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I'm sure Fantasy would had been a giant success of a game system with how nu-GW is handling things. (And is not like they have done anything incredible: Remember the recent price increases, like sc! boxes going from 65€ boxes to 110€ patrols, etc... and the across all ranges price increases. But a little bit of fanbase-engagement and BOOM. Profit! Who would have tought?!)

The proof is that AoS, a complete mess of a game at release has become a great success.

Theres nothing inherently flawed about Fantasy that made it impossible to economically work. It worked for nearly 30 years. And even as early as the 2000-2008 it was bigger than 40k in Spain for example.(Then the crisis came and... yeah)

chaos0xomega wrote:Its absolutely not trolling - its people quite rightly wondering how GW intends to profit off of something that they didn't consider to be profitable enough to continue to support not even 5 years ago, and rationally extrapolating that if GW wants to profit from it they will have to drive sales of new miniatures vs allowing people to repurpose existing figures/figures from their competitors.

The most immediately logical way to do that would be to change the scale, as it prevents people from reusing their existing fantasy minis collections and also prevents GWs competitors from profiting from sales of their own cheaper sub-par 28mm fantasy lines. Theres very little in the way of decent small-scale fantasy miniatures out there on the market currently, and exactly 0% of it is in plastic, whereas everyone and their mother imagining themselves to be the next James Workshop is trying to sell 28mm fantasy plastics that would otherwise work in the old WHFB setting in a pinch. Hell, there are now *tons* of plastic 28mm historical minis that people can and do use as the basis for cheaphammer fantasy armies too. GWs other games all have decent "moats" that have limited the ability of outside entities to market decent alternatives to GWs own minis, 40k proper having the weakest moat of them all - but even then the best alternatives cost more than GWs own minis do, so you're not buying them to save a buck so much as you are because you want something different. Otherwise, other manufacturers haven't really been successful in producing popular alt-minis that you commonly see popping up on tables everywhere the way you started seeing mantics undead standing in for vampires/tomb kings, and historicals based conversions for empire armies, etc. the way you did towards the end of WHFB.

See below on getting people to buy minis.
On the profitability: it wasn't the people who are running things now's idea. The people who decided to scrap The Old World where quite obviously not very good and also appear to have been wrong.

On the scale: it sounds utterly ridiculous to me.
As a person who started wargaming with 15mm ancients (an umbrella term for historical wargames set before the advent of gunpowder) and played that for a decade before touching a GW miniature; 15mm just isn't that popular and GW can not make the insane models that sets them apart at that scale.

There is a reason that pretty much all fantasy and Sci-Fi games are in 28mm; it's the scale you use if cool aesthetics and models are important. 15mm is the trade off if you want a decent amount of detail and nice "figures" to work with, but still want it to look like an army because you are concerned with simulating a battle. 15mm is great for historical, especially ancients.

Models that look awesome on their own? Models that capture the look and feel of a fantasy (or Sci-Fi) setting? 28mm is what you want.

His Master's Voice wrote:Much like a player that does not spend a dime on a free to play game is not a loss for the developer, you would not be a loss for GW.

There are new players out there ready to buy WFB, there are vets that will drop a grand on a new project. And then there's you, with an army ready to play, letting the newbies and vets with new, shiny toys find a game that much easier.

This is just it. Taking Kings of War as an example; (I realise it's not as big as Warhammer, but it is currently a growing game with an active global community).
When AoS happened Mantic released a book to accommodate those old Warhamer armies. The community grew, it was the shot in the arm that Kings of War needed. It is still acceptable to use minis form whatever company for Kings of War (as long as they look the part), that leads to people getting in to Kings of War with miniatures they like.

Mantic is not suffering from not selling those people miniatures. They wouldn't have sold them anything if they had to use Mantic minis to play, but they did (and still do) make the community bigger. It is now common to see people in the community (many of whom only tried Kings of War because they didn't need to buy new minis) start all Mantic armies simply to support the company (the recent releases from Mantic really help too though).
Wargames become more successfuland grow more easily the more people play. That's part of what keeps people playing GW games despite.

Those people who don't need new minis? They're an instant player base for people who do need an army to join. If they enjoy the game and get into it them we all know how many miniatures is enough. There will be new "Old World" minis in their pile of shame before long.

Yeah, I've been using facebook/reddit for a while as informal market research, but it has its pitfalls. You'll also notice discrepancies in numbers between facebook pages and groups.

Unfortunately its hard to know how much "fidelity" there is in the numbers pulled from social media sources. Not everyone is on facebook/reddit, and not everyone who is on facebook/reddit is a member of the relevant groups/pages/subreddits, etc.

I suspect to some extent there is an age skew to the data, with reddit trending younger and facebook trending a bit older (hence why Mordheim only has 4k subs on reddit but 14k on facebook - young whippersnappers are less likely to know about Mordheim or to have experienced it or hold it in any particular regard vs older gamers who view it through their nostalgia goggles). To some extent I suspect that this makes data collection somewhat perilous for two reasons:

1. Age thresholds for social media use - there is some unknown age threshold (I'm sure you can figure it out with some google searching though) after which older users become significantly less likely to be on facebook, and those who are on facebook become significantly less likely to be "engaged users" (i.e. following pages or joining groups). Lets put this, arbitrarily, at the age of 50. So those gamers age 50 and older (im being generous, I suspect the number is really somewhere between 35 and 45) are underrepresented in the facebook user population as a whole, and this is compounded because they are also underrepresented in group.page affiliation.

One might argue that this trend is manifesting in the data by way of smaller membership for WHFB groups - if we assume that WHFB peaked in the early 2000s, then its logical to assume that the average age of its player base as of the year 2000 (the year 6th released, apparently the edition that started the downward trend if rumors and hearsay is to be believed) was probably about 35 years of age (which seems to be roughly the "falloff age" at which people seem to start dropping the hobby in the greatest numbers).

These were people who hopped on the bandwagon in the late 80s and through the 90s as teens or twenty somethings and rode the popularity wave to its crest before real life got to them and they moved on to more adult things (like working overtime and having families). Add 20 years onto that and you're looking at the average WHFB player skewing towards the older end of the pool at about 55 years of age, so the average WHFB fan isn't necessarily on facebook to begin with, AND if they are might not be engaged with the community via that platform. Millennials (such as myself) trended overwhelmingly towards the 40k end of the pool and were mostly post-peak newcomers to WHFB if at all, so there aren't necessarily a lot of us in that community.

As far as games like Kings of War and other similar "WHFB revival" type games, I suspect the data is mixed - I think theres a large number of older WHFB players that aren't being captured in this data, because they likely aren't online or engaged with the game community via facebook. The flip side of that is that Kings of War and others are more recent games, so you're likely seeing the older age groups absence being made up for by millennials and younger gamers who picked up Kings of War to try to keep their WHFB collections valid or who were introduced to the game post-End Times, etc (many of whom likely joined Facebook later on during its growth phase and thus wouldn't have had an obvious reason to sign up for a Warhammer fantasy group, as the game was already behind them).

