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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
If we're counting Man O War we had giant dragons with castles on their back and the Gigantic Flying Magical Tzeentch Castles.

People want to think WHFB is low magic, that's not what that term means and trying to redefine it is not going to happen.

I think its a setting that on the tabletop was low magic, but in the lore was closer to high magic; but it also had shifts depending on the period in time and the author. Of course high and low magic are only very generic terms at best to denote a theme and many stories that fit into one can change. Eg Game of Thrones starts out very heavily low magic, but there's clearly been a high magic history to the setting and through the stories you can see many of the higher magic elements returning.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Is less more? Reading your anecdote, I spent the time thinking "man I'd prefer the flying dragon and vorpal swords".

When it comes to fantasy, preference and execution are everything. I can create a story about Space Marines and have just as much drama, tension, and commentary on the human condition as any story about guardsmen.

I looked at it and thought, "Man, riding a flying dragon with paired vorpal swords would be so easy as to be boring, but squatting in a sewer counting pennies so we can afford to go confront a scoundrel with a charmed bear in heavily trapped lair sound so difficult as to be boring as well. Surely there's a middle ground somewhere between these two that will be interesting...

BUT, it sounds like the OP had fun in his game, and you'd have fun in your dragon-riding game, so neither are wrong ways to play. Just two ends of a spectrum, neither of which appeal to me, but they don't have to appeal to me because I'm not in those games.

Part of the fun of fantasy RPGs is finding the power scale that appeals to a given group.

Sarouan wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
...its pretty clear that Daughters of Khaine would be relegated to being a a sect of Dark Eldar...

Watch out, Vect ! Morathi is coming for your space throne !!

Lol woops.

Just kidding. The debate about would it have been possible to keep the WFB universe for AoS new releases is honestly endless - each side has its own views and tend to stand their grounds no matter the arguments of the other side. I know, I have been there.

Clearly. This started out with, "whfb sucked so age of sigmar was needed to make it better" - "no, AoS sucks, WHFB was great."
Then it became "whfb was low fantasy, AoS is high fantasy, clearly they wanted a different approach to the setting." - "no, WHFB was high fantasy too"
Now its "WHFB was a very restrictive setting, AoS offers a lot more creative freedom" - "no, WHFB allowed for just as much creative freedom as AoS"

Its pretty clear that the arguments against AoS are coming from the same place that first response - "no, AoS sucks, WHFB was great". WHFBs defenders are stuck on that bit and see anything that doesn't portray WHFB in a light where WHFB was inherently flawless or just as "good" as AoS, etc.as being some sort of a value judgement against WHFB. But it isn't. I love WHFB - I also love AoS. There are a million and one reasons why AoS might have been seen as a more profitable and marketable product than WHFB was. That doesn't mean that WHFB is bad and you are a loser for missing it or whatever, it just means that it was no longer sustainable as a business operation for its creators and they had to move on from it. Personally, I think some of the arguments presented here as to what the reasons that made it such might have been are pretty damned valid despite flimsy arguments to the contrary.

Being able to argue that you could have had Sylvaneth or Daughters of Khaine in WHFB doesn't prove that WHFB was an open-ended setting, especially not when most of those arguments inadvertently reveal that you would have either have to have stilted their implementation in order to squeeze them into the established boundaries of the lore or would have otherwise pissed people off anyway when their one army suddenly became two separate ones with dramatic shifts in the lore. Seriously, people complain about Newcrons because GW gave Necrons actual lore and personality (albeit somewhat at the expense of flavor) and made one largely unpopular unit obsolete, can you imagine the nerd outrage that would have occurred when Morathi established her own kingdom of femme-elf snake chicks and a quarter of the dark elf army was suddenly a separate army entirely? Rinse/repeat with Slayers and airship dwarves becoming separate factions from regular dwarves, and wood elves being split into trees and elves, etc. etc. etc. If thats someones defense for WHFB being an open-ended setting then they have pretty much made my point for me.

Likewise, the argument that "hey if you go back a few thousand years in the lore the entire High Elf army would be riding dragons and Sigmar and Nagash would be fieldable minis with rules and Dwarves had walking statue golems" is meaningless. It might as well be a different setting at that point, you would get serious nerd rage when peoples Empire and Bretonnian armies became suddenly unusable (hope you like your Empire minis carrying spears and looking like stone-age barbarians!), and probably a few other major changes to other factions as well. Suggestions that they could have advanced the timeline and do AoS in the WHFB setting likewise - sorry, but creating the Free Cities in place of the Empire doesn't fix anything, it implies that dark elves, wood elves, dwarves, high elves, and bretonnia/empire cease to exist as independent factions and kingdoms and those armies likewise cease to exist as discrete entities on the tabletop, etc. What does that get you at that point thats any different from just blowing up the setting and creating the mortal realms? It lets you keep the rough shape of the continents I guess? To me all these arguments really do is show that the people making them like the Age of Sigmar minis and factions and themes and aesthetics and lore, etc. but they are bummed out that arbitrary fictional geography is no longer present - in short, they are complaining more for the sake of complaining and because they are experiencing a primal and instinctual fight or flight response thats telling them to hate Age of Sigmar because its different from what they already knew rather than because they have any rational argument to really justify their stance.

