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It does smack of a desperate attempt at infusing life into a dying branch of the company..I will be curious to see how GW executes this..and to be honest..i have been seeing this coming for some time, so here is hoping for the best..and bracing for the worst.

 kodos wrote:
Maybe the best time to take a closer look on Kings of War.

(and make a petition to get a Kings of War army list for every Warhammer army as soon as the 2. edi is available)

No need, it's happening

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
It does smack of a desperate attempt at infusing life into a dying branch of the company..I will be curious to see how GW executes this..and to be honest..i have been seeing this coming for some time, so here is hoping for the best..and bracing for the worst.

I think GW rightly believes that they have very little to lose at this point.
- If the naysayers are right, then WFB shrinks a bunch, but the ongoing cost to support goes close to zero, so GW loses less on the WFB line.
- If GW is right, then WFB holds with half the ongoing support cost, so WFB becomes a marginally profitable line.

Either way, GW gets mostly new blood into Fantasy, and eventually, they can grow it to something more profitable, say 10th Ed in 2018 (3 years in).

And regardless, trying to do more with Fantasy has been shown to fail. Players buy the big fancy kits. Players buy the dataslates with the flashy rules. Players pay a lot for Limited Edition product. Why wouldn't GW capitalize on those trends?

Really scared for my Lizardmen. :(

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
It does smack of a desperate attempt at infusing life into a dying branch of the company..I will be curious to see how GW executes this..and to be honest..i have been seeing this coming for some time, so here is hoping for the best..and bracing for the worst.

I think GW rightly believes that they have very little to lose at this point.
- If the naysayers are right, then WFB shrinks a bunch, but the ongoing cost to support goes close to zero, so GW loses less on the WFB line.
- If GW is right, then WFB holds with half the ongoing support cost, so WFB becomes a marginally profitable line.

Either way, GW gets mostly new blood into Fantasy, and eventually, they can grow it to something more profitable, say 10th Ed in 2018 (3 years in).

And regardless, trying to do more with Fantasy has been shown to fail. Players buy the big fancy kits. Players buy the dataslates with the flashy rules. Players pay a lot for Limited Edition product. Why wouldn't GW capitalize on those trends?

I get what you're saying regarding gw's (usually very humourous) perspective, but i don't see how this brings in new players. It's like that episode of the simpsons where homer tries to drum up new business for the bowling alley by randomly firing his shotgun outside in the parking lot. It's like the underpants gnomes who have step 1 and step 3 all mapped out, but no clue what step 2 is. It's like.... it's like games workshop.

GW always has some new blood coming in. If the old blood disappears, the remaining mix is mostly new, right?

Yeah, very true.

As someone who is looking into buying my first "real" Fantasy army, the thing that was putting me and my friends back from it wasn't the cost, it was the playerbase. There is almost no one in my area that plays it, but 40k has dedicated game days for it at my LGS, but nothing for fantasy.
For them to want to remove races or clump them together seems like a bad choice to me. I would prefer them to put more money into advertising or creating "ready to play" sets.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
It does smack of a desperate attempt at infusing life into a dying branch of the company..I will be curious to see how GW executes this..and to be honest..i have been seeing this coming for some time, so here is hoping for the best..and bracing for the worst.

I think GW rightly believes that they have very little to lose at this point.
- If the naysayers are right, then WFB shrinks a bunch, but the ongoing cost to support goes close to zero, so GW loses less on the WFB line.
- If GW is right, then WFB holds with half the ongoing support cost, so WFB becomes a marginally profitable line.

Either way, GW gets mostly new blood into Fantasy, and eventually, they can grow it to something more profitable, say 10th Ed in 2018 (3 years in).

And regardless, trying to do more with Fantasy has been shown to fail. Players buy the big fancy kits. Players buy the dataslates with the flashy rules. Players pay a lot for Limited Edition product. Why wouldn't GW capitalize on those trends?

I'm pretty fully in agreement with you about this, it seems to make the most sense. I'm really curious to see how this is all going to go down.

I think if true, it will simply come down to the models.. if they are the best they have released as suggested.. so good avid collectors find it hard to turn them down even in the on going chaos of such drastic changes.. it might just work.

Also, with the shattered worlds thing.. continuing speculation it might be true, if they do indeed drop any factions, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to bring them back in some way down the road.. a new 'bubble' is discovered etc... if this turned Fantasy's fortunes around.

Half of the stuff they have made in the last 2 years will be invalidated. Gw could just as easily avoid people going with proxies by being COMPETITIVE in their market. But that will never happen.

Well I have been telling my wife for a while that GW has been pissing me off lately and that I just need to wait until all of my armies are updated build up the armies off the most up to date books and move onto another system (really fell in love with warmahordes). All my fantasy armies are up to date so I think I will finally finish up my armies with all the options I want and step away for a while....now I can only hope they update all my 40k armies so I can do the same thing for that system too. Not going to rage out or gloom and doom just realizing with the GW price hike and them making dramatic army changes(the blood angel codex fiasco, and now the possibility of my lizardmen, wood elves and ogre kingdoms going away) costing me huge amounts of money just to stick with the game that I will just stick with the edition I am in and enjoy that one.....maybe one day I will wander back to the system when it feels new again and not as frustrating.

 gorgon wrote:
Hey there, chief. My post was pretty obviously in reference to the release schedule component to these rumors.

