Warhammer The Old World OT chat.

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**Dreamchild**

NinthMusketeer wrote:
In the context of one game or even one campaign it really isn't an issue--one can come up with SOME reason to be there. But it gets old when having to be done repeatedly, which for some armies definitely happened. Each successive reason for why Tomb Kings and Dark Elves are in the region of Kharak Eight Peaks, or Dwarfs and Lizardmen are fighting it out in Norsca, feels a bit less authentic and more like a thin excuse to cover real word practicalities. A few years of doing that and narratives which would have worked before feel like repeating asspulls.

Compare to factions like Wood Elves, Skaven, BoC, etc. Where they can easily be showing up anywhere and focus on involving themselves in the local narrative. It is a factor--not insurmountable, but it exists in a not-insignificant way.

I've never understood why this was ever an issue when in 40k, say, Blood Angels and Space Wolves - to name one of many possible examples - certainly don't systematically butcher each other on a regular basis.

Players of loyalist factions consist a significant majority of the global player base (and loyalist armies even consist of, what, 50% of armies on offer), and yet, major military campaign between prominent loyalist factions isn't a part of the 40k lore, minus a few fringe examples, and that only in the form of minor/"accidental" conflict.

**KidCthulhu**

If GW goes MTO on old Plastic regiments, they'd practically be printing money.

**Scottywan82**

KidCthulhu wrote:
If GW goes MTO on old Plastic regiments, they'd practically be printing money.

Agreed. I would order all of Island of Blood several times over, along with most of the High Elf figures.

**TheBestBucketHead**

My god, if I could get Island of Blood, I'd be the happiest man-thing on earth. I need those Rat Ogres, and my friend wants to start a High Elf army, so it would be great for everyone.

**GaroRobe**

TheBestBucketHead wrote:
My god, if I could get Island of Blood, I'd be the happiest man-thing on earth. I need those Rat Ogres, and my friend wants to start a High Elf army, so it would be great for everyone.

GW re-released it randomly a couple of years ago, except with round bases. It was redubbed "Crystal something" and I'm kicking myself for not picking it up

**xenofexx**

KidCthulhu wrote:
If GW goes MTO on old Plastic regiments, they'd practically be printing money.

This. At this point I’m so nostalgic for classic WFB minis, it wouldn’t even matter which regiments they made available; I’d just buy all of them regardless.

**jullevi**

GaroRobe wrote:

GW re-released it randomly a couple of years ago, except with round bases. It was redubbed "Crystal something" and I'm kicking myself for not picking it up

It was called Spire of Dawn.

Seaguard were excellent and I was lucky enough to grab 10 sprues of them recently at 3e/sprue from a local store. I'm going to need to hunt another command group to field two units of 25

**TheBestBucketHead**

Sadly, I missed out on Spire of Dawn. I'd have been fine replacing all the bases if I'd gotten it. But if they rerelease it, or Island of Blood, I'd be over the moon. I need those Rat Ogres.

Though, I did buy a Skaven character set of Ebay and got most of the characters in it, like the Warlord and the Warlock Engineer, so it's not the worst thing ever if it never comes back.

**chaos0xomega**

kodos wrote:
Warcry does not get people into AoS, 1 box of models being 1 unit is hence the starting problems of AoS as not only the rules were bad, but a box of Stormcast with 3 models were you needed 5 to play
Warhammer had Mortheim to get people into the setting, but not many started big R&F because of Mortheim, same as not many who like Unbderworlds or Warcry go full 2k AoS

Strg Alt wrote:
Death Knell for WHFB was weight of models needed and high price. You can´t lower the number of models for a R&F game but the price tag. Needless to say whatever comes in the future will need to address this.
AoS is running fine, with the same amount of models and much higher prices

