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.

 Grot 6 wrote:

What really neds to happen is a new Dakka Section opened up for "OLDHAMMER". Where we can start discussing home brew rules, and conversions, and gather info from Warhammer fantasy that has been lost to the curse of being forgotten in the chase of gotta catch them all "New lickies and chewies".

So like a "Warhammer Fantasy Battle Legacy Discussion" subsection, wherein "Discussion related to the legacy Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules, including 9th Age" could take place.

That's a novel idea.

*Morpheus voice* What if I told you that it already exists?

So is there actually any news and rumours here? Or is it all still on the first post of the first page?

 Overread wrote:

Ragweek wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
As per the above, at 16-20 models per unit, at 15mm scale, GW could sell actual, viable unit boxes at a price-point familiar to their customers.

At 15mm, all they'd be doing is further alienating the people who actually play Fantasy.

15 mm scale? Who had this stupid idea?! If they want to bring Fantasy back they need to do two things first:

1. Apologize to all WHFB players.
2. Trash AoS.

I second that. I would certainly forgive gw if they did yhat!

So the lesson you want GW to learn form randomly dropping games and making gamers sad is to - repeat it again?

I mean I guess its fair, but then again if its the lesson you want GW to learn surely its setting you up for a future fall since if you want them to repeat it for AoS there's nothing to stop them repeating it again for the Old World rebirth.



IT doesn't even have to touch on the fact that AoS is now selling better than Old World had sold in quite a long time. Even if many of the faults of Old World falling were on GW and even if AoS started with one of the worst game launches in a long while. Personally I'd rather GW learned positive lessons that resulted in a net gain for them and customers/gamers so that everyone benefits.

Despite my well-known hate boner for AoS, I actually agree. AoS exists, it has its own fanbase now, there's no point in killing it off other than a momentary flash of schadenfreude when the subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans get a taste of their own medicine, and I don't think that outweighs the misery it would cause the rest of its fanbase nor as you say the precedent it would set.

If GW want to bring Fantasy back, all they need to do is bring it back with genuine passion and reverence. So long as it's evident it's not purely a cynical moneymaking exercise, and so long as they don't mangle the IP to constantly and explicitly tie it into AoS, most of us will be happy. We could be happier, say if GW were to fully retcon away the End Times as part of WHF, disconnect it from AoS entirely outside of the usual "the Warp connects everything" line, and go back to the idea of it as a setting rather than a saturday morning cartoon plot, but so long as there's no "and then a portal opened and mysterious giant golden-clad men bellowing the name of Sigmar ran out and BTFO's Chaos and the day was won huzzah!" gak, or absolutely pointless "hint drop" stuff like shoehorning Cawl into the Heresy, it should be good enough.

Wait are you saying no one is playing or buying AOS? I don't think GW would be in a position to release Fantasy if AOS wasn't doing so well. Half the stuff GW releases for AOS is sold out in pre-order.

I'm hopeful that GW releases Fantasy based heroes, terrain, and armies with AOS rules that will be playable. I'd be ok with it if the bases were in WOTR miniature trays and they were blocks- but not if they brought back the old rules, stat lines, and charts. The GW Fantasy game that I played was horrible. People wouldn't home-brew their own rules if it wasn't total trash.

there's no point in killing it off other than a momentary flash of schadenfreude when the subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans get a taste of their own medicine

I think you significantly overestimate the emotional attachmet of Aos fans compared to the WFB cult.

Cronch wrote:

there's no point in killing it off other than a momentary flash of schadenfreude when the subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans get a taste of their own medicine

I think you significantly overestimate the emotional attachmet of Aos fans compared to the WFB cult.

I'd also say that the "subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans" are a reaction to a subset of WHF fans.

Cronch wrote:

there's no point in killing it off other than a momentary flash of schadenfreude when the subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans get a taste of their own medicine

I think you significantly overestimate the emotional attachmet of Aos fans compared to the WFB cult.

That’s the issue.
No one can over or under estimate anything about it.
Unless GW were to show comparative sales records per game type over the years then we won’t know.
Even “in my area or group” is no use as it’s too small of a data collection.
Some groups stick to one thing while others player different or multiple games.

While there’s no definitive answer, it can’t be doing badly as it hasn’t been axed and there’s been no drastic measures to push sales.
WHFB got the end times to try and bring more people in and make a big thing of it.
By the seems of it, that didn’t help much (or not as much as expected)

 nels1031 wrote:

Cronch wrote:

there's no point in killing it off other than a momentary flash of schadenfreude when the subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans get a taste of their own medicine

I think you significantly overestimate the emotional attachmet of Aos fans compared to the WFB cult.