So lighten the feth up. You have miniatures, I have miniatures, we all have miniatures. And none of us really know what's going to happen. I suspect that even if these rumors come to pass, there will still be a healthy number of people playing 8th edition (or some variant thereof). Especially since organized play is now in the hands of the people instead of the company.

The only thing resembling panic in the thread so far are people like myself who are concerned that their army is one of those slated to be axed according to the rumor. The people discussing the purported limited release schedule seem to be more incredulous than anything else.

Still, no big deal here until I see if all of this turns out completely true or not.

Good Emprah what the hell is going on at GW (if this is true.)

Minion: Man overlord Kirby, it looks like people really enjoyed that End Times thing we did.

Overlord Kirby: BEGIN PHASE 2!

Overlord Kirby wipes a bunch of skulls off his obsidian desk and mashes a large red button with a ceramite covered fist.

The part of the GW factories that produces WHFB burst into flames and the rulebooks are incinerated.

Minion: Uh sir you just destroyed $12 million dollars wor-

Overlord Kirby: We shall now create 9th edition, with isolated "bubbles" connected by magic and with armored zealots.

Minion: sir we already made that game.

 Vermis wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
why don't you burn $1500 of your own money and then tell me how you feel, m'kay?

Not really a fair comparison, because this:

completely invalidating the entire army

... isn't really true.

To be fair, you're likely correct to an extent; time will tell.

There us this though:

Many existing models are not usable in 9th.

So, if true, we're all going to wind up with "many" unusable game models that can either be binned or relegated to being pretties on a shelf. Let's say Gnoblars are axed, that's over a hundred models that I own and many hours of prep and paint not to mention cash outlay. Not an expensive enough example? How about Blood Knights go away? How much of an army that you own being made unusable would it take for you to be concerned?

Has this bit been discussed yet? From the bottom of this BOLS article, and attributed to Earlybird. Just sounds like piling on existing rumors, but still worth noting:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/01/breaking-wfb-9th-explodes.html

from the horse mouth

factions :

1) Chaos : Demons + Beasts + Mortals
2) Elves
3) Empire
4) Undead
5) Orcs and Goblins
6) Skavens

Lizards are gone in space.
Dwarves survivors join the empire with the ogres.

1) Chaos core : Warriors of chaos/chariot/Hounds
Demons figs will be kept as they are usable in 40k
Bye bye marauders, ungors, centigors, razorgor etc

2) Elves core : spearmen/archers/cavalry on horse
No more xbows
the 3 elves will blend in one faction
dark elves monsters are gone : cold ones, hydra

3) Empire core: Hallberds/Handgun/Canon
Some dwarves survivors and ogres are included
Imperial and bretonnian knights are merged

4) Undead core : Skeletons/Ghouls/Spirit host
bye bye bone giant, scorpion sphinx, chariots and everything too much egyptian

5) Orcs and goblins core : Goblins/Orcs/Black orcs
no real change for them

6) Skaven core : Clanrats/Plague rats/Rat ogres
no real change for them too

If this is true (which I seriously doubt at this point) I really don't see how invalidating 75%+ of existing models/armies and removing anything interesting from the remainder will improve sales.

This scares me... Warhammer is one of my favorite games and have a ton of armies.. Plus I am an old timer and watched them kill "EPIC" back in the day.. If they do something similar to fantasy I fear l'll be stuck with a bunch of miniatures that will be impossible to get rid of. I have never mind the small changes over the years, some good ...some bad.. but changing base type just to try to get new players seems like shooting themselves in the foot. And their goal is to sale miniatures.. how is less miniatures improve sales?

This sounds unreal. Maybe a spin-off smaller scale game, a tabletop version of an LCG? That's what it sounds like to me. Perhaps making another WHFB game to draw more interest to the franchise, and lead people into starting the "main" game.

Or just made up rumors that people are just running with.

Applying generous amounts of salt, in any csse

If true, and I'm not 100% writing it off, this would pretty much be the nail in the coffin for me with GW. My friends have basically no interest in 40k right now, and murdering fantasy would basically kill any last shred of interest in it we had. As it is, we're basically ignoring End Times stuff as much from lack of interest in End Times as from lack of interest in Fantasy at the moment. (We've been on an X-Wing kick lately).

I won't be selling off my armies or anything. I have rule books so I can continue to play the game as I want. I have sunk way too much money into it to just walk away completely, but I don't imagine I'd buy anything new, ever.

Too bad. I (like most here) have been playing GW games for a long time; they're what got me into table top gaming in the first place. It would be a shame for them to go completely by the wayside.

 RiTides wrote:
Has this bit been discussed yet? From the bottom of this BOLS article, and attributed to Earlybird. Just sounds like piling on existing rumors, but still worth noting:

Spoiler:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/01/breaking-wfb-9th-explodes.html

from the horse mouth

factions :

1) Chaos : Demons + Beasts + Mortals
2) Elves
3) Empire
4) Undead
5) Orcs and Goblins
6) Skavens

Lizards are gone in space.
Dwarves survivors join the empire with the ogres.