2. Age relevance. As I alluded to already, I think "WHFB Revival" games trend overwhelmingly towards older age groups, just as more recent games might draw in younger followership, etc. Its logical to assume older IPs that are past their heyday will trend towards older fans (Babylon 5, for example), and younger IPs that are fresh will trend towards younger fans (Infinity for example, has more fans on Reddit than on Facebook), and IPs that are "current" (continuously supported and updated ala 40k) or "revolving" (IPs that come and go through lulls and busy times, like Star Wars which has had fits and bursts of activity every 10-15 years or so followed by relative lulls, or perhaps Necromunda which was really popular like 20 years ago and then dead for the last 10-15 years until the relaunch) will see fanbases spread out over a wider age range with some "clumping" depending on when they were at peak activity periods, etc.

This is further compounded by target age groups of the material itself, something like Star Wars is fun for all ages, for example, whereas Game of Thrones isn't necessarily kid friendly (hence why theres 8k members of the ASOIF group which trends towards millennials and older vs 3k in the subreddit which will trend more towards teens and young twenty somethings who might not have watched Game of Thrones on tv).

So, how do we get 30k Warhammer Fantasy members on Reddit vs like 5k on Facebook? I credit a combination of Total War and the Old World announcement with the natural growth trends of reddit as a platform. Thanks to handy sites like frontpagemetrics we can see subscription counts over time:

https://frontpagemetrics.com/r/WarhammerFantasy

The takeaway here is that the subreddits popularity only came relatively recently. Total War released May of 2016, the subscriber count was about 2800. When the sequel released in September 2017 it was 3700. In November of 2019, right before GW announced TOW it was 10.7k (which makes sense, Total War has been a slow-burner in terms of popularity, or maybe its been a slow-burner in terms of the transition of newcomers from the game over to interest in the minis, either/or it took some time before I started noticing people coming into the hobby with a total war pedigree, and most of the interest seems to have been funneled towards Age of Sigmar or 40k due to the unavailability of WHFB). Since then, subscribers have basically tripled - in terms of age demographics, we can assume that people playing Total War trend towards the younger end of the population and the IP captured their interest and led them towards the warhammer sub. Likewise, the Old World announcement might have captured the interests of younger GW fans who might have been too young to know or care about WHFB 5-10 years ago.

So all of that is to say that these are helpful open-source data collection resources, but not necessarily accurate ones, and are subject ot all sorts of most likely fairly predictable data collection errors that are kind of baked into them by nature.

@chaos0xomega- that is all super interesting!

chaos0xomega wrote:
If you want to talk about garbage arguments, this is it. The majority of the old WHFB range is presently available, its just rebranded "Age of Sigmar" and comes with round bases instead of square. Theres a handful of kits from across the range that are no longer available (mainly the entirety of Bretonnia and Tomb Kings), most of which went "Last Chance to Buy" (which as one of the guys explained at one of those event days, often means the molds are being retired and/or destroyed, though sometimes they are just put into storage - given the age of the Bretonnian range, I doubt the molds are still kicking around).

Without counting I'd be surprised if even half the old WHFB range is available now. Some armies got lucky (Lizardmen I think almost everything is still there except maybe some characters, even though Saurus Warriors are very old and crappy models that desperately need an update). But other armies were so heavily culled that a viable army isn't really possible (even if it's technically possible to make a legal one).

I doubt plastic moulds have been destroyed. With resin and metal moulds, they're cheap to make, made from soft materials and the moulds need to be frequently remade and occasionally the master also needs to be remade. Plastic moulds are made from metal, are expensive to produce and don't destroy themselves nearly as rapidly. Destroying them just doesn't seem like a logical thing to do, it's not like they take up a massive amount of space relative to the storage and manufacturing space GW currently need for their operations. Companies that aren't GW often release plastic kits that are decades old, though I think with modern CNC machining getting more affordable that's become less common as making a new mould has gotten easier.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarkBlack wrote:
On the scale: it sounds utterly ridiculous to me.
As a person who started wargaming with 15mm ancients (an umbrella term for historical wargames set before the advent of gunpowder) and played that for a decade before touching a GW miniature; 15mm just isn't that popular and GW can not make the insane models that sets them apart at that scale.

There is a reason that pretty much all fantasy and Sci-Fi games are in 28mm; it's the scale you use if cool aesthetics and models are important. 15mm is the trade off if you want a decent amount of detail and nice "figures" to work with, but still want it to look like an army because you are concerned with simulating a battle. 15mm is great for historical, especially ancients.

Models that look awesome on their own? Models that capture the look and feel of a fantasy (or Sci-Fi) setting? 28mm is what you want.

I doubt GW will make it anything other than 28mm, saying I want 15mm is just my wishlisting. There's not really any good (at least that I've found) 15mm fantasy models on the market. Some 15mm exist, but they're not great, with detail levels more comparable to 10 or 6mm models. There's only a couple of historic ranges that hit the potential of 15mm models (some of the Flames of War plastic infantry looks good for example).

But yeah, I doubt they'll do it because GW like doing centrepiece models, and 15mm isn't good for that. 15mm is great when you want to represent something that looks like an actual battle with hundreds of models on each side.

chaos0xomega wrote:

One might argue that this trend is manifesting in the data by way of smaller membership for WHFB groups - if we assume that WHFB peaked in the early 2000s, then its logical to assume that the average age of its player base as of the year 2000 (the year 6th released, apparently the edition that started the downward trend if rumors and hearsay is to be believed) was probably about 35 years of age (which seems to be roughly the "falloff age" at which people seem to start dropping the hobby in the greatest numbers).

One item also to consider with the beginning of the decline, the Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001 starting the whole LotR spike for GW. While I never saw any anyone from the local playgroups move to LotR, new players stopped coming in. They were likely diverted to LotR. Why play this other fantasy game when you can play a game actually based off the movies you just saw. It starved WHFB of new players for several years. Plus, most the older players who stayed around already had armies, so new purchases were not as common.

I didn't see a new wave of players till 8th edition and it was a large group. Sadly GW didn't then release anything for WHFB for almost an entire year and most those players quit due to lack of interest.

To be fair to Warlord produced games like Bolt Action and the like they are primarily designed by Rick and Alessio.

6th Edition didn't see a decline in the games playerbase, it was more that during this time you had LOTR release (which caused the infamous "LOTR bubble") and 40K had Dawn of War. With a new game hyped up by successful movies and another game seeing a giant influx of new players because of a video game, the biggest problem with WHFB was that it was basically staying the same, or if it was growing it wasn't as much.

The real decline began in 7th and accelerated in 8th.