I'd also say that the "subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans" are a reaction to a subset of WHF fans.

Agreed and in truth they are both very small subsets of the population. They just seem more online where people often complain more than not.
The AoS ones are a reaction, often, to those early days when AoS was launched and the Old World scrapped and emotions ran very high on both sides. The new AoS player detested being insulted for loving something new and fun for them; whilst the Old World player detested that all that they'd loved (and also been led to think was getting a renewed life to it) had been thrown aside.


In the end both are simply passionate gamers who have let their passions overrule their manners.


What has happened has happened, customers, gamers sniping at each other over it gets nowhere. GW won't pay attention to it; communities only fragment over it and all that happens in the end is people leave with a soured experience of BOTH sides.

The best thing gamers can do is discourage such behaviour and push forward toward better times and engagements with the hobby we love; each in own way.

Jackal90 wrote:
WHFB got the end times to try and bring more people in and make a big thing of it. By the seems of it, that didn’t help much (or not as much as expected)

Nah, I think AoS was most definitely in the pipeline when the first End Times book dropped. Even the most prominent rumor monger of the time was warning us of it a year or so ahead of the End Times, if I remember correctly.

Now a few years before End Times, 8th edition had a solid year of Army Books and Supplements. I think when the return on that investment failed to impress the bean counters, (almost all on GW with their pricing structure at the time) thats when the decision to axe WHFB was made.

 nels1031 wrote:

Cronch wrote:

there's no point in killing it off other than a momentary flash of schadenfreude when the subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans get a taste of their own medicine

I think you significantly overestimate the emotional attachmet of Aos fans compared to the WFB cult.

I'd also say that the "subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans" are a reaction to a subset of WHF fans.

Indeed. WHF fans came out in force amongst other forums when this announcement came out to call AoS a dead game to rile others up as well while bringing back the early year insults.

 nels1031 wrote:

Jackal90 wrote:
WHFB got the end times to try and bring more people in and make a big thing of it. By the seems of it, that didn’t help much (or not as much as expected)

Nah, I think AoS was most definitely in the pipeline when the first End Times book dropped. Even the most prominent rumor monger of the time was warning us of it a year or so ahead of the End Times, if I remember correctly.

Now a few years before End Times, 8th edition had a solid year of Army Books and Supplements. I think when the return on that investment failed to impress the bean counters, (almost all on GW with their pricing structure at the time) thats when the decision to axe WHFB was made.

I think it was more than "bean counters".
I think that it was born of a management team and ethos that was very top-isolated. Kirby was even quoted in financial reports at "not needing consumer feedback." Remember this was a time where the only advanced news we got for a release was the release page in White Dwarf and any rumour - if we were lucky. GW was all about "surprise" releases; but also their upper end of the company was very shut off from the consumer.

The result I think, was a management choice to produce a game like AoS which had very little connection to what the market who GW had wanted and instead was based on a market GW didn't really have. Remember AoS at launch was a game founded on not really having rules, points nor even proper armies. It's very clear that, barring stormcast, GW were likely going to "cycle" armies - adding and dropping them and using the Grand Alliance system so that you'd build one of four grand alliance armies instead of a named faction. Letting GW drop armies and add them on a whim.

Ontop of that their marketing at the time was very bad. They sunk a huge amount into the End Times - not forgetting that "end times" events had happened in the Old World before - which got loads of fantasy players fired up. GW got their whole original market fired up and then kicked the chair out from under them by dropping the game and lumping most of the models into a new game. Shattering some armies; adding others and removing some.




Of course out of the ashes of that disaster GW has been changed significantly and is almost in a fresh and new "golden age" of wargaming.

 Overread wrote:

 nels1031 wrote:

Cronch wrote:

there's no point in killing it off other than a momentary flash of schadenfreude when the subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans get a taste of their own medicine

I think you significantly overestimate the emotional attachmet of Aos fans compared to the WFB cult.

I'd also say that the "subset of AoS fans who've acted like smug little gaks towards WHF fans" are a reaction to a subset of WHF fans.

Agreed and in truth they are both very small subsets of the population. They just seem more online where people often complain more than not.
The AoS ones are a reaction, often, to those early days when AoS was launched and the Old World scrapped and emotions ran very high on both sides. The new AoS player detested being insulted for loving something new and fun for them; whilst the Old World player detested that all that they'd loved (and also been led to think was getting a renewed life to it) had been thrown aside.


In the end both are simply passionate gamers who have let their passions overrule their manners.


What has happened has happened, customers, gamers sniping at each other over it gets nowhere. GW won't pay attention to it; communities only fragment over it and all that happens in the end is people leave with a soured experience of BOTH sides.

