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I mean, they've been upfront about the other factions for a long time. I'm not like ChaosOmega and firmly believing they'll never see light again but I do think we won't see them for a significant amount of time. So I always assumed they were pretty DOA. Not being tourney legal is a bit more than I expected out the gate but honestly that'll be mostly local level anyway.

My mains in old fantasy were Ogres and Lizardmen with Dwarves falling far behind those two. I was sad when both my favorites were axed from the get go. But I'll dive in with my dwarves and there are still plenty of ideas I never got to explore with the other armies when I was young and poor that I'm excited to try out

 Mallo wrote:
So with no chance of legacy armies being added later on, there is absolutely no reason to buy the new rules as this entire 'era' of the game can be played using the previous versions of warhammer, with the bonus of no one with a previous collection being left out. We'll just have to house rule some items out of the army lists to play 'authentically'.

Its pretty good of GW to warn/tell us that a day before pre-orders. Its nice to see them managing expectations for once, even if they let it fester for the last several months, getting peoples hopes up.

Gotta say, whatever else GW did wrong... they were pretty clear about the legacy armies months ago [May 2023]. People mismanaged their expectations themselves if they thought the legacy factions would get ongoing support.

GW drew a very big box around [factions that will be in the game] and [factions not in TOW, but have a pdf at the start]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/05/23/old-world-development-diary-the-main-factions-revealed/

What About the Other Factions?

Certain factions people remember from Warhammer Fantasy Battles are not part of the narrative we’re telling with The Old World, but will be provided with rules at the launch of the game.

Dark Elves
Skaven
Vampire Counts
Daemons of Chaos
Ogre Kingdoms
Lizardmen
Chaos Dwarfs

These legacy faction army lists will be made available for free as pdfs as a service to fans who have these classic armies on their shelf, so they can still bring them to battle for old times sake. We don’t plan to publish rules for Warhammer Age of Sigmar miniatures, except for those units that were part of the game and setting during the final edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

For people who still do not understand why Dark elves are NEVER comming back: https://youtu.be/0nqRtpiR09c?t=581

The End Times just hit some factions harder...

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Londinium wrote:

I would bet my house on their being a 'New World' supplement with the missing factions in 2-4 years if the core game is a success. There are some of the most iconic and unique WHFB races within those legacy factions, if they truly wanted to jettison them for now and for forever, they wouldn't have held out the figleaf of pdf rules. They're just being very clear right now that those armies aren't in their plans to try and prevent nerd outrage and ongoing complaints, ultimately commercial logic will dictate if they are ever returned to.

Denial is a hell of a thing.

You know it's funny how people were like you at 2018 that epic won't come back.

Well here i am 2024 painting gw's epic models.

Also gw will flat out deny even to previous date from public that they will bring back. Even if tomorrow they would announce upcoming supplement today they would write "we don't have any intention to release it"

 Londinium wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Londinium wrote:

I would bet my house on their being a 'New World' supplement with the missing factions in 2-4 years if the core game is a success. There are some of the most iconic and unique WHFB races within those legacy factions, if they truly wanted to jettison them for now and for forever, they wouldn't have held out the figleaf of pdf rules. They're just being very clear right now that those armies aren't in their plans to try and prevent nerd outrage and ongoing complaints, ultimately commercial logic will dictate if they are ever returned to.

Denial is a hell of a thing.

Not really. From my professional life I know how projects of this size are managed and risk controlled. Especially when they're as inherently risky as relaunching a legacy IP with a very dedicated fanbase but which commercially failed a decade ago. Especially when you're already managing a product line that has significant cross over (AOS) and potential for confusion. Launching with a sub-set of the full range and tightly controlling communication, promising nothing more than you can initially deliver, in order to control the message and prevent as much negative vibe around the product as possible is the obvious way to do things.

I'm not confident that TOW will succeed commercially, I am confident that if it does then the legacy factions will find their way into the game.

Your experience professionally managing large scale commercial projects is apparently different than my own - from my experience, project scoping is something done very early on, and it sounds like, from the various articles and interviews, these factions were identified as being out of scope basically from the start. Once it's out of scope, it's out of scope and that's something unlikely to change, as you build your wishlists/product backlog, task lists, etc from items *in* scope and there's usually more than enough to work on befire you need to consider modifying your project parameters to expand into something that wasnt originally intended.

You've seriously never been in a professional environment where the scope expands due to success and profit?