6th saw a big growth as it finally was a game that could be used without extensive house rules and was more about units and less about heroes
this lasted until the 7th edi Demon book was released
until that point, most mistakes done by GW (or the lack of doing anything, the famous "we don't need a FGAQ/Errata because we don't make mistakes" statement instead of correcting simple typos) was compensated by the community and a lot of house rules again and were the RAW VS RAI thing started, as a simple typo was taking as "RAW" by some and caused arguments that GW is always right no matter how clearly wrong things are (like having the right value in 2 out of 3 places in the book)

this was also the time people started looking into War of the Rings (with the cheaper models) and also 40k as it was the better rule set by that time

with 8th a lot of people took the chance and quit, as they saw that the bad things of Warhammer continued/growed while the good things were declining and there was no chance that GW would make a turn by that time
(and they were right as it took the new Game to fail hard to finally realise mistakes and turn it around with 2nd Edi AoS, and would Warhammer have seen the same support during 7th as AoS had during start of 2nd Edi, like taking input from widespread used House Rules) Warhammer would have grown as well

chaos0xomega wrote:
If you want to talk about garbage arguments, this is it. The majority of the old WHFB range is presently available, its just rebranded "Age of Sigmar" and comes with round bases instead of square.

one problem here is that we don't know which models were still made for Warhammer and which for AoS that are still available

we know that a brand new miniature line takes 3-4 years to release so Sigmarines were already a thing by the time 8th started
we heard arguments from people working at GW by that time that the final game was not decided until short before release so not sure what the models we see during 8th were made for

but what we can see from models is that if a model does not fit its base and is impossible to be used in R&F units, it was not designed to be used that way but for something different

the new Dwarf models we saw were way to big for 20mm Bases and the question why GW made the models larger but did not use 25mm Bases for the Elite units like with other factions did came up a lot and was answered with AoS and we saw 25mm round bases and a Skirmish game
same with the new Witch Elves that were impossible to be used in anything but 5 wide units were the most effective way was 7 or 10 wide

we always see the argument "designed with the new edition in mind" for rules/army books, but it is much more true for models than for rules

hence there are not many models left made for Warhammer, like State Troops or Dark Elves Warriors

 kodos wrote:
we know that a brand new miniature line takes 3-4 years to release so Sigmarines were already a thing by the time 8th started

I think that 3-4 years might just be the typical, but with a drive to get things done faster they can likely be done faster, especially if GW moved more manufacturing in house. I imagine within that 3-4 years there could be direction changes also, maybe sigmarines were intended as an elite unit for the Empire originally then morphed into what we have.

 kodos wrote:
but what we can see from models is that if a model does not fit its base and is impossible to be used in R&F units, it was not designed to be used that way but for something different

the new Dwarf models we saw were way to big for 20mm Bases and the question why GW made the models larger but did not use 25mm Bases for the Elite units like with other factions did came up a lot and was answered with AoS and we saw 25mm round bases and a Skirmish game
same with the new Witch Elves that were impossible to be used in anything but 5 wide units were the most effective way was 7 or 10 wide

we always see the argument "designed with the new edition in mind" for rules/army books, but it is much more true for models than for rules

hence there are not many models left made for Warhammer, like State Troops or Dark Elves Warriors

I'd say as early as 6th edition GW were making models that didn't rank up well. The standard bretonnian knights only rank up if you match the heads and bodies correctly with the model in front and behind. I remember my friend moaning many years ago that his Skaven didn't rank up well.

The transition from "practical for gaming" and "display shelf that's useless for gaming" started quite a while back. Even in 40k where you don't have ranks, getting models into combat can be a pain in the arse (Genestealers come to mind).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 kodos wrote:
we know that a brand new miniature line takes 3-4 years to release so Sigmarines were already a thing by the time 8th started

I think that 3-4 years might just be the typical, but with a drive to get things done faster they can likely be done faster, especially if GW moved more manufacturing in house. I imagine within that 3-4 years there could be direction changes also, maybe sigmarines were intended as an elite unit for the Empire originally then morphed into what we have.

 kodos wrote:
but what we can see from models is that if a model does not fit its base and is impossible to be used in R&F units, it was not designed to be used that way but for something different

the new Dwarf models we saw were way to big for 20mm Bases and the question why GW made the models larger but did not use 25mm Bases for the Elite units like with other factions did came up a lot and was answered with AoS and we saw 25mm round bases and a Skirmish game
same with the new Witch Elves that were impossible to be used in anything but 5 wide units were the most effective way was 7 or 10 wide

we always see the argument "designed with the new edition in mind" for rules/army books, but it is much more true for models than for rules

hence there are not many models left made for Warhammer, like State Troops or Dark Elves Warriors

I'd say as early as 6th edition GW were making models that didn't rank up well. The standard bretonnian knights only rank up if you match the heads and bodies correctly with the model in front and behind. I remember my friend moaning many years ago that his Skaven didn't rank up well.

The transition from "practical for gaming" and "display shelf that's useless for gaming" started quite a while back. Even in 40k where you don't have ranks, getting models into combat can be a pain in the arse (Genestealers come to mind).

Dwarf warriors didnt rank up well either, at least the shield and axe ones.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I think that 3-4 years might just be the typical, but with a drive to get things done faster they can likely be done faster, especially if GW moved more manufacturing in house. I imagine within that 3-4 years there could be direction changes also, maybe sigmarines were intended as an elite unit for the Empire originally then morphed into what we have.

you can speed up some things by adding more resources, but back in the day GW had not the production capacity they have now and changes in direction are a big problem for sure
and it is different to just make some models for an existing line or to design something new

making new Marines is kind of easy as the basic design does not change and we also see a lot of Copy&Paste in the basic design (same reason why most heroes and big models, in AoS and 40k have the same pose)

but making something that was not there before takes more time and also more time to cast the whole line-up for a world wide release (instead of just 2 or 3 boxes), a reason why we see smaller factions in AoS and more multi-unit kits

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I'd say as early as 6th edition GW were making models that didn't rank up well. The standard bretonnian knights only rank up if you match the heads and bodies correctly with the model in front and behind. I remember my friend moaning many years ago that his Skaven didn't rank up well.

The transition from "practical for gaming" and "display shelf that's useless for gaming" started quite a while back. Even in 40k where you don't have ranks, getting models into combat can be a pain in the arse (Genestealers come to mind).

yes that problem started earlier, yet with multi-pose models you could arrange them to fit
with mono-pose plastics, that changed and GW did not really cared about it any more (and models designed for R&F are different from those that need to look good if standing alone on the shelf)

Some of the really multi-part kits of the early 00's didn't line up well, and this is why subsequent plastic kits for WHFB ended up being a lot more static. It was a trend that started with Chaos Warriors and continued from then on.

But the decision to nuke everything and start over as a Skirmish game can definitely be identified and dated when certain kits came out that went back on that design decision.

If indeed that is what they're releasing, I would much prefer a skirmish game, border patrol was one of the best little rule sets they dropped in the compendium.

Plus I know from personal experience the devilish nature of clan rat tails that there's always been problems with keeping Warhammer R&F

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
maybe sigmarines were intended as an elite unit for the Empire originally then morphed into what we have.

