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I read historical fiction (and “low” fantasy) for different things than I read “high” fantasy for. A Guy Gavriel Kay fantasy set in not-quite-China focuses on characters and world building and setting the stakes and limitations of the story, which is great. Moorcock’s Corum stories are full of balls-to-the-wall wtf creatures, magic powers, and weird surprises around every corner, which is also great. There’s no reason why WHF can’t give the former while AOS gives the latter. Neither type of storytelling is superior; they each have their mood and time.

So wait.

WHFB= A setting where I can use affordable historical miniatures for the bulk of my army
AOS=No historical miniatures

That’s the key difference..?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 BlackoCatto wrote:
The back down continues

No, I’m definitely ded. Because Cathay.

Have they shown any art or fluff developed for Cathay ?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 GaroRobe wrote:
I can't find it now, but I swear there was some cool lore about Cathay during the End Times. Something like jade dragon/tiger statues coming to life, lots of gunpowder weapons, etc.

Also, doesn't Cathay more or less worship Tzeentch, but they're not like super Chaos-y?

In some novels, Cathay has a Dragon King. In some, a Monkey King. I thought the idea that Cathay worshipped Tzeentch came from a Tzeentch cultist, and was likely a lie.

I’d be pretty disappointed if the whole kingdom of Cathay were ineffectual chaos worshippers.

This is what happens when you don’t name your fictional planets.

I’m really hoping the Cathay minis have a heavy dose of fantasy mixed with historical designs. If they look at least as blingy as the armor from that Matt Damon movie about The Great Wall, I’m in.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Warhammer pretty much tried to be all things to all people (at least all fantasy miniature wargamers) and have something for everyone. Maybe that's why people disagree about how to label/pigeon-hole it.

Didn’t have a lot for players who wanted Araby, Ind, Cathay, Nippon, Warhammer Africa (what was it called?), or women (except for a few character minis).

The limited number of steam tanks was always stupid. “Lost technology” was a 40k thing that felt very out of place in a universe where guns and steam/clockwork automata were becoming ever more common.

The only part that interests me is the lore. I’ll happily buy some new WHFB novels by CL Werner or Chris Wraight. The Old World was a fun setting for stories.

As for the minis, nope. They were too expensive when the Goldswords dropped in plastic, and have apparently only risen in price per mini since then. I might have been tempted by Kislev or Cathay minis, but the very thought of $35 for a single human mini or $50 for 5-10 mooks hits me like ice water.

There are too many affordable alternatives of decent-or-better quality for me to buy if the novels give me the modeling itch:
WGA is making Empire proxies with their Conquistadors.
Last Sword’s elves and lizardmen are great.
Mantic’s ratmen are good enough for Skaven to my eye.
For dwarfs, Oathmark, Mantic and Avatars of War have decent minis, but Reaper Bones are the closest lookalikes to GW, and still cheaper per axe-dwarf.
Orcs are well represented in plastic and resin across many, many ranges.
Tomb Kings are well covered by TTCombat’s new range.
Fireforge has Bretonnia down.
Chaos is well covered by lots of ranges. The Heartbreaker oldhammer resins are priced competitively with current GW plastics, and loaded with “character”.

So many affordable alternatives are out there that I suspect many TOW customers will start shopping around once they see the prices.

For the gonzo part, American cartoons and comic books have been gonzo for a long time, and hold sway over at least one generation’s sensibilities.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Whenever I am in a balance conversation in a forum, facebook, discord, wherever, inevitably there will always be responses that say "I dont care about balance, I just want to hang out with my friends playing what they are playing and chucking dice."

YOU LIE MISTER!

I am very active in online communities for these games, I have literally never once seen someone say that

I say it all the time. Am I invisible?

From my experience there is a small but vocal subsection of gamers who care deeply about balance, and the majority just try not to engage with them.

 Strg Alt wrote:
Funnily one important aspect has so far been neglected in this discussion: Price.