What's really important is that GW thought it wasn't the case at that time and that's why they destroyed the Old World to make Age of Sigmar. Anything else is just a "what if ?" question that will have all the answers you want to have.

Truth. Despite peoples desires to pretend GW is wholly inept and utterly incompetent, GW had its reasons and justifications for doing what they did and it doesn't really matter if we agree with it or not.

I don't think WHFB was low fantasy by any means, but its high fantasy elements weren't in the foreground to the same degree as AoS.

For me, the 'soul' of Warhammer was a landsknecht with a halberd venturing into the sewers to fight ratmen, or a French/English knight setting his lance as he bears down on a troll. Mundane people putting steel and courage against fantasy monsters. Yeah, the emperor rode a hippogryph and there were dragons and wizards, but those were special and rare things- same as how Lord of the Rings had dragons and wizards, but most of the fights were just dudes with swords.

AoS seems much more focused on the magical and 'larger-than-life' right at the forefront. It's not just Tolkien dwarves, no sir, these are steampunk airship-riding flying dwarves. Your stars of the setting aren't dudes in puffy coats wishing they were somewhere else, they're golden-armored supermen with enchanted weapons. Zombies are out, engineered bone-golem super-skeletons are in.

I really don't mind AoS's style. It's just different, and I think playing games of 'well WHFB had that too' is missing the forest for the trees. You couldn't retrofit AoS's content into the Old World without significantly altering the style of the setting. I at least like that AoS is its own thing, and we still have an Old World to go back to.

 catbarf wrote:
...but its high fantasy elements weren't in the foreground...For me, the 'soul' of Warhammer was a landsknecht with a halberd venturing into the sewers to fight ratmen, or a French/English knight setting his lance as he bears down on a troll. Mundane people putting steel and courage against fantasy monsters.

Excuse me? Weren't in the foreground? What game were YOU playing? It certainly wasn't Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Warhammer has pretty much slapped you in the face with High Fantasy concepts from the outset. It's always had Steamtanks and Gyrocopters. Magic weapons and magic armor and magic banners, common enough to give to unit champions. Wizards that could summon literal meteors from bare sky come to almost every battle. Hordes of rat-men riding magical belltowers, giant eagles and griffons and giants and giant skeletons are commonly seen on any battlefield. Nobody blinks an eye at Pegasus riding knights and gigantic chaos demons, or half-dragon half-ogres and frog demigods floating into battle on levitating stone thrones. Dragons are so common that they have a dedicated breath attack named after them in the core section of the rules. That's not even getting into the crazyness that came out in 8th edition, all that stuff has around going back to 5th edition or before. High levels of magic and fantastical creatures have ALWAYS been at the forefront in Warhammer. Not just buried in the fluff, but in the game as played out on the tabletop. It wasn't something that "occasionally crept in", it was literally every single army that was lead by some general with 100 points of magic items. Often chosen from a "standard magic items list" Every army has a Battle Standard Bearer with a magical banner. Every army that DOESN'T have a meteor-wielding wizard still took a lowbie wizard with at least one dispel scroll, because if you didn't then the enemy wizard got to wipe a unit off the table each turn. With magic. Which was an entire phase of the game.

The "soul of Warhammer" is definitively NOT a landsknecht with a halberd any more than the "soul" of Star Wars is a smuggler with a good blaster at his side. Defining either setting like that is actively ignoring everything else going on around you.

Didn't we have whole editions of the game dominated by heroes with magic gear riding winged monsters?

I think I lean toward saying WHFB had more fantasy stylistic range than AoS has. But that means saying WHFB 'was' this or that is kinda silly.

Tbh, the Old World was varied enough to gather many different types of fantasy, from the very low to the very high.

It's why there are different perceptions on what the Old World was because it was never one distinct thing. This thread is proof enough.

The whole conversation of "it was X, not Y!" is kind of useless. Just people trying to hard to have the right opinion.

I agree that Warhammer Fantasy was a different kind of setting compared with AoS. But people that tries to use the battlefield as an example are wrong. Old World battlefields were very much similar to the ones you can see in Age of Sigmar with the exception of some of the extreme elements like flying Kharadron Fleets fighting on the skies agaisnt whatever.

In Warhammer Fantasy, a bunch of normal humans fighting another bunch of normal humans wasn't the norm, or what was the center of the universe. All the relevant battles were big with tons of heroes, monsters, magic, etc....

WHFB was superior to Ao$ because it was a clearinghouse for fantasy tropes from broad myth and literature, such that everything inspired and resonated with it, from Lord of the Rings to Fafrd and the Grey Mouser. Ao$ is a proprietary sandbox that no longer resonates with established tropes, and instead aims to trademark gimmicks to set itself apart, for example cow elves. This is clear, and why Ao$ is a weaker setting.