I think that was originally the plan, considering there's the one piece of Blanche art floating around.

I still hold that AoS was less about Fantasy being a 'failure' so much as Sigmarines not fitting in the setting, so it had to go. It was all about Sigmarines - because Marines sell - and doing whatever they had to in order to make it work, even if that meant killing the setting.

 kodos wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I think that 3-4 years might just be the typical, but with a drive to get things done faster they can likely be done faster, especially if GW moved more manufacturing in house. I imagine within that 3-4 years there could be direction changes also, maybe sigmarines were intended as an elite unit for the Empire originally then morphed into what we have.

you can speed up some things by adding more resources, but back in the day GW had not the production capacity they have now and changes in direction are a big problem for sure
and it is different to just make some models for an existing line or to design something new

making new Marines is kind of easy as the basic design does not change and we also see a lot of Copy&Paste in the basic design (same reason why most heroes and big models, in AoS and 40k have the same pose)

but making something that was not there before takes more time and also more time to cast the whole line-up for a world wide release (instead of just 2 or 3 boxes), a reason why we see smaller factions in AoS and more multi-unit kits

When did GW move mould production in house? I thought it predated AoS?

But I'm sure the 3-4 year design cycle includes a whole bunch of back and forth between artists and decision makers and round tables for moving concepts forward, and a whole heap of planning as to where a new product will sit within the release cycle of everything else that is planned to be released. That sort of stuff can be accelerated if necessary, then the raw design work, mould cutting, production run, boxing and shipping can be done much quicker if the will is there to do it.

I'm sure if the poop hit the fan for some reason and GW needed to completely change tack, they could do it in less than 3-4 years with the resources they have (or had) and could bring in if necessary. I imagine it's more of a 3-4 year plan, which doesn't necessarily mean it takes 3-4 years to get something done.

EDIT: Not saying AoS wasn't in development for 3-4 years, I just don't think having a typical 3-4 year design cycle is proof that it must have been in development that long, but maybe it was.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Kalamadea wrote:
People keep talking about popularity of games with anecdotal popularity of their local groups, the closest thing I could think of to any kind of real metric would be members of game-specific Facebook Groups or Subreddits

Spoiler:

Facebook Groups
Warhammer 40K: 67K members
Age of Sigmar: has 2 similar sized groups of 24K & 23K members, I'd assume most of the members overlap between both groups
Lord of the Rings: 11K members
Warhammer Fantasy (any/all editions, but AoS discussions specifically not allowed): 5K members
Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition: 4K members
Warhammer The Old World: 13K members in a group just based on the announcement of WHFB returning
Kill Team: 2 similar sized groups of 19K and 16K members, lots of overlap now but the 16K group started as a Heralds Of Ruin fan-made rules Kill Team group
Warcry: 10K members
Underworlds: 2 similar groups of 10K and 9K members, probably lots of overlap
Mordheim: 14K members
Blood Bowl: 24K members
Necromunda: 16K members
Kings of War: 11K members
Oathmark: 3K members
Conquest: 153 members of the US group, 128 for a UK group
Infinity: 8K members
X-Wing: mostly regional groups, largest is an 8K member general group, but there's a 14K member trading group and a 10K member painting group
Legion: 18K members
ASoIaF: 8K members

Reddit
Warhammer (generic all-things-warhammer group) 198K members
Warhammer 40K: 352K members
Age of Sigmar: 70K members
Lord of the Rings: 14K members
Warhammer Fantasy: 30K members
Kill Team: 33K members
Warcry: 10K members
Underworlds: 12K members
Mordheim: 4K members
Blood Bowl: 21K members
Necromunda: 14K members
Kings of War: 4K members
Oathmark: only 105 members (although Frostgrave has 4K)
Conquest: 77 members
Infinity: 10K members
X-Wing: 1.5K members
Legion: 16K members
ASoIaF: 3K members

40K is pretty much more popular than everything else combined (no surprise), but AoS is hardly chump-change by comparison. And yet there's clearly still a LOT of people who are at least discussing WHFB. I don't know how much is related to Total War keeping the IP alive and how much is merely nostalgia, but there's very much a large amount of people that still love The Old World even if they now play AoS or have moved on to KoW or others, and there's more interest in WHFB/ToW, a dead OOP game, than the currently produced LotR (which is sad, LotR is great and should be more popular). There's more people interested in a dead OOP WHFB game than the currently produced Kings of War, Conquest, Oathmark and ASoIaF. If LotR is still popular enough to keep the entire line in production (even if much of it is mail-order) then so long as GW makes WHFB/ToW accessible it will be a success. Certainly the interest is more than the 4% of total sales that GW quoted when they killed WHFB, it's just a matter of GW making the game intro-friendly like they have with 40K and AoS

That is quite interesting, though disheartening, thanks for compiling it. I can't think of better data either.
I wonder why the discrepency between Reddit and Facebook for some games? I don't use Reddit so I'm not sure what about it might affect a community preferring it.

That is a lot less than I expected for Conquest. It is rather new, but that is low even then.

I'm not a guru in FB, but while the FB Conquest group has 1070 members (as of just now), Para-Bellum as a company has over 10K followers on FB. I'm not 100% sure how that can be used to measure popularity, but it helps to keep in mind that they only make one game.

I also think it's worth noting that the game released in July(ish) 2019, so the majority of the time that the game has been out they've been growing their brand during the pandemic.

I feel like I'm defending their lower numbers, and I guess I am. It's a great game and while there are some things that I feel could be improved, I feel like it's genuinely more solid than WHFB was, which I was and still am a huge fan of.

I really don't see how this project would make much sense if it had some sort of significant change from what WHFB was, either in terms of the scale or just being limited to a few human factions.

While there hasn't really been any specifics they've shown square bases and gone on about it being a return to the iconic setting, talking about it in a way that gives no indication at all of it being something vastly different. To hype it up like that, showing the old miniatures, the video games etc while saying "Remember WHFB? It's coming back, get excited!" only to omit any indication of something huge like...it won't be anything close to WHFB in terms of the game style, or that a majority of things from the setting aren't relevant because it's very limited in scope? That would just be baffling and likely cause a bit of commotion.I'm not expecting every faction at launch, but this is a big project that they've said will do for AoS what the Horus-Heresy is like, which suggests a narrative-based thing that'll be added to over time.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
If you want to talk about garbage arguments, this is it. The majority of the old WHFB range is presently available, its just rebranded "Age of Sigmar" and comes with round bases instead of square. Theres a handful of kits from across the range that are no longer available (mainly the entirety of Bretonnia and Tomb Kings), most of which went "Last Chance to Buy" (which as one of the guys explained at one of those event days, often means the molds are being retired and/or destroyed, though sometimes they are just put into storage - given the age of the Bretonnian range, I doubt the molds are still kicking around).

