ASF). Dwarves would be good, but were just done, and ain't Smurfs, so probably won't be back for a while.
My bet would be Empire, as there are no really Zany rules ('sept for Detatchments, but that doesn't have to be mentioned), and they have all sorts of units. I would expect a cannon, block of State troops, Handgunners unit and Possibly some Knights (or other Cav). Also a Wizard and Captain. A good intro to most of the basic game elements.
For "Evil", there are four that we can discard off-hand. Demons, undead (Both), and Ogres are just to much of a departure from normal game elements. I think we can throw Beastmen into that pile as well (Wouldn't know for sure, never played 'em), and Chaos Dwarves I am fairly certain won't be released by then, so they are out. (Same w. Kislev and Dogs of War).
This leaves Greenskins, Skaven, Dark elves, and Chaos Mortals for clearly "Evil", and Lizardmen and Wood Elves for a "Grey "army.
Judging by their Tendancy toward the Green skins, I would make a guess at them (Also, excludeing Animosity, they are fairly straight Forewards)
My other Guess would be Mortals, as, like Empire, they have a wide selection of Basic Game Elements, and few really odd rules (as far as I know). If they were done, I would expect a small (10-15 man, likely 12 man) unit of Warriors, Some cav (probably Marauders), and Possibly some chaos beastie (Troll, Ogre, probably not a spawn or Giant, as they have to many odd rules). Also a champion and sorcerer.
All the other armies have to many unique army-wide rule (cold blooded, Woodland Ambush, the strength in numbers thing Skaven have) to really make a good starter army. (Although Dark Elves Might be able to work).
So, I would Expect:
Empire vs Orcs or Empire vs Chaos
Empire vs DE would also be possible, as would Brets vs. someone.