VBS wrote:
Tbh, the Old World was varied enough to gather many different types of fantasy, from the very low to the very high.

It's why there are different perceptions on what the Old World was because it was never one distinct thing. This thread is proof enough.

The whole conversation of "it was X, not Y!" is kind of useless. Just people trying to hard to have the right opinion.

I’d just call that High Fantasy.
Where things happen sometimes that are also possible in a low fantasy setting. They are just happening in the HF one.


Also though,
Can’t the AoS vs Fantasy, Low vs High be taken to general?
There hasn’t been a post about the new game in ages. I know info is limited, but if it was at least about things we’ve seen..


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And yes I know, I posted about it too
But the point is, it’s not news that they’re different. We had all this when AoS first came out etc..

 Vulcan wrote:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Is less more? Reading your anecdote, I spent the time thinking "man I'd prefer the flying dragon and vorpal swords".

When it comes to fantasy, preference and execution are everything. I can create a story about Space Marines and have just as much drama, tension, and commentary on the human condition as any story about guardsmen.

I looked at it and thought, "Man, riding a flying dragon with paired vorpal swords would be so easy as to be boring, but squatting in a sewer counting pennies so we can afford to go confront a scoundrel with a charmed bear in heavily trapped lair sound so difficult as to be boring as well. Surely there's a middle ground somewhere between these two that will be interesting...

BUT, it sounds like the OP had fun in his game, and you'd have fun in your dragon-riding game, so neither are wrong ways to play. Just two ends of a spectrum, neither of which appeal to me, but they don't have to appeal to me because I'm not in those games.

Part of the fun of fantasy RPGs is finding the power scale that appeals to a given group.

Fair assessment.

"squatting in a sewer counting pennies". Im going to go use this, thank you.

 jeff white wrote:
WHFB was superior to Ao$ because it was a clearinghouse for fantasy tropes from broad myth and literature, such that everything inspired and resonated with it, from Lord of the Rings to Fafrd and the Grey Mouser. Ao$ is a proprietary sandbox that no longer resonates with established tropes, and instead aims to trademark gimmicks to set itself apart, for example cow elves. This is clear, and why Ao$ is a weaker setting.

That's a lot of words to say generic.

I dunno if this is off topic, but in my humble opinion, AOS is leagues above Warhammer in terms of high fantasy.

Looking beyond things like Kharadron Overlords and Air-grots (since Skaven used crazy machines in fantasy and dwarfs had zeppelins and gyrocopters) there's a lot that I would classify as high fantasy.

Foremost is the fact that gods walk amongst men (and most have models.) The Everqueen, Nagash, Morathi, Teclis, etc are all god-tier beings and often are described as gods. In fantasy, gods existed, but only were physically present as mortals, if they ever physically existed at all. We also have beings like the Godbeasts that can still show up from time to time, though they also can just die fairly easily (rip Behemet).

The worlds are also a lot crazier than fantasy. Some pretty fantastical places existed, mostly in the realm of chaos, but in AOS, we have floating islands (not super special), rivers of gold, sentient mountains, the realms themselves constantly being built (from that one short story about the wizard going to a realm's edge), space lizard temple spaceships, etc.

The stakes are also bigger. Since the realms aren't finite like the Old World, whole civilizations can be introduced and killed off. True, whether or not these stakes hold any significant meaning depends on you, but that's still a lot more intense than a simple kingdom being besieged.

The point is it isn't the size of something within a setting that makes it significant in the first place. WHFB blowing up the Empire and having Cathay continue the fight against Chaos would have a hell of a lot different response than it blowing up Cathay and having the Empire continue.

 Galas wrote:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I agree that Warhammer Fantasy was a different kind of setting compared with AoS. But people that tries to use the battlefield as an example are wrong. Old World battlefields were very much similar to the ones you can see in Age of Sigmar with the exception of some of the extreme elements like flying Kharadron Fleets fighting on the skies agaisnt whatever.

In Warhammer Fantasy, a bunch of normal humans fighting another bunch of normal humans wasn't the norm, or what was the center of the universe. All the relevant battles were big with tons of heroes, monsters, magic, etc....

What an absolute heap of the brown stuff.

First of all, "they're exactly the same, providing you ignore these major, glaring examples of difference that I'm arbitrarily excluding because they fatally undermine my argument" is just disingenuous.

Secondly, maybe the battles you personally paid attention to and which GW wanted to push as they became ever more focused on encouraging players to buy bigger and bigger armies fit the description you give, but that doesn't make the countless other battles that took place in the setting - and which in that setting would be far more typical - invalid or negated.

Thirdly, the perpetual attempts to strawman "there's a large difference in the level of magic and other fantastical elements in WHF compared to AoS and similar settings, and this has a meaningful impact on the kinds of stories that can be successfully told in each" as "hurr durr you just want War of the Roses go play historicals nurd" and similar is just tired. The setting does not have to be "just normal humans fighting normal humans" for the typical battlefield to look nothing like AoS. I like dragons. And wizards. And ancient Elven fae. And mythical beasts. I like that Warhammer Fantasy has them. I also like that it has them in moderation, thus permitting the setting to also meaningfully include Gunter & Gruber with their bog-standard forged metal halberds, and have them be something more than a mere speedbump to a god-powered superbeing in magical armour riding lizard-gryphs from another dimension.