How expensive are ten Witch Elves again? Oh, only 40 Euros?! That's quite a bargain when you consider that you need a lot of them to fill up your regiments. However lets really milk our customers this time. That will mean we are charging 60 Euros for five Witch Elves. As compensation we provide bigger tactical stones from which these damsels are jumping from. The message between the lines is that you need cojones the size of rocks to enter this new game...

I have to admit I’m surprised just how little everyone is discussing the pricing. To me, that was always the biggest barrier to entry for new players, and one of the most influential reasons for Grognards to leave the “GW hobby”.

The prices have still been going up since the Olde World died, right?

There are plenty of ways to split off AOS as a timeline so that the Old World can live on in parallel, from time travel shenanigans to multiverse theory to the Warp works in mysterious ways. There was a tremendous amount of IP value wrapped up in that setting, and still is if GW was willing to resuscitate it correctly.

Ancient Otter wrote:
Skimming over the last ten pages or so, I haven't seen any mention of Oathmark in relation to R&F games or noobs. Guess it's not making as much of an impact despite star power of its author from previous skirmish games or the value of model boxes to make different types of infantry.

Every mention of Oathmark I’ve seen on this site has been about the minis, and how to use them in other games or for conversions with other minis. I personally still think of Oathmark as “Frostgrave (but not)”. Something similar is happening with the Stargrave minis, to a lesser extent.

Goose LeChance wrote:
There's no reason for Lumineth to exist in the same world as High Elves. Same for OBR/Tomb Kings. Steampunk Balloon Dwarves would at best be a new unit for Dwarves. Most AoS armies would not have been well received in WHFB.

That doesn't mean there aren't infinite ways to expand, but AoS armies don't fit in the same world. I'd like to see horrors from the depths that aren't Aquaman fish elves. Just leave the WHFB players alone.

Nothing new or interesting was well received by the WHFB community. (Nothing except metal units redone in plastic, and even then …goldswords.)

Demi-gryph knights? Tomb knights? High Elf sky chariots? Forget it. And if you suggested expanding to Araby or Cathay since no one wants new units for existing factions, oh boy was that not well received.

It’s not like people were happy when Empire State Troops were redone, either. And having new core units didn’t make empire players any happier to see new things in their army.

If Tomb Kings core units were redone how many Tomb Kings players would have (still) bought cheaper used models instead?

chaos0xomega wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
It’s not like people were happy when Empire State Troops were redone, either. And having new core units didn’t make empire players any happier to see new things in their army.

If Tomb Kings core units were redone how many Tomb Kings players would have (still) bought cheaper used models instead?

Considering how much money people are willing to pay for those old crappy core models to this day - quite a few.

So, let me get this straight.

“WHFB players hated new minis and new ideas because they wanted the core units redone. They didn’t want to buy bad core sculpts.”

“WHFB players are paying through the nose for bad core sculpts now that they know there won’t ever be better core units.”

Man, how did WHFB ever get a bad reputation?

My frustration came from both ends. WHFB players hated everything new or interesting and sabotaged any attempt to introduce new life into the game/setting. At the same time, each release had at least one mini I would have loved to buy if only the price were a bit closer to reasonable.

@ Space Egyptian

You’re talking about a few dozen Oldhammer/nostalgia purchases of a dwindling scarcity, which is quite different from people supporting a current product range. By your logic, AT-43 should come back, and with the same prepaints, because prices skyrocketed after Miniature Market cleared out their warehouse.

You can go through all the old threads and count how many players refused to support any new items until the core troops were updated, as well as how many people refused to buy updated EST and Dwarf Warriors because they were different/bad.

Edit: I forgot how many people also refused to buy new daemonettes, Bloodletters (at first) and Tzeentchy guys. And the new dark elves core monopose miniatures. Super successful strategy though because it worked for Vampire Counts.

 kodos wrote:
the new Dwarf Elite units had 2 problems, their design did not fit well with the old Warrior models you needed to fill the core

and they did not fit 20mm bases at all so were nearly impossible to rank up

which somes up the whole problem of 8th, but during that time GW already worked on Sigmarines anyway

Before the dwarf elites, people hated the dwarf warriors that came out last, with the torso front/face combo bits. Because they weren’t the previous plastics.