I doubt plastic moulds have been destroyed. With resin and metal moulds, they're cheap to make, made from soft materials and the moulds need to be frequently remade and occasionally the master also needs to be remade. Plastic moulds are made from metal, are expensive to produce and don't destroy themselves nearly as rapidly. Destroying them just doesn't seem like a logical thing to do, it's not like they take up a massive amount of space relative to the storage and manufacturing space GW currently need for their operations. Companies that aren't GW often release plastic kits that are decades old, though I think with modern CNC machining getting more affordable that's become less common as making a new mould has gotten easier.

Metal molds usually get ground/melted down and used in the production of new metal slabs for the production of new molds, as recycling the metal drastically reduces the production costs. And metal molds do take up a fair amount of space (especially if you're using a proper slide-out mold storage racking system), as their weight generally requires them to be spread out over more shelves, etc. Older kits especially take up more space as the older kits tend to be spread across a larger number of individual molds than more recent kits are, as well as usually being comparatively over-engineered relative to more recent CNC molds (i.e. the molds themselves are physically larger due to tolerancing and factors of safety, etc.) As far as GW is concerned, space was a big issue for them, they invested millions into expanding their facilities because they ran out of space - that was a stated reason as to why they started pushing things to last chance to buy and made to order, because they no longer had space available to hold on to everything and maintain production of older products. Doesn't mean everything is gone - I'm sure the more recent Tomb Kings kits like the Necrosphinx and stuff were retained, but some of the older tomb kings and bretonnian kits (amongst others) kits would be over 20 years old at this point. Hell, the newest Bretonnian plastics (unless I'm missing something) are from 2004.

As for kit re-issues from other manufacturers, they aren't always done using the original tooling. Often times they re-engineer the molds to refurbish/refresh them (and sometimes they recut the molds from the original masters if they still have them available, more recently over the past 10-20 years some manufacturers have figured out ways to reverse engineer the molds from production samples as well, but I'm not 100% sure how common that is) before putting them back into production, though it depends on the condition of the molds. I have some kit reissues that have the plastic stamped with the original year of the molds, and some reissued kits that have more recent dates stamped on them, it really varies and different manufacturers have different policies about it.

One item also to consider with the beginning of the decline, the Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001 starting the whole LotR spike for GW. While I never saw any anyone from the local playgroups move to LotR, new players stopped coming in. They were likely diverted to LotR. Why play this other fantasy game when you can play a game actually based off the movies you just saw. It starved WHFB of new players for several years. Plus, most the older players who stayed around already had armies, so new purchases were not as common.

I didn't see a new wave of players till 8th edition and it was a large group. Sadly GW didn't then release anything for WHFB for almost an entire year and most those players quit due to lack of interest.

Yeah I've been curious as to how much of an impact LOTR had on WHFB. I've seen some people say none whatsoever and others (like you) attribute it to the decline. If LOTR killed WHFB then it kind of makes you wonder what might happen to Age of Sigmar as a result of The Old World. I would assume GW is aware of the risk to itself at this point, so I can only imagine that the approach they intend to take with The Old World is one that mitigates and minimizes any potential harm to Age of Sigmar, be it a separate scale or limited product releases/support, etc. In any case, I imagine that WHFB fans will not be entirely satisfied with what GW gives them.

I think that was originally the plan, considering there's the one piece of Blanche art floating around.

Oh? First I've heard of this, do you have a link to the Blanche Sigmarine artwork in question?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
I really don't see how this project would make much sense if it had some sort of significant change from what WHFB was, either in terms of the scale or just being limited to a few human factions.

While there hasn't really been any specifics they've shown square bases and gone on about it being a return to the iconic setting, talking about it in a way that gives no indication at all of it being something vastly different. To hype it up like that, showing the old miniatures, the video games etc while saying "Remember WHFB? It's coming back, get excited!" only to omit any indication of something huge like...it won't be anything close to WHFB in terms of the game style, or that a majority of things from the setting aren't relevant because it's very limited in scope? That would just be baffling and likely cause a bit of commotion.I'm not expecting every faction at launch, but this is a big project that they've said will do for AoS what the Horus-Heresy is like, which suggests a narrative-based thing that'll be added to over time.

I mean, they did basically say that when they announced it. They said that (as of November last year) the only work they had done on the project was designing a logo and they still needed to do basically everything else (game design, miniature design, artwork, etc.). Likewise they outright said that The Old World would be to Age of Sigmar as The Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40k. The Horus Heresy is a limited scope project, thats why there are no Eldar, Orks, etc. in the main game, nor are there any Ork or Eldar titans in Adeptus Titanicus. If GW is comparing it The Old World to Horus Heresy, then its logical to conclude that the will take a similar approach as to the scope of the range. On that note, the existence of multiple games under the Horus Heresy umbrella (so far just the main HH game and AT, with rumors of a Horus Heresy Battlefleet Gothic game in the works) implies the potential for the same under The Old World umbrella - the time period they chose for it arguably indicates the intent to bring back Mordheim at some point, I would think.

If GW is comparing it The Old World to Horus Heresy, then its logical to conclude that the will take a similar approach as to the scope of the range. On that note, the existence of multiple games under the Horus Heresy umbrella (so far just the main HH game and AT, with rumors of a Horus Heresy Battlefleet Gothic game in the works) implies the potential for the same under The Old World umbrella - the time period they chose for it arguably indicates the intent to bring back Mordheim at some point, I would think.

Not convinced - if so why not have the primary setting as around 2000 (Imperial Calendar) allowing both Mordheim and the Vampire Wars to slot right in rather than 200 years later?

The era seems to be a relaive lull in the big events with bickering over the imperial throne but some time before the Great War against Chaos.

They have been focussing on Kiselv, spent alot of time sorting out the map of Norsca and now adding specific Elf settlements in Bretonnia.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Metal molds usually get ground/melted down and used in the production of new metal slabs for the production of new molds, as recycling the metal drastically reduces the production costs. And metal molds do take up a fair amount of space (especially if you're using a proper slide-out mold storage racking system), as their weight generally requires them to be spread out over more shelves, etc.

Are you speaking from experience, or just generally? Because I could see that being the case for a company that mass produces large injection moulded items (like furniture), but I doubt that would be the case for moulds that are used for wargaming. Are you sure you're not getting confused with melting down unused metal models? That's definitely something they do, bits get thrown back into the pot to be melted down and made into new models.

But the moulds themselves? GW wouldn't have the facilities to melt/grind down blocks of steel or aluminium and turn them back into billet for re-machining, so they'd be just sending them off to a recycler for a much lower price than they paid and in the grand scheme of things, I doubt there's THAT much metal as to make it worth while (even if it was a high grade when you bought it, you likely aren't selling it back to recyclers for high grade prices). We occasionally buy steel and aluminium billet at work, and in the context of a bloke in his backyard it might be expensive, but not in the context of a multi billion dollar company.