 DarkBlack wrote:
What I don't get is why people cling to GW games despite all the disapointment. There are other companies that make good games.
You want rank and file games? Have you had a look at Kings of War, Conquest, A Song of Ice and Fire, Oathmark or Age of Fantasy?

I know this was a few pages back, but I decided to check out some "lets plays" of ASOIAF. Didn't really appeal to me (though the models look great). It looks to take inspiration in some areas from WHFB, however the bits I didn't like were that it seems to be heavily kill based (i.e. in one round of attacks you often wipe out significant portions of each others units), random charge distance (can people seriously not come up with a better idea than that...) and the way it uses cards to alter engagements very (overly?) significantly. I'm undecided if I like the general way modifiers / terrain / objectives work Also whilst I like the ASOIAF universe in general, for a table top game I do prefer a few more monsters and whatnot. When I started WHFB in the mid to late 90's, that had the perfect level of monsters in that they weren't massively dominant, but each army still had an option or two for something big and scary to bring.

I do like the way they did the unit cards though, that's a good idea to avoid the flicking back and forth necessary in WHFB to figure out what you need to roll each time. And yeah, the models look great.

 Kalamadea wrote:

Spoiler:

Excuse me? Weren't in the foreground? What game were YOU playing? It certainly wasn't Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Warhammer has pretty much slapped you in the face with High Fantasy concepts from the outset. It's always had Steamtanks and Gyrocopters.

Spoiler:

Magic weapons and magic armor and magic banners, common enough to give to unit champions. Wizards that could summon literal meteors from bare sky come to almost every battle. Hordes of rat-men riding magical belltowers, giant eagles and griffons and giants and giant skeletons are commonly seen on any battlefield. Nobody blinks an eye at Pegasus riding knights and gigantic chaos demons, or half-dragon half-ogres and frog demigods floating into battle on levitating stone thrones. Dragons are so common that they have a dedicated breath attack named after them in the core section of the rules. That's not even getting into the crazyness that came out in 8th edition, all that stuff has around going back to 5th edition or before. High levels of magic and fantastical creatures have ALWAYS been at the forefront in Warhammer. Not just buried in the fluff, but in the game as played out on the tabletop. It wasn't something that "occasionally crept in", it was literally every single army that was lead by some general with 100 points of magic items. Often chosen from a "standard magic items list" Every army has a Battle Standard Bearer with a magical banner. Every army that DOESN'T have a meteor-wielding wizard still took a lowbie wizard with at least one dispel scroll, because if you didn't then the enemy wizard got to wipe a unit off the table each turn. With magic. Which was an entire phase of the game.

The "soul of Warhammer" is definitively NOT a landsknecht with a halberd any more than the "soul" of Star Wars is a smuggler with a good blaster at his side. Defining either setting like that is actively ignoring everything else going on around you.

Tanks and helicopters? Oh my, those are far-fetched indeed!

As has become more than clear in recent years, part of the difference isn't what exists, but what's visible and focussed on. WHFB had beings with god-like power, but you rarely saw them. Depending on what edition you look at, the strongest figures in a faction's background often had no rules and models, or they had rules (and possibly an accompanying model) that required your opponent's permission to use (right? I remember that being a thing). And even then, very few people used them. Never saw anyone use Kroq-gar or Lord Kroak in 6th, those figures were just used converted or used as proxies for an Oldblood on carnosaur and a Slann. Skarloc and Ariel may have been important in the lore, but I wasn't expected to use them in my Wood Elf army. Meanwhile, AoS is supposed to, somewhere, contain vaguely ordinary humans going about their daily lives, but in this case those are the ones that are unseen. The fact that they live in realms in which ordinary life can be difficult to imagine and comprehend doesn't help.

Thing is, the shift to focus more on the immensely powerful beings didn't just happen with AoS; before that we already saw people becoming more powerful and just physically bigger. During the End Times, Archaon changed from a guy on horse to a guy on a massive chimaera. Little ratman Thanquol's rat ogre bodyguard Boneripper had to become a much larger rat-monster bodyguard. Guy on foot or horse Mannfred became guy on big flying creature Mannfred. Before the End Times, Vampire Counts got massive centrepieces like the Mortis Engine, the Empire got a new, larger griffon expected to be ridden by many characters besides the Emperor, as well as demigryph knights etcetera etcetera. I don't have the rules nearby, but I think even those changed from "roll a D6, the nearby forest may be magical" to "roll a D6 to see what kind of magical this forest is", between 6th and 8th.