WHFB died because of bad rules, no support and price hikes combined with increasing size of standard units

and this is a difference for AoS, there is rules support, the rules are good (within the GW environment) and 1 box of models makes a minimum sized unit that is playable
needing 120 models to play is different if those are 12 units each 40€, or if those are 3 units each 120€

and this is part of marketing, being able to start small and grow is easier to get people into than start big even if the outcome is the same
which was something GW killed with the 8th Edi point system as the cool and expensive heroes could not be used in less than 2-3k games
(it started with 7th were the minimum sized unit raised from 16 to 20 models but the boxes were reduced from 16 to 10 but you still could play 1000 point games rather easy)

Locally average AoS model count is half of what our average 7th/8th ed WHFB model counts were. AoS gives you a lot of ways to build lower model count armies with lots of big things to spend your points on. In WHFB I was taking multiple units of 30-50 models ea as a starting point, where the majority of the models in the unit served no purpose except to be wound counters.

Overread wrote:
I have to agree. I think we will see AoS get a bit more strict here and there, lets not forget its original inception was just to be fully open because GW weren't really being serious with it at almost any level save selling models. So some of AoS's is issues are almost dealing with going back to Rogue Trader era levels of lore building.

Eg at inception realms were almost endless in size and travelling to the rim was a huge undertaking of many years travel coupled with constant creation of new land on the boundaries. These days it feels like GW has reined in that aspect somewhat, though the Realms are still vast.

Maps have also started coming out slowly; but I do agree they have an uphill struggle. It's made worse when there are realms like the Metal Realm where there are whole (and fairly regular it seems as every story has at least one) storms of rust-dust and mineral wealth on the surface for the taking and lakes of quicksilver. Ergo its a scene out of the band album covers of the 70s metal music; but at the same time not only is the distance and concept of land battles and territory hard to visualise; its also really hard to visualise how people live there.

The setting went from an Old World where GW felt creative constriction (which is odd considering how many factions they didn't explore and how most AoS factions could easily have setup with minimal lore work) to one where its so utterly open its hard to consider things.

I think the other angle is time. There really isn't a chronological system in place. We have events happening in an order, but its really hard to date things. This makes it really hard to understand the importance of territory changes because you've no idea how it really settles in the story unless its near to major landmarks - like the NecroQuake. Even then you have a hard time working out if two characters you know are alive or dead at the same time. Or place a network story like the new Gotrek stories in any kind of order - has Gotrek really managed to spend perhaps decades being drunken between books or is it just a few months and if so that means a lot of major events are happening very fast etc..

It's "messy" to say the least. Visually its amazing, but it needs some kind of overlord to put order to the Chaos.

I have and still do believe that all of this is intentional. I think the point with AoS was very much to reset to a "blank slate" with a basic framework behind it, and let community feedback somewhat dictate the directions along which the game and setting evolved in in a more organic fashion, much like how WHFB and 40k evolved early on. I've seen/heard plenty from studio insiders in various interviews that implies that something along these lines were the case, though they stop far short of outright saying so.

**Scottywan82**

GaroRobe wrote:
TheBestBucketHead wrote:
My god, if I could get Island of Blood, I'd be the happiest man-thing on earth. I need those Rat Ogres, and my friend wants to start a High Elf army, so it would be great for everyone.

GW re-released it randomly a couple of years ago, except with round bases. It was redubbed "Crystal something" and I'm kicking myself for not picking it up

Yeah, I could rip my hair out for not buying it.

**Olthannon**

Spire of Dawn? It's still around, I'd advise asking at your local GWs. They might have a couple in the back.

**Tyel**

I played WHFB at smaller sizes, including various escalation style leagues, so I feel this whole "it only works at 2k points" is a bit of a reach.

The issue is that people show up to say a 1k points game with say 75% of their points in some deathstar and wondered why the game feels a bit stupid and imbalanced.

Like the common claim was a new guy shows up in the store, and want's to play generic humany humans. They promptly get told to start they "need" 40 Halberdiers, so 4 boxes, and a bunch of characters. They respond "that sucks, I'm out."

But you didn't have to do that - its just what the playerbase insisted on doing to itself.