1) Chaos core : Warriors of chaos/chariot/Hounds
Demons figs will be kept as they are usable in 40k
Bye bye marauders, ungors, centigors, razorgor etc

2) Elves core : spearmen/archers/cavalry on horse
No more xbows
the 3 elves will blend in one faction
dark elves monsters are gone : cold ones, hydra

3) Empire core: Hallberds/Handgun/Canon
Some dwarves survivors and ogres are included
Imperial and bretonnian knights are merged

4) Undead core : Skeletons/Ghouls/Spirit host
bye bye bone giant, scorpion sphinx, chariots and everything too much egyptian

5) Orcs and goblins core : Goblins/Orcs/Black orcs
no real change for them

6) Skaven core : Clanrats/Plague rats/Rat ogres
no real change for them too

Wait

What the crap is a plague rat? Plague Monks maybe? Or the poisoned rat swarms from the previous army book?

If this happens, I will write up an update for 8th edition, tweaks to all army books to rebalance existing units, and FAQs/Errata.

Anyone willing to help is welcome to give their input, but this will happen if GW scraps Fantasy in this rumored way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Accolade wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Has this bit been discussed yet? From the bottom of this BOLS article, and attributed to Earlybird. Just sounds like piling on existing rumors, but still worth noting:

Spoiler:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/01/breaking-wfb-9th-explodes.html

from the horse mouth

factions :

1) Chaos : Demons + Beasts + Mortals
2) Elves
3) Empire
4) Undead
5) Orcs and Goblins
6) Skavens

Lizards are gone in space.
Dwarves survivors join the empire with the ogres.

1) Chaos core : Warriors of chaos/chariot/Hounds
Demons figs will be kept as they are usable in 40k
Bye bye marauders, ungors, centigors, razorgor etc

2) Elves core : spearmen/archers/cavalry on horse
No more xbows
the 3 elves will blend in one faction
dark elves monsters are gone : cold ones, hydra

3) Empire core: Hallberds/Handgun/Canon
Some dwarves survivors and ogres are included
Imperial and bretonnian knights are merged

4) Undead core : Skeletons/Ghouls/Spirit host
bye bye bone giant, scorpion sphinx, chariots and everything too much egyptian

5) Orcs and goblins core : Goblins/Orcs/Black orcs
no real change for them

6) Skaven core : Clanrats/Plague rats/Rat ogres
no real change for them too

 agnosto wrote:
The only thing resembling panic in the thread so far are people like myself who are concerned that their army is one of those slated to be axed according to the rumor.

No armies are going to be axed. You'll still be able to play with them. You just won't see any new releases in the current "Old World" style ever again. But GW won't ban 8E armies from 9E. 9E will be a transition period as they introduce the various streamlined (yet also 15% more points efficient) Grimdark Armies that replace the bloated Old World Armies. During 9E, expect the rapid release of a series of new Grimdark Hero and Grimdark Core units in 2015 to support the new Grimdark Armies that replace the various Old World Armies.

2016, I'd expect we see a mix of Grimdark 2-in-1 Specials (e.g. Grimdark Ogres) and/or Grimdark 2-in-1 Rares in 2016 and 2017, along with limited edition releases of select Old World models updated to Grimdark form.

When 10E comes out (2018?), expect to see the Old World "bubbles" collapse and WFB to be Grimdark all the way.

Anyone think this isn't how GW goes forward? Yes, no?

@RITides and Grey Templar

The Earlybird post is from here:

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?404065-Warhammer-And-Now-For-Something-Completely-Different&p=7349364&viewfull=1#post7349364

Scroll down a bit to Avian's post - which I quote now for convenience

Quote Originally Posted by AngryOrcBitch...WAAAGH! View Post
What the *****! No way.... there is just no way.

You should not trust people simply based on their user name. This guy has a history of first posting nonsense about the High Elf book and then posting nonsense about the Wood Elf book. No reason to start believing in him now.

Earlybird - Total rumors: (4 TRUE) / (15 FALSE)

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/448304.page

Earlybird is the opposite of a good source. BOLS haven't checked this before posting but on Warseer he was rightfully ignored. Better not trust him - especially with all these details which WILL make people sad or worse very angry.

Thanks Warhams, I made a note of this under his or her information in the OP. I believe most of the other rumors are in the more reliable category.

Hasn't much of this been confirmed by Harry, who is a good source?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Hasn't much of this been confirmed by Harry, who is a good source?

No, one example (I have a serious flu and cannot read and compare texts for more than a few minutes at the moment) the lizardmen removal. It is not in Harry's post.

Harry also does not specificaly mention what happens to each race nor do Darnok's sources. Better be careful with this

Normally, I'd poo poo this type of huge change but D&D did pretty much the same thing with their most popular setting (forgotten realms) with the advent of 4th edition. Granted, WOTC didn't have to worry about invalidating folks' armies of minis but that type of huge shake up with a new edition for a popular and long running product line has precedent within the industry.

All this shake-up and I STILL see nothing to suggest that cavalry will be actually worth taking...