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chaos0xomega wrote:
Yes, that makes sense, but what's the excuse for not having released them 2-3 months ago? The game hasn't had any releases since what, March? They could have put dwarves out in April or may without issue.

The last TOW release was May 5th: Remaining kits for Tomb Kings, Bretonnia and O&G (but not the new resin Orc character). The dice set for Dwarfs was leaked on 3rd January, and Dwarfs were previewed on 21st March.

I've seen a few people speculate that GW never planned on releasing Dwarfs until after AoS 4th, but if that's the case...previewing them 3 months in advance seems daft, especially since TOW has received only four(!) articles after the preview, the last on the 19th April.

Hopefully once Dwarfs are released they can regain momentum and quell the belief (however misguided it is) that GW don't care about TOW.

I've never seen such a bad rollout of a new product in my life.

It's not just the product releases, it's everything.

I get that the game is not their top priority, which might be it's saving grace as less attention from GW is often great where rules are concerned. But come on! Two months without any article on the mothership, almost the only game without any new things during the last preview show...

In one of the last articles they said 'It's safe to say Warhammer The Old World is here to stay!'
because of its big success, only to follow that news up with...absolute radio silence for about two and a half months.

Almost everything about the release of this game apart from the quality of the product itself so far had me raising my eyebrow. I.O.W. the rules and the game itself seem great, but the marketing is beyond bad. It feel somewhat schizofrenic; as if the developers do their best to make it a loveletter to warhammer, but the marketing department doesn't want it to succeed. Maybe there is more truth to the stories about the animosity between FW and Games Workshop/Citadel than i thought.

Pfft, try having Middle-Earth as one of your games, then you can complain.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Pfft, try having Middle-Earth as one of your games, then you can complain.

Very true, though that game is 20 years old and did receive quite a lot of attention during at least its first 3 or 4 years (it even had its own magazine at one point!)

And fantasy had nearly 30. You need to relax and remember old world has had 3 full armies in a sixth month period. That's a release rate even 40k couldn't dream of.

Young Thorgrim and Burlok

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
And fantasy had nearly 30. You need to relax and remember old world has had 3 full armies in a sixth month period. That's a release rate even 40k couldn't dream of.

Oh I'm quite relaxed. O&G and Bretonnia are my armies so I'm set.

You are being disengenuous though: they made it very clear that this a new game, not Warhammer Fantasy (it's still Fantasy though! ). Also, while they released 3 armies most of those are just re-releases of old models, a small number of which have been remastered and an even smaller number of the released models are actually new designs.

So though you're right, there are a few sidenotes.

All these "buts" are all pretty irrelevant. Thats still a massive release over a short period and people need to learn some patience.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
And fantasy had nearly 30. You need to relax and remember old world has had 3 full armies in a sixth month period. That's a release rate even 40k couldn't dream of.

Wut? 40k has had 7 codexes released in the past 6 months.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
And fantasy had nearly 30. You need to relax and remember old world has had 3 full armies in a sixth month period. That's a release rate even 40k couldn't dream of.

Wut? 40k has had 7 codexes released in the past 6 months.

Come on now, you know better than that. Codices with a majority of one pity hero are not an equivalent of three full army releases.

I agree with both of you in a way.
And all jokes aside i agree with Gideon that 3 armies in half a year is a normal pace. (Though technically one of only two new models for O&G still hasn't been released, which i find disappointing).

I still think the coverage the game gets overal is very sub par and weird for a new release that has proven to be quite popular. In my eyes the pr around the game has been a big mess from the beginning

chaos0xomega wrote:
Yes, that makes sense, but what's the excuse for not having released them 2-3 months ago? The game hasn't had any releases since what, March? They could have put dwarves out in April or may without issue.

Gotta have that authentic WHFB release feel where it is years between army updates and some armies get skipped between editions!

People don’t know they were born, in my day you might have had 1 release per edition, which were 5 years apart

MaxT wrote:
People don’t know they were born, in my day you might have had 1 release per edition, which were 5 years apart

Meanwhile Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle recall skipping entire editions! Not even a book let alone a model!

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
And fantasy had nearly 30. You need to relax and remember old world has had 3 full armies in a sixth month period. That's a release rate even 40k couldn't dream of.

Wut? 40k has had 7 codexes released in the past 6 months.

Come on now, you know better than that. Codices with a majority of one pity hero are not an equivalent of three full army releases.

Except they kind of are. Every edition each army gets reboxed/repackaged. There's not much difference between that and the old wprld releases - they're 20 year old kits in new boxes, it's not like HH where GW is launching new armies w a dozen new plastic kits.