In summary, there were three trends: an emphasized focus on powerful named characters (quite a few veterans lament the loss of highly customizable characters the player was expected to name and create a backstory for), a focus on creating and selling large centrepiece models (already diminishing the rank and flank look of the game) and the increased existence/visibility of more fantastical elements on the table. This has continued in AoS and is partially also visible in 40k (Ghazghkull is bigger than ever, the Sisters got two new large special characters in the form of Junith Eruita and the Triumph procession). Big personalities (apparently) need to be on the tabletop and need to have suitably big models. All of which then leads to the simple question that brings us back to the actual topic: how much of that will we see in W:TOW? As discussed previously, are bear cavalry and ice witches a rare feature, or a staple of the Kislevite forces? (The question isn't if they exist - they always have - but how common they are supposed to be.) Is for instance King Louen Orc-Slayer going to be portrayed as a character on the tabletop, and if so, are he and his knights allowed to look like relatively ordinary human medieval knights? So, how much of what GW wants to make will resemble what people actually liked about Warhammer Fantasy, that is lacking for them in AoS? Because if you like both WHFB and AoS, that's great, but GW already has you as a customer. This project clearly needs to reach people who enjoyed the former and not the latter, otherwise it has very little reason to exist.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

Spoiler:

Tanks and helicopters? Oh my, those are far-fetched indeed!

As has become more than clear in recent years, part of the difference isn't what exists, but what's visible and focussed on. WHFB had beings with god-like power, but you rarely saw them. Depending on what edition you look at, the strongest figures in a faction's background often had no rules and models, or they had rules (and possibly an accompanying model) that required your opponent's permission to use (right? I remember that being a thing). And even then, very few people used them. Never saw anyone use Kroq-gar or Lord Kroak in 6th, those figures were just used converted or used as proxies for an Oldblood on carnosaur and a Slann. Skarloc and Ariel may have been important in the lore, but I wasn't expected to use them in my Wood Elf army. Meanwhile, AoS is supposed to, somewhere, contain vaguely ordinary humans going about their daily lives, but in this case those are the ones that are unseen. The fact that they live in realms in which ordinary life can be difficult to imagine and comprehend doesn't help.

Thing is, the shift to focus more on the immensely powerful beings didn't just happen with AoS; before that we already saw people becoming more powerful and just physically bigger. During the End Times, Archaon changed from a guy on horse to a guy on a massive chimaera. Little ratman Thanquol's rat ogre bodyguard Boneripper had to become a much larger rat-monster bodyguard. Guy on foot or horse Mannfred became guy on big flying creature Mannfred. Before the End Times, Vampire Counts got massive centrepieces like the Mortis Engine, the Empire got a new, larger griffon expected to be ridden by many characters besides the Emperor, as well as demigryph knights etcetera etcetera. I don't have the rules nearby, but I think even those changed from "roll a D6, the nearby forest may be magical" to "roll a D6 to see what kind of magical this forest is", between 6th and 8th.

In summary, there were three trends: an emphasized focus on powerful named characters (quite a few veterans lament the loss of highly customizable characters the player was expected to name and create a backstory for), a focus on creating and selling large centrepiece models (already diminishing the rank and flank look of the game) and the increased existence/visibility of more fantastical elements on the table. This has continued in AoS and is partially also visible in 40k (Ghazghkull is bigger than ever, the Sisters got two new large special characters in the form of Junith Eruita and the Triumph procession). Big personalities (apparently) need to be on the tabletop and need to have suitably big models. All of which then leads to the simple question that brings us back to the actual topic: how much of that will we see in W:TOW? As discussed previously, are bear cavalry and ice witches a rare feature, or a staple of the Kislevite forces? (The question isn't if they exist - they always have - but how common they are supposed to be.) Is for instance King Louen Orc-Slayer going to be portrayed as a character on the tabletop, and if so, are he and his knights allowed to look like relatively ordinary human medieval knights? So, how much of what GW wants to make will resemble what people actually liked about Warhammer Fantasy, that is lacking for them in AoS? Because if you like both WHFB and AoS, that's great, but GW already has you as a customer. This project clearly needs to reach people who enjoyed the former and not the latter, otherwise it has very little reason to exist.

I think toward the end of WHFB it was suffering from the range becoming overgrown. GW's business strategy relied on always releasing new kits (as they sold the best by a long way) while never retiring old ones that no one was really buying any more, and I think this in some part led to releasing more big stuff.

Was WFB as high fantasy as AoS ? To me, the answer is "it depends which period of WFB".

At the very beginning, in the first editions and such, yes it was very high fantasy. You can see it in the old artworks with insane stuff like ships in the sky, weird forests filled with weirdly people that look clearly like fantasy races and countries that look nothing like the real world.

Then as the editions followed...it was toned down at first a bit, especially in the Empire with restrictions about magic and how the common people saw it. It was especially true in the first edition of the WFB RPG, and the setting at that time was low fantasy.