For the record, I am in the camp that if we ever see the legacy armies it won't be for years, but if The Old World is successful enough to warrant investment there will come a time where bringing in the legacy (or kislev/cathay) is the juiciest fruit still on the tree, and I doubt shareholders will demand they ignore it because of an article written in early 2024.

tneva82 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Londinium wrote:

I would bet my house on their being a 'New World' supplement with the missing factions in 2-4 years if the core game is a success. There are some of the most iconic and unique WHFB races within those legacy factions, if they truly wanted to jettison them for now and for forever, they wouldn't have held out the figleaf of pdf rules. They're just being very clear right now that those armies aren't in their plans to try and prevent nerd outrage and ongoing complaints, ultimately commercial logic will dictate if they are ever returned to.

Denial is a hell of a thing.

You know it's funny how people were like you at 2018 that epic won't come back.

Well here i am 2024 painting gw's epic models.

Which is bizarre because we were told pretty early on that the designers pre-designed rules for non-titan units in the game, which they never ended up using. Technically speaking though, as some in this thread pointed out, epic didn't come back because it's HH only/no xenos.

Warptide wrote:
Yeah it is strange to see a unit filler for a 20-man unit. Like, you had to buy one 20-man kit or -man regardless. It does make removing models easier and can add more theme to a unit. I don't really care for them until you get up to 30+ models though. It's nice that GW has officially endorsed them, though!

Maybe you want 25 strong unit so 2 casualties don't remove rank bonus?

You don't think 20 is max size do you? We already know there's no such thing.

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
For people who still do not understand why Dark elves are NEVER comming back: https://youtu.be/0nqRtpiR09c?t=581

The End Times just hit some factions harder...

Lmao didn't expect that

Grail Seeker wrote:
You've seriously never been in a professional environment where the scope expands due to success and profit?

For the record, I am in the camp that if we ever see the legacy armies it won't be for years, but if The Old World is successful enough to warrant investment there will come a time where bringing in the legacy (or kislev/cathay) is the juiciest fruit still on the tree, and I doubt shareholders will demand they ignore it because of an article written in early 2024.

Well he can have experience with failed projects. Every project he is dead and buried


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Londinium wrote:

I would bet my house on their being a 'New World' supplement with the missing factions in 2-4 years if the core game is a success. There are some of the most iconic and unique WHFB races within those legacy factions, if they truly wanted to jettison them for now and for forever, they wouldn't have held out the figleaf of pdf rules. They're just being very clear right now that those armies aren't in their plans to try and prevent nerd outrage and ongoing complaints, ultimately commercial logic will dictate if they are ever returned to.

Denial is a hell of a thing.

You know it's funny how people were like you at 2018 that epic won't come back.

Well here i am 2024 painting gw's epic models.

Which is bizarre because we were told pretty early on that the designers pre-designed rules for non-titan units in the game, which they never en
ed up using. Technically speaking though, as some in this thread pointed out, epic didn't come back because it's HH only/no xenos.

And people said as hh lt can come. But then people like you said no. We were right, people like you wrong.

Grail Seeker wrote:
You've seriously never been in a professional environment where the scope expands due to success and profit?

For the record, I am in the camp that if we ever see the legacy armies it won't be for years, but if The Old World is successful enough to warrant investment there will come a time where bringing in the legacy (or kislev/cathay) is the juiciest fruit still on the tree, and I doubt shareholders will demand they ignore it because of an article written in early 2024.

Honestly, no. If you define your product as x, it being successful doesn't automatically justify adding y into it, especially if you determined at the start that you was not appropriate for whatever reason. Doesn't mean you can't become a separate product (though in this case it already is).

And the whole point here seems to be that they'd rather do new things like kislev, cathay, the moot, maybe hobgoblins as independent from chaos dwarves, possibly estalia, tilea, norsca, and Arab, etc than retread the same ground cicered in their other games

You know what armies were never original scope of game?


Ogors, chaos dwarves, sisters of battle, necrons, tau...

Among others.

Gw has funny habit of adding armies to game time to time. easier than just creating new units and it's new release or bust for gw.

 Londinium wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Londinium wrote:

I would bet my house on their being a 'New World' supplement with the missing factions in 2-4 years if the core game is a success. There are some of the most iconic and unique WHFB races within those legacy factions, if they truly wanted to jettison them for now and for forever, they wouldn't have held out the figleaf of pdf rules. They're just being very clear right now that those armies aren't in their plans to try and prevent nerd outrage and ongoing complaints, ultimately commercial logic will dictate if they are ever returned to.