**Kalamadea**

It's all the non-Island of Blood stuff I want, specifically the Dragon Princes and High Elf hero kits to be available again. Both go for such stupid amounts on Ebay. I'd certainly pick up some White Lions and chariots and Bolt Throwers too if they were available

I'm still SOOOO glad I started my High Elf army project at the time that I did, back in 2019. Much of the stuff was still available from GW or was still reasonable prices on ebay, IoB was still super cheap (probbaly because it had be reissued).

Really happy to finally get some 6th ed games in with them in recent months. No matter what happens with ToW, at least I'll have the older edition to play

**AegisGrimm**

I'd buy a copy of Spire of Dawn/Island of Blood if it were re-released, unfortunately I have to cringe at what the potential cost would be.

**Scottywan82**

AegisGrimm wrote:
I'd buy a copy of Spire of Dawn/Island of Blood if it were re-released, unfortunately I have to cringe at what the potential cost would be.

Yeah, that would hurt.

**Platuan4th**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
Just Tony wrote:
Shakalooloo wrote:
Geifer wrote:
There is no point in the Imperial timeline where you would struggle to insert Tomb Kings,

No, just the problem of justifying why a band of Wood Elves have ventured into Khemri. Or how a group of Tomb Kings have profaned a sacred elven woodland. As with Lizardmen, it's not their lack of existence that requires a bit of a thinking to justify, but their geographical isolation.

Boats. I can't see how it's THIS difficult for people to understand.

Don't even need boats. The Wood Elves can travel through the worldroots of the Oak of Ages, which are spread all over the world.

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Worldroots

Likewise, the Lizardmen have an entire system similar to the Webway to points all over the planet.

**kodos**

chaos0xomega wrote:
Locally average AoS model count is half of what our average 7th/8th ed WHFB model counts were. AoS gives you a lot of ways to build lower model count armies with lots of big things to spend your points on. In WHFB I was taking multiple units of 30-50 models ea as a starting point, where the majority of the models in the unit served no purpose except to be wound counters.

this was 8th Edition, and Warhammer died not at the end of 8th, it died at the end of 7th with most of the playerbase being gone after the Daemon book release (was it not problem to get 70-100 people into a local event, this declined to ~20-30 at the end of 7th and recovered only a little bit at the start of 8th and went down with the first army books released)

30 model units were already seen as large, were most players only had 1 large one and multiple smaller ones
that 30/40 became the minimum and you needed multiples of it was a reason why lot of people left and hardly any new ones started, but this was not a short period compared to the before were MSU was the dominate style

the average model count is no different to the one for 6th/7th Edition Warhammer, the absurd model count of 8th to squeeze as much money out of those who still played was a reason, but it was already a dead by that point

PS: of course there were exceptions, we had a Goblin player who already came in with 200 models in 6th Edition but the same guy still plays his 200 Goblins in AoS

**Cyel**

Paymaster Games wrote:
Realistically speaking the Lizardmen are the only ones with the power to open those kinds of portals, but they did not do that very often.

I love how you're using "realistically" to describe how magical lizard people open interdimensional portals

As for the Old World, I expect it to be a huge nostalgia bait, but, as much as I loved 6th I'm not going to be fooled into a GW game again. I fully expect it to be standard GW affair: unbalanced, clunky, comprising mostly of tedious upkeep and not much gameplay with handling more akin to that of a coal (or corpse

) laden cart in a world where so many games run like sport cars.

**Sarouan**

kodos wrote:
chaos0xomega wrote:
Locally average AoS model count is half of what our average 7th/8th ed WHFB model counts were. AoS gives you a lot of ways to build lower model count armies with lots of big things to spend your points on. In WHFB I was taking multiple units of 30-50 models ea as a starting point, where the majority of the models in the unit served no purpose except to be wound counters.
this was 8th Edition, and Warhammer died not at the end of 8th, it died at the end of 7th with most of the playerbase being gone after the Daemon book release (was it not problem to get 70-100 people into a local event, this declined to ~20-30 at the end of 7th and recovered only a little bit at the start of 8th and went down with the first army books released)

30 model units were already seen as large, were most players only had 1 large one and multiple smaller ones
that 30/40 became the minimum and you needed multiples of it was a reason why lot of people left and hardly any new ones started, but this was not a short period compared to the before were MSU was the dominate style

the average model count is no different to the one for 6th/7th Edition Warhammer, the absurd model count of 8th to squeeze as much money out of those who still played was a reason, but it was already a dead by that point

PS: of course there were exceptions, we had a Goblin player who already came in with 200 models in 6th Edition but the same guy still plays his 200 Goblins in AoS

Competitive scene was never a good representation of the game's health.