Then at the end, high fantasy came back bit by bit as GW added new units that were "more fantastic" than players would expect it to be. It was ultimately GW going back to its roots, but I still remember clearly at that time players complaining it was not fitting to WFB because precisely it was too "high fantasy". Do you remember the introduction of the Empire demi-gryph knights, with people saying it was absurd these fantastic mounts came out of nowhere and were used as troops rather than an occasionnal monstruous mount for heroes ? Or the high elf Phoenixes and "flying chariot" ? Yes, people complained about them being too high fantasy.

So saying WFB was always high fantasy...that's simply not true. WFB had an evolution (or devolution, depending on who you're talking with) during all its life. And people claiming otherwise just don't remember well what really happened at that time.


Could WFB's universe stay and welcome new armies of AoS ? Personnally, I think yes, it would have been possible, but to be honest it would have been harder than starting from a blank state. I do understand why GW did what they did with AoS. Besides, since it's been done, it's pointless to still debate about it anyway.

The Old World project is just looking at the state of the Old World in the past, long before the events leading to End Times. It's the Horus Heresy of AoS. Nothing more, nothing less.

While I still remember my days playing WFB fondly, I won't be saying that WFB is superior to AoS. In fact, I won't let nostalgy blind my eyes - there are things I really don't regret in WFB and things I really do enjoy in AoS.

Sarouan wrote:
While I still remember my days playing WFB fondly, I won't be saying that WFB is superior to AoS. In fact, I won't let nostalgy blind my eyes - there are things I really don't regret in WFB and things I really do enjoy in AoS.

I generally shy away from saying WHFB was superior, simply that it was different, and AoS is a type of different I don't enjoy.

My gripe with it all is that, for me at least, the niche that AoS would fill was already filled by 40k. I played WHFB because of the game it was and the setting it was, and they killed that game and setting to replace it with one I didn't want, all because GW mismanaged the one I did want.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

My gripe with it all is that, for me at least, the niche that AoS would fill was already filled by 40k.

It wasn't. 40k is SF, AoS is Fantasy.

Saying playing 40k is the same as playing AoS is nonsense. I play both, I would know if I was playing the same niche.

Sarouan wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

My gripe with it all is that, for me at least, the niche that AoS would fill was already filled by 40k.

It wasn't. 40k is SF, AoS is Fantasy.

Saying playing 40k is the same as playing AoS is nonsense. I play both, I would know if I was playing the same niche.

Agreed!

Someone mentioned Moorcock who has always been a big influence on Warhammer - the Mortal Realms of AOS are very much in theme like the worlds he created.

I enjoy both worlds - after all I spend plenty of time updating the Warhammer Lex!

At the very beginning, in the first editions and such, yes it was very high fantasy. You can see it in the old artworks with insane stuff like ships in the sky, weird forests filled with weirdly people that look clearly like fantasy races and countries that look nothing like the real world.

Then as the editions followed...it was toned down at first a bit, especially in the Empire with restrictions about magic and how the common people saw it. It was especially true in the first edition of the WFB RPG, and the setting at that time was low fantasy.

Then at the end, high fantasy came back bit by bit as GW added new units that were "more fantastic" than players would expect it to be. It was ultimately GW going back to its roots, but I still remember clearly at that time players complaining it was not fitting to WFB because precisely it was too "high fantasy". Do you remember the introduction of the Empire demi-gryph knights, with people saying it was absurd these fantastic mounts came out of nowhere and were used as troops rather than an occasionnal monstruous mount for heroes ? Or the high elf Phoenixes and "flying chariot" ? Yes, people complained about them being too high fantasy.

Part of this was the creation of the Old World as its own thing and the growing ability to translate the more fantastical into models - remember it went from this (early on)



to this

but the ambition to create such models was Always there and Always a part of the world, lore and theme of Warhammer.

I think he meant the niche in terms of gameplay rather than in terms of genre/setting - and on that I agree with him, AoS doesn't necessarily offer much of a different experience on the table than 40k does. In general, the mechanical differences are fairly minute and don't lend themselves towards creating a significantly different gameplay experience.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think he meant the niche in terms of gameplay rather than in terms of genre/setting - and on that I agree with him, AoS doesn't necessarily offer much of a different experience on the table than 40k does. In general, the mechanical differences are fairly minute and don't lend themselves towards creating a significantly different gameplay experience.

Considering that since its beginning, Warhammer games have always been based on the same game system thats not a major surprise.

I would agree that AOS and 40k are now closer due to the removal of the ranked regiment element but they were always reaonably compatable.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Middle Earth was high fantasy with princes and wizards and the fate of the world, but that world was grounded in English folklore and history.

Middle Earth is quite clearly inspired by Midgard from Germanic and Norse mythology. Which is where the idea of dwarves comes from too.

Just in case you wanted to know.

IIRC it was an answer to Norse Myth, Greek, Roman etc, an attempt to bring together English folklore to create a uniquely British myth that could stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

And given the global success of Tolkienesque fantasy I think he succeeded.

That's interesting! Do you have a reference where I can read more?

When I think English myth and legend; then Celtic mythology along with Arthurian legend and fae come to mind.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:
What I don't get is why people cling to GW games despite all the disapointment. There are other companies that make good games.
You want rank and file games? Have you had a look at Kings of War, Conquest, A Song of Ice and Fire, Oathmark or Age of Fantasy?