Denial is a hell of a thing.

Not really. From my professional life I know how projects of this size are managed and risk controlled. Especially when they're as inherently risky as relaunching a legacy IP with a very dedicated fanbase but which commercially failed a decade ago. Especially when you're already managing a product line that has significant cross over (AOS) and potential for confusion. Launching with a sub-set of the full range and tightly controlling communication, promising nothing more than you can initially deliver, in order to control the message and prevent as much negative vibe around the product as possible is the obvious way to do things.

I'm not confident that TOW will succeed commercially, I am confident that if it does then the legacy factions will find their way into the game.

It would be great if it does happen but it just doesn't overly sound likely when based on articles they've broadly got things planned out quite for a while. If they hadn't outright said they are not part of this or their plans for the game and will not be receiving support beyond the basic rules, then potentially I could see it, but unless there are things i've completely forgot I don't think they usually go out of there way to say no to doing something that they then later do.

tneva82 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Londinium wrote:

I would bet my house on their being a 'New World' supplement with the missing factions in 2-4 years if the core game is a success. There are some of the most iconic and unique WHFB races within those legacy factions, if they truly wanted to jettison them for now and for forever, they wouldn't have held out the figleaf of pdf rules. They're just being very clear right now that those armies aren't in their plans to try and prevent nerd outrage and ongoing complaints, ultimately commercial logic will dictate if they are ever returned to.

Denial is a hell of a thing.

You know it's funny how people were like you at 2018 that epic won't come back.

Well here i am 2024 painting gw's epic models.

Also gw will flat out deny even to previous date from public that they will bring back. Even if tomorrow they would announce upcoming supplement today they would write "we don't have any intention to release it"

Just what have they outright denied before only to then actually do a short while later? I really can't think of any examples.

Grail Seeker wrote:
You've seriously never been in a professional environment where the scope expands due to success and profit?

For the record, I am in the camp that if we ever see the legacy armies it won't be for years, but if The Old World is successful enough to warrant investment there will come a time where bringing in the legacy (or kislev/cathay) is the juiciest fruit still on the tree, and I doubt shareholders will demand they ignore it because of an article written in early 2024.

Have you seriously never been in a professional environment where something failed to meet expectations? Or just barely did? Everything you're predicting is pure speculation on a dream of a success that hasn't happened yet.

If there were no chance at all for the legacy armies to be expanded on why even put resources into making the PDFs to begin with. Since they have already done that and there is a ton of lore and models, and some form of basic rules converted to this new edition, there wouldn't be much work at all for them to fully implement them later into the game. Like 95% of it is already done.

They might not put them into the official story line or put up any real marketing for them and yet add them in "fully". As in supported at events and with updates to the rules and maybe even new models. There is a lot of leeway in their statement.

These factions will probably feature in some of the new lore and novels anyway, as filler for the background, even if they won't have any major part of the ongoing stories. They would just be like non marines and non chaos factions in 40k. Part of the background but without any agency while GW favors the main protagonists.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Elements announcement is literally on their homepage:

"A Notice Regarding Warhammer: The Old World.

We are disappointed to report that stock allocations are very low for all products in this release. Therefore we will not be able to offer them for online sale, and will have very limited stock in our physical stores. We have been made aware that most of the products are planned to be restocked in the future, but we haven’t yet been given a firm date.

Kind regards, The EG Team"

It is a real shame when one of, if not the, largest 3rd party retailers in the country is effectively out of the game as a result of GW's continuing stock issues. Picture confirmation of chaos0xomega's post for those that missed it

Hang on - Element Games do airbrush stuff?

Klickor wrote:
If there were no chance at all for the legacy armies to be expanded on why even put resources into making the PDFs to begin with.

So that people who still have those minis can play, somewhat. In no way does tossing a beggar a loaf of bread guarantee that they will get a steak dinner later that night.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt seem to be the rule of the day when it comes to TOW. What base sizes do we need? What factions will get support? Will we be able to get rulebooks? GW's ultra-opaque nature doesn't really do it any favors here.

Two of those already have definitive answers. And the books never sell out, only the boxes.

They answered which factions get support months ago. They've said it multiple times since then.

Not sure at this point it's a them problem.

Now we've got base sizes for everything before release.

Stock issues are of course an on-going issue though. Across everything 😔

 Ahtman wrote:

Klickor wrote:
If there were no chance at all for the legacy armies to be expanded on why even put resources into making the PDFs to begin with.