In terms of weight, over here and I imagine in the UK commercial workshop floors are built for 500 to 1500kg per square meter (depending on what it's going to be used for) and you can buy shelving to suit. The moulds I've seen for plastic kits generally aren't a hell of a lot wider / longer than the sprue they make, and maybe a couple of inches deep, some quick calcs and yeah, you aren't going to be buying a very tall storage unit with 10's of shelves, but I don't think the space you'd need to store a few armies worth is hugely excessive.

GW seem to be playing with the timeline a bit, IIRC the names of the four Empire characters aren't all contemporaries, nor are any of them contemporaries with Louen Orc-Slayer. Magritta was born in 1979 IC, Louen was a monarch as of 2201 IC. Obviously these are two people who shouldn't co-exist, yet here they are. Sigismund died somewhere between 1705 and 1750, Wilhelm and Ludwig died somewhere between 2051 and 2058.

All of which is to say I suspect that they are reworking/retconning the timeline a bit so Mordheim and the Vampire Wars might fall within the same period covered by the game.

I also wouldn't put the cart before the horse, they showed us some Kislev concept art - but you will note that Kislev's faction symbol is not present on the map they showed us (nor is Praag or any of the cities or towns of the country, they reference the Oblasts as regions but thats about it). Compare/Contrast with 4 Empire factions and 14 Bretonnian factions, and Wood Elves which all have clear faction symbols on the map. For all we know, Kislev is going to be 2 or 3 units that can be taken as an ally in an Empire or Bretonnian army or something. Likewise High Elves have settlements but don't seem to have a specific faction symbol either.

What we know for certain is that Empire and Bretonnia are in the game, and it seems that those two factions are going to be subdivided into a number of feuding subfactions - this mirrors Horus Heresy's 18 space marine factions. We will get flavoring of a few others no doubt in the same way that Horus Heresy has Mechanicum, Talons of the Emperoro, and Solar Auxilia, but it seems the main focus will be on humans.

If GW is comparing it The Old World to Horus Heresy, then its logical to conclude that the will take a similar approach as to the scope of the range. On that note, the existence of multiple games under the Horus Heresy umbrella (so far just the main HH game and AT, with rumors of a Horus Heresy Battlefleet Gothic game in the works) implies the potential for the same under The Old World umbrella - the time period they chose for it arguably indicates the intent to bring back Mordheim at some point, I would think.

This is the biggest fan induced misinterpretation with the old world.
They mention Horus Heresy purely to say that it was in the past and that was the foundation of 40k retroactively.

The Old World is to Warhammer Age of Sigmar, as the Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40,000. The bedrock of lore from which mortals rose to godhood and legends were forged. And like the Horus Heresy, seeing those mythic heroes in action has an undeniable appeal, as does re-creating the glorious armies of a previous epoch

So what they actually said in that article was not "it's going to be a skirmish game like the Horus Heresy. People seem to have gone oh well the mentioned HH so it's going to be like that. And for some reason plenty of people have now run with that, like Ork machinery and weapons don't work except by Orky psychic powers. Which is also bollocks.

We know absolutely nout about the game system yet beyond pure conjecture.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Metal molds usually get ground/melted down and used in the production of new metal slabs for the production of new molds, as recycling the metal drastically reduces the production costs. And metal molds do take up a fair amount of space (especially if you're using a proper slide-out mold storage racking system), as their weight generally requires them to be spread out over more shelves, etc.

Are you speaking from experience, or just generally?

Both. I can't speak to GW's exact business practices, but its becoming standard in the plastics industry to recycle unneeded molds. Steel molds don't last forever, if you maintain them properly you can stave off corrosion, but wear and tear from use eventually catches up to them and you either need to recondition them or dispose of them as they are otherwise functionally useless to you. Its becoming popular to have them recycled into new molds, to be honest I'm not sure how the process works exactly, from what I understand the mold gets ground down into smaller pieces and then melted and re-forged.

But the moulds themselves? GW wouldn't have the facilities to melt/grind down blocks of steel or aluminium and turn them back into billet for re-machining, so they'd be just sending them off to a recycler for a much lower price than they paid and in the grand scheme of things, I doubt there's THAT much metal as to make it worth while (even if it was a high grade when you bought it, you likely aren't selling it back to recyclers for high grade prices). We occasionally buy steel and aluminium billet at work, and in the context of a bloke in his backyard it might be expensive, but not in the context of a multi billion dollar company.

GW isn't a multibillion dollar company, its a ~$380 million dollar company with a grossly overinflated stock value. As far as I know, GW doesn't even cut their own molds in house, from what I was told they basically do everything but - their in house staff does the design and engineering work and then sends them out to another company to have the molds cut.

In terms of weight, over here and I imagine in the UK commercial workshop floors are built for 500 to 1500kg per square meter (depending on what it's going to be used for) and you can buy shelving to suit. The moulds I've seen for plastic kits generally aren't a hell of a lot wider / longer than the sprue they make, and maybe a couple of inches deep, some quick calcs and yeah, you aren't going to be buying a very tall storage unit with 10's of shelves, but I don't think the space you'd need to store a few armies worth is hugely excessive.

GW has something like 600 distinct plastic kits in production currently. Thats a lot of molds, and doesn't include any of the more recent kits that they have rotated out of production. I'd say the amount of space they need for mold storage is pretty excessive before you even begin to account for stuff they haven't shot plastic into in 5+ years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Olthannon wrote:

If GW is comparing it The Old World to Horus Heresy, then its logical to conclude that the will take a similar approach as to the scope of the range. On that note, the existence of multiple games under the Horus Heresy umbrella (so far just the main HH game and AT, with rumors of a Horus Heresy Battlefleet Gothic game in the works) implies the potential for the same under The Old World umbrella - the time period they chose for it arguably indicates the intent to bring back Mordheim at some point, I would think.

This is the biggest fan induced misinterpretation with the old world.
They mention Horus Heresy purely to say that it was in the past and that was the foundation of 40k retroactively.

The Old World is to Warhammer Age of Sigmar, as the Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40,000. The bedrock of lore from which mortals rose to godhood and legends were forged. And like the Horus Heresy, seeing those mythic heroes in action has an undeniable appeal, as does re-creating the glorious armies of a previous epoch

So what they actually said in that article was not "it's going to be a skirmish game like the Horus Heresy. People seem to have gone oh well the mentioned HH so it's going to be like that. And for some reason plenty of people have now run with that, like Ork machinery and weapons don't work except by Orky psychic powers. Which is also bollocks.

We know absolutely nout about the game system yet beyond pure conjecture.

Its logical extrapolation. If The Old World is being marketed as a historical "background" product line in the same vein as the Horus Heresy is for 40k, its logical to assume that The Old World will see similar levels of support. Certainly, I would not expect GW to pony up a half dozen factions for us to play with on release day. If nothing else, it would be silly to assume that a "background" product would see more support than the core product lines, GW doesn't drop a half dozen factions on release day for 40k, let alone Age of Sigmar - they aren't going to do it for Warhammer Fantasy either. It's realistic to assume that on launch the game will probably encapsulate no more than two distinct factions (Bretonnia and The Empire). Its even more realistic to assume that it will really be only one faction with a number of subfactions (Empire that can be played 4 different ways or Bretonnia that can be played 14 different ways, etc.). It's realistic to assume that GW might release up to an additional two or three factions over the course of a year after the games release. Its unrealistic to assume that you are going to get more than within that same period of time.