Warhammer Battle died when the game ended up being supported by GW to be replaced by AoS. That some players have personnal affinities with 6th, 7th or other editions isn't significative here : it's just personnal preferences and thus will always be subjective.

As for the number of models...the real trouble was the amount needed to play. I'm not talking about optimisation here, but required minimum per rules. It is a fact that Warhammer Battle always had a high model number entry because of how army limitation rules were written. That was one of the bad points when selling the game to newbies, and one of the good points of AoS when it came out : AoS was much more "free" on that matter, just like 40k. That means you could relativize the purchases based on what you want to play / have, not just because the rules said you had to take 30+ models you feel forced to take.

Here with the Old World project, since the targeted market is clearly different like Horus Heresy is (ie the nostalgia players) and AoS will still be around, it won't be as much a critical core problem IMHO. I think it's intended to have losses at the start, but compensated with sales from core games like Blood Bowl. I say "intended" because it is quite obvious to me they will not release everything at launch because of their business model and production planning, so they'll need time to build up the releases to a size similar to Warhammer Battle in its golden age. Just like Horus Heresy currently, and (again) Blood Bowl and Necromunda.

**lord_blackfang**

Locally it died the day 8th was released, when readers got to the page that explained random charge range. Tournaments went from 80 to 8 people overnight.

**Sarouan**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Locally it died the day 8th was released, when readers got to the page that explained random charge range. Tournaments went from 80 to 8 people overnight.

Keyword is "locally" here. In my region, game was actually well alive during all 8th edition because people like the new rules and when End Times came out, people were actually excited because it sounds like the background was actually really moving (they didn't know it was meaning the death of their game at that time...).

Old players may get tired, but newcomers don't see the same problems than their elders - because they never had to deal with them before, and thus played the rules as they are with no trouble.

**Dawnbringer**

I'd like to point out the number of models required increased as the editions went on. If you look at the representative army's in 5th, they are fall smaller in model count than 8th.

**Platuan4th**

Dawnbringer wrote:
I'd like to point out the number of models required increased as the editions went on. If you look at the representative army's in 5th, they are fall smaller in model count than 8th.

6th to 8th is a better set of data since spending 600-900 points on a single character in 4th/5th was pretty common. HeroHammer is a bad representation of what to expect army size wise.

**Sarouan**

Dawnbringer wrote:
I'd like to point out the number of models required increased as the editions went on. If you look at the representative army's in 5th, they are fall smaller in model count than 8th.

Well...more or less. Because at that time, you ~had~ to spend a minimum pourcentage of total army point value in models.

So yeah, individual units needed less minimum models, but in the end you had to buy quite the number of them to fulfill that pourcentage requirement. Not even talking about the general, who was forced to be a specific lord character no matter the size of the battle.

Granted, Chaos Warriors were really easy to collect and play. You didn't win a lot of battles that way, though.

**lord_blackfang**

Dawnbringer wrote:
I'd like to point out the number of models required increased as the editions went on. If you look at the representative army's in 5th, they are fall smaller in model count than 8th.

Not only that, but late WHFB saw the new meta of huge units coupled with the first truly backbreaking price hikes - the Goldsword standard, if you will.

**Sarouan**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Dawnbringer wrote:
I'd like to point out the number of models required increased as the editions went on. If you look at the representative army's in 5th, they are fall smaller in model count than 8th.

Not only that, but late WHFB saw the new meta of huge units coupled with the first truly backbreaking price hikes - the Goldsword standard, if you will.