So that people who still have those minis can play, somewhat. In no way does tossing a beggar a loaf of bread guarantee that they will get a steak dinner later that night.

Giving them hope when there is 0 chance to get support later might backfire though. But I do think they would want to expand the scope if the game is successful and this is an easy way to do it in a couple of years without having constant churn for the sake of churn with the core armies or making up new editions. Adding in Dark Elves, or any other legacy faction, could expand the lifetime of the old world for another couple of months with little manpower after all the currently planned armies and supplements have been released.

On that opaqueness...are we aware which products are one and done and which will be continued in stock/replenished items? Printed card game aids always seem to last about 15 minutes and are never seen again.

Klickor wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

Klickor wrote:
If there were no chance at all for the legacy armies to be expanded on why even put resources into making the PDFs to begin with.

So that people who still have those minis can play, somewhat. In no way does tossing a beggar a loaf of bread guarantee that they will get a steak dinner later that night.

Giving them hope when there is 0 chance to get support later might backfire though. But I do think they would want to expand the scope if the game is successful and this is an easy way to do it in a couple of years without having constant churn for the sake of churn with the core armies or making up new editions. Adding in Dark Elves, or any other legacy faction, could expand the lifetime of the old world for another couple of months with little manpower after all the currently planned armies and supplements have been released.

How is it giving them hope when they said that was all they were doing? It only gives hope to those who are being oblivious to what GW is telling you. It would be nice if eventually they do expand but basing your hopes and dreams on wishful thinking is just asking for disappointment. GW is literally telling you what the plan is and yet people are going "but maybe what they really mean is..."

GW doesn’t get to decide which lists are allowed in any tournie other than their own anyway, the community will decide that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Fear, uncertainty and doubt seem to be the rule of the day when it comes to TOW. What base sizes do we need? What factions will get support? Will we be able to get rulebooks? GW's ultra-opaque nature doesn't really do it any favors here.

The status of the legacy factions has been the clearest that GW have ever been, they’ve said it again and again. There is no uncertainty or doubt here. To suggest otherwise is simply wrong.

You may not like it, and that’s totally fair enough, but they have been clear.

I'll just get some stuff from Mantic to play the game with instead if it's going to constantly be out of stock.

They've had three years to plan and prepare to make sure that they don't have zero stock for retailers on launch.

If you want to come on this long-term journey with us, the factions in the Forces of Fantasy and Ravening Hordes books are the ones to collect and play – and we want to be pretty clear about that

Sounds to me like the 9 are the 9 and new factions like Kislev are an equally deluded prospect as Dark Elves or Lizardmen. Reaffirming that those old design diaries were complete horsegak from day 1.

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
Quotes from the new article ( https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/05/old-world-almanack-designer-round-table-on-the-past-and-future-of-a-stone-cold-classic/ )

"There’s a lot of invisible work in the Old World project, finding old miniatures in the archive,"
"What’s more, plenty of the original ‘Eavy Metal miniatures had been lost or damaged through the wear and tear of 40 years of Warhammer. "

Man GW really did throw WHFB stuff in the dumpster and now they have to search the local landfill for the old eavy metal miniatures.

The quote I find intriguing is

"Rob: There’s one Bretonnian model coming out that had been designed decades ago and never released. It was incredible to be able to find things like this buried at the back of a cupboard."

Wonder what that could be? A lost Perry masterpiece?

There's specific allowanced for mercenaries and allies, so it wouldn't surprise me to see Kislev fit in that niche (as they used to) in a few years when we start getting into the rise of Asarvar Kull.

Legacy factions and tournaments sounds like it's the same as Legends. GW aren't going to go back and balance fix those PDFs, and don't view them as part of the ecosystem they will be balancing future stuff around, so aren't tournament lists in their view. New Dark Elf, Lizard, Vampire, Skaven and Ogre concepts are going to be implemented through the AoS lens instead.

Some early tournaments might be open to all lists, and there might be some country level organisation that looks to keep the old lists current, but I kind of imagine once the first errata and points update comes out everyone is going to sticking to the core factions.

MaxT wrote:
GW doesn’t get to decide which lists are allowed in any tournie other than their own anyway, the community will decide that.

and if you want to run an official tournament, you go by GWs rules
ask how many 40k tournaments allow units from legends pdf to be used

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkqXFins_rc
Youtubers are playing the game!

have we seen anything like a real scenario yet or is it really just kill and nothing else?