And even ignoring that, in the past 6 months we've had Tau and Dark Angels with a half dozen new kits a piece to go with their new books

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
And fantasy had nearly 30. You need to relax and remember old world has had 3 full armies in a sixth month period. That's a release rate even 40k couldn't dream of.

Wut? 40k has had 7 codexes released in the past 6 months.

Come on now, you know better than that. Codices with a majority of one pity hero are not an equivalent of three full army releases.

Except they kind of are. Every edition each army gets reboxed/repackaged. There's not much difference between that and the old wprld releases - they're 20 year old kits in new boxes, it's not like HH where GW is launching new armies w a dozen new plastic kits.

And even ignoring that, in the past 6 months we've had Tau and Dark Angels with a half dozen new kits a piece to go with their new books

An army already in production doesn't have to have any additional slots for production. Sure the run up to a codex release they likely DO get a bunch of extra general slots set aside for that purpose. But that's the general normal running of things now (GW has been doing regular codex updates for a long while now). In addition the new boxes are just a new shipment from China - the only extra work is likely sending the intern to the shredding room to shred any old stock boxes.


Adding a whole Warhammer Old World army is way different. First up its a big chunk of new models being added to the production pipleline all in one go or with only a few weeks to break things up. That's a big amount of new material to schedule and slot into the release system. Everything for it is new and additional workload being built into the company. That army now requires a big injection of resources followed by regular restock production slots. It's not normal running its in addition to normal running until its part of the flowing system.

That also ignores any quality control aspects such as checking moulds and castings to make sure that mass production hasn't created issues of its own in the workflow.

Working in manufacturing as I do, I have to tell you that there is absolutely zero difference between releasing a TOW faction (metal kits notwithstanding) or a new codex release for 40k. The only extra step for TOW is resurfacing the old molds. The production planning, workflow, capacity and utilization impact, etc is all the same. The fact that it's product that they weren't producing before doesn't really change that unless it requires new production tooling - that's where the resource investment actually occurs. Likewise the fact that 40k stuff is in pipeline/rotation already and TOW is being added to it doesn't change much either - GW has been steadily growing their capacity for some time, likewise removing old products from production. If they're releasing TOW it's because they have capacity to accommodate it without impacting something else.

Maybe a stupid question, but do we know why there haven't been any restocks of TOW product? Nearly everything is out of stock on GW's website. This is almost like the early weeks of Disney Lorcana, where it was hard to even find product at all in stores anywhere. I recently acquired a Tomb Kings army and I need some Tomb Guard or maybe some Necropolis Knights and I can't find them.

As usual, demand is exceeding their ability to manufacture

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Maybe a stupid question, but do we know why there haven't been any restocks of TOW product? Nearly everything is out of stock on GW's website. This is almost like the early weeks of Disney Lorcana, where it was hard to even find product at all in stores anywhere. I recently acquired a Tomb Kings army and I need some Tomb Guard or maybe some Necropolis Knights and I can't find them.

I'm sure a significant amount of their manufacturing capacity went toward Sakventide. And, hopefully, they're ramping up for the release of Dwarves.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Working in manufacturing as I do, I have to tell you that there is absolutely zero difference between releasing a TOW faction (metal kits notwithstanding) or a new codex release for 40k. The only extra step for TOW is resurfacing the old molds. The production planning, workflow, capacity and utilization impact, etc is all the same. The fact that it's product that they weren't producing before doesn't really change that unless it requires new production tooling - that's where the resource investment actually occurs. Likewise the fact that 40k stuff is in pipeline/rotation already and TOW is being added to it doesn't change much either - GW has been steadily growing their capacity for some time, likewise removing old products from production. If they're releasing TOW it's because they have capacity to accommodate it without impacting something else.

I'm not saying that TOW models are different from what GW already releases, just that its a question of volume.
Releasing 1 codex is an entirely different production lineup to releasing multiple new kits, with new SKUs, new picking and packing, new contents and everything.

Yes I fully agree, GW is only doing this because they believe they have capacity to do so without it impacting their regular operations; but even then they have limits on production. If you've got a bit TOW army that you have to stock up and build up for release AND you've got a mammoth (not as big as 40K Leviathan but still big) AoS new edition to stock up on and launch then surely you can see that the production slots might run out. That the two major releases can't happen in close order - heck the week or two before we got the pre-order were slightly lighter on releases from GW and then we've a 2 week pre-order window as well.

I'm agreeing that TOW armies slot into the system, but simply noting that as they are a big chunky addition all in one go, they have to be more spread out and can't compete with production slots when there's a major edition release for a leading game by GW.