I know this was a few pages back, but I decided to check out some "lets plays" of ASOIAF. Didn't really appeal to me (though the models look great). It looks to take inspiration in some areas from WHFB, however the bits I didn't like were that it seems to be heavily kill based (i.e. in one round of attacks you often wipe out significant portions of each others units), random charge distance (can people seriously not come up with a better idea than that...) and the way it uses cards to alter engagements very (overly?) significantly. I'm undecided if I like the general way modifiers / terrain / objectives work Also whilst I like the ASOIAF universe in general, for a table top game I do prefer a few more monsters and whatnot. When I started WHFB in the mid to late 90's, that had the perfect level of monsters in that they weren't massively dominant, but each army still had an option or two for something big and scary to bring.

I do like the way they did the unit cards though, that's a good idea to avoid the flicking back and forth necessary in WHFB to figure out what you need to roll each time. And yeah, the models look great.

My point was that there are a lot of options.
I haven't gotten into ASOIAF either, I hear it's got limited replayability.
For me, Kings of War is exactly the kind of wargaming experience I'm looking for.
From what I've seen, Oathmark is also a good and straightforward fantasy rank 'n flank. As is Age if Fantasy, with the added benefit of being free.

Sarouan wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

My gripe with it all is that, for me at least, the niche that AoS would fill was already filled by 40k.

It wasn't. 40k is SF, AoS is Fantasy.

Saying playing 40k is the same as playing AoS is nonsense. I play both, I would know if I was playing the same niche.

The game play experience is very similar though. Post 8th edition 40k definitely has rules that were tested in AoS.

40k has daemons and wizards, calling it "psychic powers" doesn't make it not magic. It's technically Sci-Fi, but "Science Fantasy" is a better term.

I prefer "Warhammer Fantasy iiiin Spaaaaaaace" personally, but I suppose "Sigmar iiiiiiiin Spaaaaaace" is more correct now.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
If we're counting Man O War we had giant dragons with castles on their back and the Gigantic Flying Magical Tzeentch Castles.

People want to think WHFB is low magic, that's not what that term means and trying to redefine it is not going to happen.

Which is exactly why I put it in parenthesis, because your "low" fantasy might be completely different thant my "low" fantasy. If you have a definitive summary what for you constitutes "low" fantasy, please share it, so we can agree/disagree on it. Otherwise any discussion about our feel for this is futile.

To quote myself from earlier this thread:

savemelmac wrote:
One reason I believe the feeling of low fantasy stems from is the limit of 1 or 2 rare units into your army. You would just not see 4 steam tanks. It simply was not possible to field them. If you are extrapolating from that time, the idea of an army of just giants like Sons of Behemat seems absolutely ridiculous. I am fine with one giant. I am still okay with two. But then.... And the same goes for Gryphs, Dragons, Sphinxes and wacky war machines of the Skaven or Imperium. One big centerpiece for the army is awesome. An army of center pieces, not so much.

Coenus Scaldingus wrote: how much of that will we see in W:TOW? As discussed previously, are bear cavalry and ice witches a rare feature, or a staple of the Kislevite forces? (The question isn't if they exist - they always have - but how common they are supposed to be.) Is for instance King Louen Orc-Slayer going to be portrayed as a character on the tabletop, and if so, are he and his knights allowed to look like relatively ordinary human medieval knights? So, how much of what GW wants to make will resemble what people actually liked about Warhammer Fantasy, that is lacking for them in AoS? Because if you like both WHFB and AoS, that's great, but GW already has you as a customer. This project clearly needs to reach people who enjoyed the former and not the latter, otherwise it has very little reason to exist.

This sums it up rather nicely. I am fine with bear cavalry, as long it is one rare unit, and not everybody and their mother rides on bears. Same for ice witches: Having magic weapons is not unprecedented (chaos knights and grave guard), but I would like them to limit it to special powerful units.

I also do not really understand why people seem to be offended by my wish to have a rank and file game with limited magic/monsters/huge centerpiece models. AoS already exists. If they go through the trouble to establish another game, I simply hope they do differentiate them enough to be interesting for a different type of player involvement.

savemelmac wrote:

I am fine with bear cavalry, as long it is one rare unit, and not everybody and their mother rides on bears. Same for ice witches.

Kings of War already has similar (frostfangs are bear-like, right?).

I also do not really understand why people seem to be offended by my wish to have a rank and file game with limited magic/monsters/huge centerpiece models.

Kings of War already has that too.

 DarkBlack wrote:

I also do not really understand why people seem to be offended by my wish to have a rank and file game with limited magic/monsters/huge centerpiece models.

Kings of War already has that too.

And I'll add that KOW was also inspired by WFB in more than one way. Not surprising, since its original father was Alessio Cavatore.

It's not like the rank and file games with limitations on list building have disappeared completely. They just don't have the GW scene so far.