The best thing gamers can do is discourage such behaviour and push forward toward better times and engagements with the hobby we love; each in own way.

Loving all the "lets be reasonable and respectful here, both sides were bad and we should move on, but of course it's definitely all the WHF fans' fault and they started it" BS

People can talk about the WHF Grog boogeyman all they like, the reality is that the early anger was directed at AoS and at GW, and it was the fans of AoS who chose to take that as a personal slight against them and escalated things. The folk(mostly jokingly, if smugly) talking about AoS being a "ded gaem" when TOW was announced are only reflecting back the comments that were made to WHF fans after AoS was launched. I mean, some AoS fans were unironically defending those initial "get you by" rules for the WHF factions that were filled with deliberate pisstakes and rules that gave ingame advantage for mocking the mentally ill or slagging off your opponent, that's how desperately they'd tied their own personal worth into AoS as a brand. Not to mention that anyone who was annoyed by the way certain forums and quite a few FB groups just appropriated places that had been dedicated to WHF for years and essentially told WHF people to eff-off or stuck them in a containment board was dismissed out of hand as being an unreasonable whinger when they clearly had a fair point. After all that? Yeah some of the vitriol shifted its focus to the AoS fandom itself, I'd argue they had it coming at that stage.

And here I thought I was blaming GWs management and marketing choices at the time?

Is there any background overview book for AOS under $25? Something like the old Guide to the Old World or an RPG sourcebook?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is there any background overview book for AOS under $25? Something like the old Guide to the Old World or an RPG sourcebook?

I don't think there's really a great "This is all about the Mortal Realms!" thing that fits under that, but the "Getting Started" magazine they sell has a bit that would fill you in on the Mortal Realms and what they are. If I remember right, it contains a decent chunk of the stuff from the main rulebook's fluff section.

 Overread wrote:
And here I thought I was blaming GWs management and marketing choices at the time?

And we’re Both over here using the word subset, same word choice as the dude quoting us. You even emphasize how small that subset is. Somehow when we say it, that translates to “all the WHF fans” in the lens that this dude views this forum.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Is there any background overview book for AOS under $25? Something like the old Guide to the Old World or an RPG sourcebook?

Honestly some of the wiki's around now do a good job of that already.
Otherwise the Big Rule book is a good starting point, though perhaps more than you want to spend on it.

Black Library wise there's no lore book as such, but there is an RPG campaign system in the works by Cubical 7 though its a way off yet. That RPG system will likely have a lot of good general lore and establish the realms and system quite nicely.

Cut it out. Stay polite and on topic please.

I kinda hope we hear something about this game soon though. 3 years is a long time to wait without any news at all.

I know there was some hype among the AoS folk locally about it, many excited that they could keep their WHFB armies on squares and just use new forces/armies for AoS.

Yeah - until we know more about it I'm not really paying much attention to it. At this moment we know zero about what it is or is about or anything.

I am looking forward to seeing what they do, I am still playing 6th and hope that my two forces remain roughly useable in the new game (bring back DoW GW!) but if not I could be tempted by soemthing new. Played against a fellah using Sigmarines on squares as Chaos Warriors and it actually looked really good and has tempted me to try making a Fish Elves forces as counts as DE.

Hopefully the ranking system will be better then 8ths that required huge ranks, but not so poor as 7th's. I don't like the idea of having pure cavalry because there was no point to having ranked armies due to how quickly they capitulated to being struck from the flanks or back. They really weren't much of a speedbump after a point even before the issues of powercreep came to play.

Though I am looking forward to seeing Ogre's done up again, or whatever armies they've chosen to bring back.

Cronch wrote:

You want to know the biggest problem with AOS? No one plays it.

And that's why it's in 2nd place in that independend sales list that gets published every half a year.

And fb was top3 when gw decided to kill fantasy killing support and new releases which unsurprisingly caused drop in sales. When you sell most of kits you ever are going to sell in first few months and do no new releases vour sales suffer.

Problem with fb wasn't it didn't sell(top3 seller when it was killed off inside gw). Problem was it didn't sell as much as space marines which for kirby meant it sold too little

tneva82 wrote:

Cronch wrote:

You want to know the biggest problem with AOS? No one plays it.

And that's why it's in 2nd place in that independend sales list that gets published every half a year.

And fb was top3 when gw decided to kill fantasy killing support and new releases which unsurprisingly caused drop in sales. When you sell most of kits you ever are going to sell in first few months and do no new releases vour sales suffer.

