Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi everyone, new to the forum. Hopefully this is the right place, apologies if not.

I played warhammer fantasy from 2005-2008, originally vampire counts then wood elves, some 6th edition and some 7th edition.

I left the hobby in 2008 and I'm thinking about getting back into it after 13 years out.

I went onto the games workshop website and I hardly recognise a thing

A lot seems to have changed since I left and I was foolishly hoping to pick up from where I left off with just another rehash of the fundamentally same rules but that doesn't seem to be the case so I was hoping someone couldclear a few things up...

what happened to fantasy?
what is age of sigmar ?
where did all the Models go ?
and why the round bases?


Thanks

Short version - the Old World (where Fantasy was set) blew up, and some of it re-formed as The Mortal Realms (where AoS is set). Have a look at the AoS site.

Not every faction survived this - some are completely gone (Brets) while others are fractured and part of other factions. It's billed as more of a skirmish game, hence the round bases.

A few answers

Old World Blew up - literally. GW decided that Old World wasn't selling well, did a big investment and End Times campaign and blew up the whole setting and replaced with with Age of Sigmar.
This was done during the Kirby Ceo years when GW "didn't do community feedback" and from what we can gather there were a few choice middle managers that basically caused chaos with the project.


Suffice to say AoS launched without ANY sensible rules (they had some "Magic the Gathering Unhinged fun rules"); no points, bases changing to round (copy catting 40K) and removed several armies.

Army removal happened in two ways - either fragmenting into tiny armies or total removal (Bretonnia and Tomb Kings were removed within a short span of it starting)



There was loud outcry; crashing sales and whilst it attracted some (esp those who wanted to write their own rules); the upshot was GW's upper management was reshuffled, some left, some retired and we got the new age of management.


AoS changed vastly from its launch (which wasn't even a 1.0) to the current 2.0. 2.0 introduced proper rules, points, new ideas (Endless Spells) and generally has firmed things up.



Vampires are actually about to have a SUPER time because GW is updating that model line almost entirely as the next big Age of Sigmar release. It's not yet got a date, but look up "Soulblight" and you should find loads of links and info. Basically most of the vampire line is old finecast and plastics and is being removed and replaced/updated with a brand new release.




As for why round bases this was mostly because GW saw rank and file not working and, at the time, decided to copycat 40K which was selling really well. Right now the two even bounce ideas off each other rules wise - what works in one often slips over to the other side and vis versa even though they are distinct systems. AoS is also seemingly getting a bit better balance in terms of faction powers and diversity and the creative side is outstanding. Competitive events often show quite a wide spread of faction variety turning up - though its still GW rules so there's still issues here and there.



As for what Age of Sigmar is in terms of story its a shift from character to god driven story setting so the tale has loads of mortal heroes, but the main story focuses on the gods. ~Many from the Old World that escaped. Age of Sigmar is technically the 3rd age, preceeded by the Age of Myth and the Age of Chaos - both of which are historical events that were never present for gamers. The Age of Myth is basically the 8 Realms (think of them as giant discworld settings linked with magical portals) being discovered, populated, tamed and generally build up into grand civilizations. Then Chaos seeped its way in and launched a huge invasion and took many realms and pushed many of the gods into hiding or madness (or both); creating a 500 year Age of Chaos. Sigmar basically sealed his realm away, built an army of reforged souls (souls taken from heroes who were given new bodies and suited in powerful armour); and then launched a huge counter attack at the start of the Age of Sigmar.

Stormcast, when killed, will be brought back by lightning to the forges to be remade, though each time (including the first) is likely to destroy memories and shatter their mind a bit. So each time they are reforged they lose more of themselves and have that replaced with more of a fevered desire to fight chaos. So they do start to crack and go a bit insane/one track minded.


Despite starting as a clear copy-cat of Gw's marine release method, they've eased right off that approach and the game now features a lot of diverse factions, each with stories and power behind them. There's still a lot of smaller armies that need bulking up~ (Luminieth just got a big second wave this last weekend that went up for pre-order); and some older ones that need some revamped models (eg Skaven and Seraphon). GW is getting there though and there's been new things like the Ossiarch Bonereapers and Gloomspite Gits (basically a huge expansion of mushroom loving goblins) .


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also there's a new Warhammer Quest game (adventuring) which features a lot of vampiric units. That's going up on pre-order next weekend. It might well sell out but its a medium term product - ergo for a few years GW will restock it. They just finished Blackstone Fortress which was the 40K version.

So Cursed City (which has a lot of cross over models with the vampires) will last for a few years and is expected to see several expansions over that time
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/03/28/sunday-preview-enter-the-cursed-city/



Also some soulblight (vampire) previews
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/03/20/warhammer-preview-online-faith-damnation/

Unfortunately the game you know is long gone. Unless you can get people to play a dead game or one of the fan rulesets that have spun off of it.

If you are into rank and file still and want that instead of what age of sigmar is... which is a completely DIFFERENT experience altogether - you can look at:

Kings of War
Para Bellum's Conquest
Oathmark

Do you have any old world armies? If not than start fresh. AoS has some killer armies, easy game, good support, blast to paint. Or like auticus said theres tonnes of rank and file, Ill throw in the 9th age, my group had a blast with it.

beast_gts wrote:
It's billed as more of a skirmish game, hence the round bases.