And honestly, the Old World project is nice and all, but we only know about a part of its background so far. We have nothing about the gameplay and we don't even know if it will be a rank and file game like WFB at all. As far as I know, they may be making the next Mordheim-like game, just with the entire Old World map rather than a ruined town as setting. FW is barely able to handle skirmish-size games like Necromunda and Bloodbowl, I don't even see how they could manage a full rank and file game with new whole armies the size WFB offered.

I still don't understand why people keep hyping themselves to so high expectations that they can only be disappointed when the real thing will be there at the end. Especially when we have litterally nothing more than a map and a few artworks to back it up.

 Kalamadea wrote:
Excuse me? Weren't in the foreground? What game were YOU playing? It certainly wasn't Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Warhammer has pretty much slapped you in the face with High Fantasy concepts from the outset. It's always had Steamtanks and Gyrocopters. Magic weapons and magic armor and magic banners, common enough to give to unit champions. Wizards that could summon literal meteors from bare sky come to almost every battle. Hordes of rat-men riding magical belltowers, giant eagles and griffons and giants and giant skeletons are commonly seen on any battlefield. Nobody blinks an eye at Pegasus riding knights and gigantic chaos demons, or half-dragon half-ogres and frog demigods floating into battle on levitating stone thrones. Dragons are so common that they have a dedicated breath attack named after them in the core section of the rules. That's not even getting into the crazyness that came out in 8th edition, all that stuff has around going back to 5th edition or before. High levels of magic and fantastical creatures have ALWAYS been at the forefront in Warhammer. Not just buried in the fluff, but in the game as played out on the tabletop. It wasn't something that "occasionally crept in", it was literally every single army that was lead by some general with 100 points of magic items. Often chosen from a "standard magic items list" Every army has a Battle Standard Bearer with a magical banner. Every army that DOESN'T have a meteor-wielding wizard still took a lowbie wizard with at least one dispel scroll, because if you didn't then the enemy wizard got to wipe a unit off the table each turn. With magic. Which was an entire phase of the game.

The "soul of Warhammer" is definitively NOT a landsknecht with a halberd any more than the "soul" of Star Wars is a smuggler with a good blaster at his side. Defining either setting like that is actively ignoring everything else going on around you.

I feel like you've rather missed my point.

Yes, all of those things were in the game- that's exactly what I said. Of course Fantasy had lots of high fantasy elements. Of course you could take all sorts of big monsters and centerpieces. But they were special specifically because they weren't the baseline. All those high fantasy elements were contrasted with more mundane rank-and-file.

-An Empire army was primarily composed of dudes wearing pajamas, not resurrecting demigods with magic weapons. Yes, you had steam tanks and wizards. They weren't the core of the army, and you were highly limited in how many you could take.
-A Dwarf army was primarily Tolkien-esque short Scots with axes. You could take a Gyrocopter or two. You certainly didn't have an entire army of flying Dwarfs and airships.
-A Tomb Kings army was mostly skeletons. There were bone giants. Your entire army was not entirely composed of engineered bone-golems.
-You could take one giant in many armies as a large, highly powerful centerpiece. You could not take an army where a giant was your smallest model.

I guess I wasn't clear enough the first time around so I'll rephrase my point: WHFB had all the same high fantasy elements as AoS. The difference is that WHFB also put a lot more emphasis on mundane 'low-fantasy' elements to establish a baseline, rather than all high fantasy all the time down to even your basic foot troops.

This was an Empire battalion. That's how you got started with the Empire, the face of the WHFB setting. You get twenty foot soldiers with polearms, ten with muskets, ten knights with barded warhorses, and a cannon. No wizards. No steam tank. No dragons. Just soldiery that could be mistaken for Renaissance historicals. As you worked towards 1000pts, then you could start adding in more fantastic elements, but at bare minimum a quarter of your points were going to be spent on knights and/or state troops.

This is a Stormcast SC, how you get started with the face of the setting in AoS. You get thirteen reincarnated demigods, another three who are also angels and can fly, and two characters, of whom one is riding a dragon-lizard-dog and the other of whom is a cleric who can summon lightning.

Or look at how armies transitioned, and see how prominent the rank-and-file are versus the centerpiece models. The Seraphon, Anvilgard, and FEC Start Collecting boxes include a Carnosaur, Hydra, and Zombie Dragon respectively; those are things you'd see one of at 2000pts in WHFB as the centerpiece of your army, not at 500pts as a starting point. Plus for many factions that changed in the transition, what they have as their basic rank-and-file now is what used to be their elites in WHFB. Orcs don't actually have Orcs anymore, you get either Savage Orcs or Black Orcs as your base troops. Dwarfs don't get Dwarf Warriors, they get Ironbreakers, Arkanauts, or Slayers.

If you really don't see any stylistic difference between the two games, I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

Though I believe so far we've managed to push derailing things so far.. There's always been magical elements within such things. I imagine at this point we are going to see more of it as they push out and explore the rest of the world. Hedge wizards and witches and the like could be substituted for Imperial College mages.