Problem with fb wasn't it didn't sell(top3 seller when it was killed off inside gw). Problem was it didn't sell as much as space marines which for kirby meant it sold too little

Fantasy was not top3. Where are you getting this nonsense? Fantasy was doing horribly.

 Carnikang wrote:


I kinda hope we hear something about this game soon though. 3 years is a long time to wait without any news at all.

I hope so to, perhapse they'll show something at lvo later this week

Strg Alt wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
As per the above, at 16-20 models per unit, at 15mm scale, GW could sell actual, viable unit boxes at a price-point familiar to their customers.

At 15mm, all they'd be doing is further alienating the people who actually play Fantasy.

15 mm scale? Who had this stupid idea?! If they want to bring Fantasy back they need to do two things first:

1. Apologize to all WHFB players.
2. Trash AoS.

Yikes.

I really didn't like WFB getting squatted, I can't imagine AOS players would like it any more, and I certainly don't wish them to go through it simply because I did. IF they are making money of AOS and people actively play it, there's no reason NOT to keep it around. Hell, even if the line is simply raided for 40K conversions/proxies, it's still sales.

Cronch wrote:I hope all WHFB players have the same attitude as you :*

We get it: you love AOS and hate WFB. Doesn't change the fact they're bringing WFB back. Deal.

Albino Squirrel wrote:There was a time when Games Workshop was releasing new games all the time. The problem was exactly what people are describing with Warmaster. It didn't matter how great the game was, people didn't want to start another whole game system. So there weren't enough people buying the stuff to justify all the cost of creating an entirely new game and range of miniatures. And they couldn't afford to keep them around permanently. They're better off spending that effort to create a new faction in 40k or Age of Sigmar.

Except for the fact that people WERE buying WFB stuff, it just wasn't in Marines levels of purchases, which is the standard Kirby held. Point blank, cancelling WFB left money on the table, and GW wants it back.


Also, Warmaster failed for more reasons than any other system: it was a different scale necessitating the need for all new terrain/etc., it was a bear to paint, it didn't bring new things to the game like Epic did for 40K, it was just tiny WFB with a game system that could screw you over from the start of your turn.

Jjohnso11 wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:

Cronch wrote:

You want to know the biggest problem with AOS? No one plays it.

And that's why it's in 2nd place in that independend sales list that gets published every half a year.

What is your point?

Out of my whole post- that's the best you can come up with? I guess every conversation needs "THAT GUY".

The point is your argument is flawed since you're asserting no one plays or buys AOS. Games Workshop made the right decision axing Fantasy since no one played/bought the models or rulesets. When the new games drops I will not lose hours of my life playing a horrible ruleset that is either hero hammer or cavhammer. I sincerely hope they don't devote too many resources to this new iteration.

It's nice to know you have the prescience to know exactly what this new ruleset is going to play like. Oh, you don't? Then stow it, to be frank. Nothing leaked at all indicates it is going to ape ANY of the more awkward parts of previous editions. We literally don't know, so I don't know where your conjec…

Oh, wait. AOS fan. Got it.

This doesn't mean your game is cancelled, save your vitriol for a moment when it is actually warranted.

 Just Tony wrote:
Doesn't change the fact they're bringing WFB back

Not trying to nitpick, but I have seen this assumption thrown about a lot in these discussions, and I am pretty sure GW has not said this.

33 pages in to this discussion just on Dakka, and all we have had so far is GW saying something was in the works utilising the Old World lore, and mentioned square bases.

Is it definitely not just a rehash of WFB? I don't know, nobody does. But with them revisiting the Old World, and setting it out akin to Horus Heresy for 40K, doesn't automatically mean it is just WFB...again.

You know, just for balance

As entertaining it is to see old blood feuds being necromanced on Dakka I do hope that GW allows for some adaptability between the Old World and AoS, ie. my round base Daughters of Khaine can be used as rank and file Witch Elves in the Old World. If they'd release something like the LotR movement trays it would be fantastic.

Otherwise I think there is too little information to know what the plans are for the Old World. A part of me believes that even GW isn't really sure what they want to do with it except capitalize on a renowned IP. I also fear it won't be as 1-to-1 unit- and army-wise as people are hoping as GW really wants to make some money. The last thing I fear is that they'll approach this like most of their games by only releasing two major factions and then evaluating where to go next. Which in turn would leave players who love different factions out in the cold or just accepting that if they want to play they can only play those two factions.

I'm hoping for this to be a new warmaster. Different scale, entirely detached from AoS, new miniatures and big armies that better represent the numbers involved.

Eldarsif: I agree. But the only way to manage that is to use unit footprints rather than individual bases for deciding things, and people have rightly pointed out the issues with that due to 32mm bases being so large.