Beyond that, at this point I believe (IIRC) we have had it indirectly confirmed that the Old World is a specialist/forgeworld-led product line, which should tell us something as well.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yeah I've been curious as to how much of an impact LOTR had on WHFB. I've seen some people say none whatsoever and others (like you) attribute it to the decline. If LOTR killed WHFB then it kind of makes you wonder what might happen to Age of Sigmar as a result of The Old World.

don't think that we will get anything official to that but for the wider local community, the Warhammer scene consisted of 4 kinds of players (roughly)

those who liked Warhammer, those who liked Fantasy, those who liked Rand&File and those who liked events/tournaments

Warhammer was the main event game, it was the main Fantasy game and the only non-historical R&F game and therefore cheaper (most things plastic to the all metal armies)

the Fantasy players looked away, Confrontation and Warmachine/Hordes and Lord of the Rings became a thing, the event players changed to 40k which therefore saw more and bigger events therefore getting more people attracted to the system
and the R&F gamers looked into historicals and Kings of War as the change to plastic on that market made those armies more affordable and cheaper than Fantasy

so depending the reasons why people play AoS, it is possible that there will be a similar decline if TOW gets big

chaos0xomega wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
I really don't see how this project would make much sense if it had some sort of significant change from what WHFB was, either in terms of the scale or just being limited to a few human factions.

While there hasn't really been any specifics they've shown square bases and gone on about it being a return to the iconic setting, talking about it in a way that gives no indication at all of it being something vastly different. To hype it up like that, showing the old miniatures, the video games etc while saying "Remember WHFB? It's coming back, get excited!" only to omit any indication of something huge like...it won't be anything close to WHFB in terms of the game style, or that a majority of things from the setting aren't relevant because it's very limited in scope? That would just be baffling and likely cause a bit of commotion.I'm not expecting every faction at launch, but this is a big project that they've said will do for AoS what the Horus-Heresy is like, which suggests a narrative-based thing that'll be added to over time.

I mean, they did basically say that when they announced it. They said that (as of November last year) the only work they had done on the project was designing a logo and they still needed to do basically everything else (game design, miniature design, artwork, etc.). Likewise they outright said that The Old World would be to Age of Sigmar as The Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40k. The Horus Heresy is a limited scope project, thats why there are no Eldar, Orks, etc. in the main game, nor are there any Ork or Eldar titans in Adeptus Titanicus. If GW is comparing it The Old World to Horus Heresy, then its logical to conclude that the will take a similar approach as to the scope of the range. On that note, the existence of multiple games under the Horus Heresy umbrella (so far just the main HH game and AT, with rumors of a Horus Heresy Battlefleet Gothic game in the works) implies the potential for the same under The Old World umbrella - the time period they chose for it arguably indicates the intent to bring back Mordheim at some point, I would think.

I don't see how the Horus Heresy is "limited in scope", it features who it was expected to feature. The whole premise of the conflict in the first place was Space Marines and other loyalist forces VS Chaos Marines and traitors, and that's what the miniatures have covered - several dozen kits of upgrades for Space Marines/Chaos including their Primarchs, along with Solar Auxilia, Mechanicum, Daemons, Custodes Imperium Militia etc. It's not like it was something that we knew should have heavily featured Orks or Eldar but they just decided not to include them because it was too much, they just don't really have much of a place within it. That's not to say they couldn't have included them if they really wanted to, but it's not like it's some sort of glaring omission. That's not so much the case with The Old World where most of the factions would still be quite heavily active within the setting, and are already established as an iconic part of the world where leaving them out would be quite a noticeable gap both in the lore and for players.

As for the comparison they gave with saying it was similar to the Horus Heresy, that was to do with the basic idea of the whole thing, in that it's a prequel that tells the story of a bygone era that serves as part of the foundation of the setting, it was within a paragraph that was talking about the lore side of things.

I don't think LOTR killed off Fantasy - although it may have contributing to balkanising the "fantasy playerbase" so 40k became the top dog once third edition hit its stride. To a degree though I think its that fantasy grew stale, while 40k was running very hot.

The real issue though was just that GW made a succession of bad choices. I didn't like Cavalry Hammer - but I don't think *sales* of Fantasy though were down until 2010 and later into 8th. It was in this era that GW finally experienced some competition from games like X-Wing and Warmahordes in FLGSs all over the place. The practices that had worked fine (or at least they'd been able to get away with) a decade earlier now seemed outmoded. The game wasn't balanced and its rules were actively unpleasant to play in a conventional manner.

Even then the End Times brought a lot of people back to fantasy, because here was GW setting the scene for a new edition, where the issues could be fixed. But those hopes were dashed, and this at least in part contributed to why the reaction to AoS was so hostile.

 Mentlegen324 wrote:


I don't see how the Horus Heresy is "limited in scope"

Clearly you do:

It's not like it was something that we knew should have heavily featured Orks or Eldar but they just decided not to include them because it was too much, they just don't really have much of a place within it. That's not to say they couldn't have included them if they really wanted to, but it's not like it's some sort of glaring omission.

You spelled it out pretty clearly here.

That's not so much the case with The Old World where most of the factions would still be quite heavily active within the setting, and are already established as an iconic part of the world where leaving them out would be quite a noticeable gap both in the lore and for players.

I disagree. They are setting The Old World at a point in history thats seemingly relatively quiet, pretty deliberately during a point in time in which The Empire is wracked by a civil war. I have no doubt that other factions are going to come up, but the decision to focus on a "civil war" event, just like the Horus Heresy, seems pretty telling with regards to what the main focus of the game will be, at least as far as launch and the early releases. It seems pretty likely that at launch your options are going to all be human flavored - if we're lucky you'll get knightly humans vs renaissance humans, if we're not then it'll be red and white Altdorf humans vs blue and white Middenheim human or whichever of the other 2 empire factions are present. Other factions will follow, but be realistic about the release schedule. The Sisters of Battle release and the recent Necron release seem to be about the maximum extent of what you can realistically expect GW to put out in plastic as part of a major release - both of them were considerably larger than other comparable releases like the launch of the Lumineth, Idoneth, and Gloomspite Gits. Even the upcoming Slaanesh release doesn't look like it'll be more than a half dozen or so new kits when all is said and done. What do you realistically expect GW to give you on release, keeping in mind that this is a product supposedly being developed under the specialist/forgeworld umbrella and thus not considered a core product the way AoS, 40k, and LotR are? What do you expect follow-on releases to look like, and how quickly do you expect to get them, keeping in mind that games like Necromunda, Titanicus, Aeronautica Imperialis, and Blood Bowl basically get one release slot per quarter?