It's something that kept coming back with every edition...prices were always "backbreaking" in comparison to the last one.

Funny part is when you look at 8th edition miniature prices now with AoS, you'd actually wish you could still have them at that price then. Inflation is a bitch...

That said, I still remember that time I began my dark elf army when they were all lead and only one unit of plastic (the useless swordsmen), with that legendary army box with Rakarth. Dark elves were rarely seen because of how expensive they were. Heh.

**lord_blackfang**

Sarouan wrote:
Funny part is when you look at 8th edition miniature prices now with AoS, you'd actually wish you could still have them at that price then. Inflation is a bitch...

Oh absolutely. But there was a clear psychological boundary overstepped at the time - 25 GBP for 10 plastic "medium" infantry (Goldswords, Tomb Guard...) coupled with suddenly needing 40 of them for a functional unit, back when people were used to 20 (+/- 4) man boxes and prices going down when a unit shifted from metal to plastic.

**Overread**

I think its important to note that no one thing killed Old World. Much like how Warmachine died, the death of popularity of Old World was many things that steadily built up and up into a snowball effect. Each item on its own could have been overcome with strengths and features in other areas.

Eg huge unit sizes could have been overcome with the lower prices; or with more focus on smaller game modes to bridge the gap to the 2K army games etc....

Each layer of mistakes and changes that resulted in a negative impact built upon each other and they all steadily added up. Plus with wargames once you start to see dwindling populations and players locally that has a massive snowballing effect of killing off enthusiasm for local established players and killing off recruitment of new fresh blood into the hobby. Which is critical if any hobby is going to survive.

I'd actually say GW is one of the fewer firms who seem, in waves at least, to be more acutely aware and willing to tackle the issue of getting new young people into a hobby that's got a healthy established older fanbase. Certainly in the UK they do several drives through schools and such; all designed to nurture the next generation of gamers.
In contrast some other hobbies like Historical Wargames and Hornby all seem to rely on a large adult population with far less drive toward recruiting new or younger people.

**kodos**

minimum sized infantry to get all bonus was 16 models in 6th, 20 in 7th and 40 in 8th
while over the same time it started with a box of 20 for 20€ and ended with a box of 10 for 25€ (inflation alone would make it 15€ for 10)
if AoS would see such a change within 3 Editions, it would be a dying game as well

Sarouan wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
Dawnbringer wrote:
I'd like to point out the number of models required increased as the editions went on. If you look at the representative army's in 5th, they are fall smaller in model count than 8th.

Not only that, but late WHFB saw the new meta of huge units coupled with the first truly backbreaking price hikes - the Goldsword standard, if you will.

It's something that kept coming back with every edition...prices were always "backbreaking" in comparison to the last one.

Funny part is when you look at 8th edition miniature prices now with AoS, you'd actually wish you could still have them at that price then. Inflation is a bitch...

well, it was the one unit where the new cheap plastic models came in more expensive than the metal models they replaced
this marked a breaking point from were new releases meant it became cheaper to get into the game, to starting an army got more and more expensive

**Strg Alt**

Tyel wrote:
I played WHFB at smaller sizes, including various escalation style leagues, so I feel this whole "it only works at 2k points" is a bit of a reach.

The issue is that people show up to say a 1k points game with say 75% of their points in some deathstar and wondered why the game feels a bit stupid and imbalanced.

Like the common claim was a new guy shows up in the store, and want's to play generic humany humans. They promptly get told to start they "need" 40 Halberdiers, so 4 boxes, and a bunch of characters. They respond "that sucks, I'm out."

But you didn't have to do that - its just what the playerbase insisted on doing to itself.

WHFB only works well with large regiments. Why? Because the rules are written that way. Take a look at the magic system with it´s missile spells causing either D6, 2D6 or even more amounts of hits. Regiments of ten models are often crippled when hit. Same applies when artillery guns come into play. The whole game expects the player to field big infantry blobs in order to soak up that kind of damage.