We were mostly discussing the demise of WHFB. For the new game, I suppose it depends on how much new blood they can get and how much the old fan base approves of the new sculpts, two areas the old world has historically struggled.

I’m sure the first year or two will be very successful, if only because GW has really hot its marketing down now. Whether the game will last once it requires community commitment…I have doubts, depending on how GW handle the situation.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
My frustration came from both ends. WHFB players hated everything new or interesting and sabotaged any attempt to introduce new life into the game/setting. At the same time, each release had at least one mini I would have loved to buy if only the price were a bit closer to reasonable.

Depends. If the new stuff is garbage then it is prudent to say "NO!" in order to protect the setting. Units like High Elf sky chariots were just trash.

The sky chariot fit just fine in a setting with floating sea-mountains, steam tanks, chaos everything (you see the art of their huge cannon-castle on wheels?), Skaven everything, tomb kings constructs, flying castles (Man o’War had a lot of similar crazy stuff). The High Elves, using magic the most and living near the vortex, would naturally field something to counter all the other flying units once dragons became scarce and hard to rouse.

 Mr Morden wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The sky chariot wasn’t stupid because magic flying things are stupid, it was stupid because an eagle is a light weight agile creature and so strapping a chariot to its back, it just looks silly.

Also people have some concept of inertia, so kinda understand that sitting in something rigidly joined to a flying animal would be pretty unpleasant and not exactly a great platform to fight from.

Yeah I would agree with that - lots of stuff looks cool - this, for me at least looked silly - actual flying boats and ships would have been cooler - flashbacks to the ones in Slaine and the one onthe recent Balders gate intro video !

My plan was to use the boat separately from the eagle as flying boats work on their own as far as I’m concerned. But, hey, free eagle! It’s a shame they were gone before I could find one at a decent price.

They’d have a real optics problem if they expanded their trend of Europeans=human, non-Europeans=monsters.

Have you seen what they pay their rules designer team?

Consumer perception plays too big a part to dismiss it as “that thing everyone believes is wrong; surely it won’t affect their purchasing habits.”

Goose LeChance wrote:
Any new units will not be at the price points of many old kits, eg: Mauraders box of 20 for 50$. vs Slaves to Darkness Warbands which are 20 for 80$, Witch Elves are 10 for 70$

Don't expect Great Swords at 55$ or Freeguild at 35$. Any new models will be modern prices.

Enjoy filling out a 40 man Kislev unit with a box of 10 for 70$.

Is that really where prices are now? I remember when $4.125 per great sword was too much.

Miss Scarlet would.

The big issue I’ve seen with balance, or specifically chasing balance, was that it was a futile endeavor and a distraction from aspects of the game non-tournament players cared about. It was also always used to stifle any attempt at expanding the lore or miniatures range, always “first balance everything, then make _______”.

Those designs look pretty great to me. Once they’re rendered in heroic scale they’ll look very much like Warhammer.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 kodos wrote:
Cathy is in Total War, nothing new here as this was already known

Nothing new here? They just gave the biggest reveal and mass information about Cathay that has ever been in Warhammer.

Yeah, but he’s talking about Cathy, not Cathay. Huge difference. Cathy has been in WHTW since the “Ugh, Coffee” expansion and highlighted throughout the “Ack, Need Cute Shoes” saga event.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Can anyone confirm if there is any issue with the new character names?

Miao Ying, Zhao Ming, Celestial Dragon Emperor and his wife, the Moon Empress.

Sound cool -even if the Miao is a bit caty?

Probably better than:

https://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gossippa_Lotta

Wasn’t Miao Ying the Chinese girl with green eyes from Big Trouble in Little China?