Thats not to say that one day The Old World won't have all dozen or so of the original WHFB factions playable in it - just that it probably won't be in the next decade.

chaos0xomega wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
If you want to talk about garbage arguments, this is it. The majority of the old WHFB range is presently available, its just rebranded "Age of Sigmar" and comes with round bases instead of square. Theres a handful of kits from across the range that are no longer available (mainly the entirety of Bretonnia and Tomb Kings), most of which went "Last Chance to Buy" (which as one of the guys explained at one of those event days, often means the molds are being retired and/or destroyed, though sometimes they are just put into storage - given the age of the Bretonnian range, I doubt the molds are still kicking around).

I doubt plastic moulds have been destroyed. With resin and metal moulds, they're cheap to make, made from soft materials and the moulds need to be frequently remade and occasionally the master also needs to be remade. Plastic moulds are made from metal, are expensive to produce and don't destroy themselves nearly as rapidly. Destroying them just doesn't seem like a logical thing to do, it's not like they take up a massive amount of space relative to the storage and manufacturing space GW currently need for their operations. Companies that aren't GW often release plastic kits that are decades old, though I think with modern CNC machining getting more affordable that's become less common as making a new mould has gotten easier.

Metal molds usually get ground/melted down and used in the production of new metal slabs for the production of new molds, as recycling the metal drastically reduces the production costs. And metal molds do take up a fair amount of space (especially if you're using a proper slide-out mold storage racking system), as their weight generally requires them to be spread out over more shelves, etc. Older kits especially take up more space as the older kits tend to be spread across a larger number of individual molds than more recent kits are, as well as usually being comparatively over-engineered relative to more recent CNC molds (i.e. the molds themselves are physically larger due to tolerancing and factors of safety, etc.) As far as GW is concerned, space was a big issue for them, they invested millions into expanding their facilities because they ran out of space - that was a stated reason as to why they started pushing things to last chance to buy and made to order, because they no longer had space available to hold on to everything and maintain production of older products. Doesn't mean everything is gone - I'm sure the more recent Tomb Kings kits like the Necrosphinx and stuff were retained, but some of the older tomb kings and bretonnian kits (amongst others) kits would be over 20 years old at this point. Hell, the newest Bretonnian plastics (unless I'm missing something) are from 2004.

As for kit re-issues from other manufacturers, they aren't always done using the original tooling. Often times they re-engineer the molds to refurbish/refresh them (and sometimes they recut the molds from the original masters if they still have them available, more recently over the past 10-20 years some manufacturers have figured out ways to reverse engineer the molds from production samples as well, but I'm not 100% sure how common that is) before putting them back into production, though it depends on the condition of the molds. I have some kit reissues that have the plastic stamped with the original year of the molds, and some reissued kits that have more recent dates stamped on them, it really varies and different manufacturers have different policies about it.

One item also to consider with the beginning of the decline, the Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001 starting the whole LotR spike for GW. While I never saw any anyone from the local playgroups move to LotR, new players stopped coming in. They were likely diverted to LotR. Why play this other fantasy game when you can play a game actually based off the movies you just saw. It starved WHFB of new players for several years. Plus, most the older players who stayed around already had armies, so new purchases were not as common.

I didn't see a new wave of players till 8th edition and it was a large group. Sadly GW didn't then release anything for WHFB for almost an entire year and most those players quit due to lack of interest.

Yeah I've been curious as to how much of an impact LOTR had on WHFB. I've seen some people say none whatsoever and others (like you) attribute it to the decline. If LOTR killed WHFB then it kind of makes you wonder what might happen to Age of Sigmar as a result of The Old World. I would assume GW is aware of the risk to itself at this point, so I can only imagine that the approach they intend to take with The Old World is one that mitigates and minimizes any potential harm to Age of Sigmar, be it a separate scale or limited product releases/support, etc. In any case, I imagine that WHFB fans will not be entirely satisfied with what GW gives them.

I think that was originally the plan, considering there's the one piece of Blanche art floating around.

Oh? First I've heard of this, do you have a link to the Blanche Sigmarine artwork in question?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:
I really don't see how this project would make much sense if it had some sort of significant change from what WHFB was, either in terms of the scale or just being limited to a few human factions.

While there hasn't really been any specifics they've shown square bases and gone on about it being a return to the iconic setting, talking about it in a way that gives no indication at all of it being something vastly different. To hype it up like that, showing the old miniatures, the video games etc while saying "Remember WHFB? It's coming back, get excited!" only to omit any indication of something huge like...it won't be anything close to WHFB in terms of the game style, or that a majority of things from the setting aren't relevant because it's very limited in scope? That would just be baffling and likely cause a bit of commotion.I'm not expecting every faction at launch, but this is a big project that they've said will do for AoS what the Horus-Heresy is like, which suggests a narrative-based thing that'll be added to over time.

I mean, they did basically say that when they announced it. They said that (as of November last year) the only work they had done on the project was designing a logo and they still needed to do basically everything else (game design, miniature design, artwork, etc.). Likewise they outright said that The Old World would be to Age of Sigmar as The Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40k. The Horus Heresy is a limited scope project, thats why there are no Eldar, Orks, etc. in the main game, nor are there any Ork or Eldar titans in Adeptus Titanicus. If GW is comparing it The Old World to Horus Heresy, then its logical to conclude that the will take a similar approach as to the scope of the range. On that note, the existence of multiple games under the Horus Heresy umbrella (so far just the main HH game and AT, with rumors of a Horus Heresy Battlefleet Gothic game in the works) implies the potential for the same under The Old World umbrella - the time period they chose for it arguably indicates the intent to bring back Mordheim at some point, I would think.

Masters of the Universe.

Transformers.

G.I.Joe

Playmobil


Just a FEW toy lines where 30+ year old molds were pulled out and used to press out fresh copies of the toys. Year before last my wife picked up a fresh copy of the AMT Star Trek model kit from the 60s that had the phaser, tricorder, and communicator so my daughter could explore.

Given that Revell release of 40K models I mentioned previously, there's no reason to think GW simply scrapped every mid player they've had that isn't in current production.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Mentlegen324 wrote:


I don't see how the Horus Heresy is "limited in scope"

Clearly you do:

It's not like it was something that we knew should have heavily featured Orks or Eldar but they just decided not to include them because it was too much, they just don't really have much of a place within it. That's not to say they couldn't have included them if they really wanted to, but it's not like it's some sort of glaring omission.

You spelled it out pretty clearly here.


Thats not to say that one day The Old World won't have all dozen or so of the original WHFB factions playable in it - just that it probably won't be in the next decade.

What I meant is that the Horus Heresy was not something they took and then limited in scope to something that left out significant aspects of what was expected. That it doesn't really involve certain factions was just part of it in the first place due to the nature of the premise rather than an arbitrary limitation like what's being suggested with The Old World.