But in reality it's still an army based game - just everything essentially moves about similar to how skirmishers did in WHFB. Must remain within x" for unit coherence.

 auticus wrote:
Unfortunately the game you know is long gone. Unless you can get people to play a dead game or one of the fan rulesets that have spun off of it.

If you are into rank and file still and want that instead of what age of sigmar is... which is a completely DIFFERENT experience altogether - you can look at:

Kings of War
Para Bellum's Conquest
Oathmark

I am gonna vouch for conquest (and you can use those for oathmark). If you're gonna start up from the ground up (or even if you have existing minis still,tbh), AOS is not a game I can recommend any longer. You will potentially face a disappointing experience.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

beast_gts wrote:
It's billed as more of a skirmish game, hence the round bases.

But in reality it's still an army based game - just everything essentially moves about similar to how skirmishers did in WHFB. Must remain within x" for unit coherence.

Which, tbh, is a minus for the game. As you'll have to move those 60 grots. One. By. One. I find it just shifts the tedium to more inane stuff.

Lord Kragan wrote:

ccs wrote:

beast_gts wrote:
It's billed as more of a skirmish game, hence the round bases.

But in reality it's still an army based game - just everything essentially moves about similar to how skirmishers did in WHFB. Must remain within x" for unit coherence.

Which, tbh, is a minus for the game. As you'll have to move those 60 grots. One. By. One.

You can move 60 grots one by one if you prefer. Me? I'll happily make myself a movement tray that accommodates round bases & only move individuals as needed (pile-in etc).
Just because my grots can spread out doesn't mean they have to. They've fought for decades huddled up together, no reason to change now.

movement tray works for the least tedious part, the 1-2 turns before close combat. Then you get to do pile-in, and you want off mr bone's wild ride.

Cronch wrote:
movement tray works for the least tedious part, the 1-2 turns before close combat. Then you get to do pile-in, and you want off mr bone's wild ride.

That's fine. Always had to pull models off trays anyways to wrap around once stuck in.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to help and for all the information, I appreciate it.

Quite a lot to take in and while it looks like the good old days are staying in the good old days there's obviously loads of new stuff I need to check out !

And no I don't have anything anymore, I think I'll get a few kits just for the fun of building and painting for now.

When my local gw opens back up I'll check if there's any 6th or 7th edition fantasy around here while I bring myself up to speed with all these other games.

Thanks again

ccs wrote:

Cronch wrote:
movement tray works for the least tedious part, the 1-2 turns before close combat. Then you get to do pile-in, and you want off mr bone's wild ride.

That's fine. Always had to pull models off trays anyways to wrap around once stuck in.

There's significant difference between taking 5 models from the back rank to wrap around (a rule I always hated for it's fiddlyness anyway) and setting up 60 gobbos or chainrasps to maximize attacks ensuring at least two layers of 25mm bases get within 1" of the enemy. One takes 5 seconds, the other can take good few minutes if you really insist on checking the coherency (...and if you don't, which I usually tend to handwave for my enemy, it just means you have a horrible rule that is better to ignore than keep around).

Adamwarhammeraccount wrote:
Thank you everyone for taking the time to help and for all the information, I appreciate it.

Quite a lot to take in and while it looks like the good old days are staying in the good old days there's obviously loads of new stuff I need to check out !

And no I don't have anything anymore, I think I'll get a few kits just for the fun of building and painting for now.

When my local gw opens back up I'll check if there's any 6th or 7th edition fantasy around here while I bring myself up to speed with all these other games.

Thanks again

Sadly you will have no luck. Gw actually has (or had) a mandate to forbid any wfb games in its stores. There are some fanfasy kits in the stores but for games...

Lord Kragan wrote:
Sadly you will have no luck. Gw actually has (or had) a mandate to forbid any wfb games in its stores. There are some fanfasy kits in the stores but for games...

For playing in-store it's up to the manager, the same as 30k & Specialist Games IIRC. Local gaming clubs (or non-GW stores) might play older versions - I know two of mine have 8th Edition Fantasy nights.

Adamwarhammeraccount wrote:
Thank you everyone for taking the time to help and for all the information, I appreciate it.

Quite a lot to take in and while it looks like the good old days are staying in the good old days there's obviously loads of new stuff I need to check out !

And no I don't have anything anymore, I think I'll get a few kits just for the fun of building and painting for now.

When my local gw opens back up I'll check if there's any 6th or 7th edition fantasy around here while I bring myself up to speed with all these other games.

Thanks again

In all this I also forgot to say that GW IS bringing Old World back. Right now they've only got a logo and a few concept designs for Kisleve! Though they said that it was at least a 3 year project before anything would be seen and that was a year ago (and then we had corona) so its likely still several years off.

Note that the team behind Total War games also got the licence for Old World. They've published 2 full connected games (armies and dlc from game 1 carry over into game 2) which cover a huge swathe of armies and Warhammer TW 3 is coming likely later this year (and again games 1 and 2 races and dlc carries over into the 3rd game). The Kisleve stuff that GW has previewed is likely based on the same concept work they've done with CA in producing the TW army (Kisleve is coming in the 3rd game - complete with bear cavalry).