Whilst GW isn't fully into one-and-done production; we have heard many times that the launch window for a new thing (model,army, game etc) is often one of its most heavy periods of sales. So GW has to bulk up stock for that launch. That's the abnormal moment of sales for any product they sell - after that the amount they have to produce at any one time should go down as they shift to keeping things in stock. Sure they've clearly got "bulking up" production slots and right now they are likely eaten up entirely with AoS 4.0 - which might even eat up a number of "big bulk up production windows".

chaos0xomega wrote:
Working in manufacturing as I do, I have to tell you that there is absolutely zero difference between releasing a TOW faction (metal kits notwithstanding) or a new codex release for 40k. The only extra step for TOW is resurfacing the old molds. The production planning, workflow, capacity and utilization impact, etc is all the same. The fact that it's product that they weren't producing before doesn't really change that unless it requires new production tooling - that's where the resource investment actually occurs. Likewise the fact that 40k stuff is in pipeline/rotation already and TOW is being added to it doesn't change much either - GW has been steadily growing their capacity for some time, likewise removing old products from production. If they're releasing TOW it's because they have capacity to accommodate it without impacting something else.

All other things being equal it still physically takes longer to manufacture the average ToW box (at least four, can be up to ten, shots of a 4-man sprue and then probably a shot of a separate command sprue and maybe even shield sprues) than it does the average AoS box (max two shots of a 5 or 10-man sprue).

"Duardin" are not even purged from the cities of sigmar range yet. They are even mentioned in the war-com article about CoS in the new edition.
They usually dont double up with the same models in AoS and TOW, do they?

 Fayric wrote:
"Duardin" are not even purged from the cities of sigmar range yet. They are even mentioned in the war-com article about CoS in the new edition.
They usually dont double up with the same models in AoS and TOW, do they?

Given that Old World hasn't even been out for six months, it's difficult to discern what GW 'usually' does. However:

-Beastmen got purged from Age of Sigmar to become a strictly Old World army.
-Dark Elves are considered a Legacy army for Old World, so their models do still technically belong on sale for Age of Sigmar.
-Old World photos for Warriors of Chaos all show classic minis.

Currently, the Dwarves appear to be an outlier.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Fayric wrote:
"Duardin" are not even purged from the cities of sigmar range yet. They are even mentioned in the war-com article about CoS in the new edition.
They usually dont double up with the same models in AoS and TOW, do they?

Given that Old World hasn't even been out for six months, it's difficult to discern what GW 'usually' does. However:

-Beastmen got purged from Age of Sigmar to become a strictly Old World army.
-Dark Elves are considered a Legacy army for Old World, so their models do still technically belong on sale for Age of Sigmar.
-Old World photos for Warriors of Chaos all show classic minis.

Currently, the Dwarves appear to be an outlier.

And goblins got the older sculpts for nightgoblins and wolfriders. Savage orcs got dropped from the Orruk Warclans. Semi related coincident had empire models updated/replaced for Cities of sigmar new sculpts as TOW got released. And likewise coincidentally, the orruk ardboys got resculpted at the time of TOW release and old sculpts soon released as blackorcs.

Beastmen was a surprise for everyone that GW pulled it from AoS and threw it into Old World - I would not be surprised if this was purely management or inter-departmental issues (eg the AoS team and Old World team cannot communicate with each other because - secrets or something).

I'm also convinced GW doesn't really know what to do with Dwarves nor the Dark Elves in AoS. They don't appear to want to get rid of either but they also don't seem to want to do anything concrete with them either. They are out in a limb, esp since Cities of Sigmar got a big core of models released for them.

Beastmen weren't a surprise to me?

They received even less support than Idoneth and Fyreslayers, which are the yardstick for literally just coasting along. Once Slaangor made an appearance in the Hedonites Battletome, Tzaangors for Disciples, and generic Beastmen as part of the Spire Tyrants it kinda felt like the obvious pathway forward would be them just being integrated into the main armies.

It's interesting Dispossessed aren't totally gone, but I think its very likely the Old World units will be missing by the next battle tome.

It's pretty obvious, even prior to the beastman purge, that GW wants to separate the models ranges. Why else would they bring back the old plastic night goblins instead of the newer kit that is currently used in AOS? The Dark Elf models currently in the Cities are likely safe, since there aren't any plans to include them in TOW (though the core book mentions them a few times, so they may have been removed last minute)

The additions to CoS missed the mark IMO. They're grim fantasy but the whole point of CoS was the mixing of humans, duardin, and aelves together.

The Command Corps could have had the assassin model be an aelf, the cannon should have had a duardin gunner, maybe even throw some aelf and duardin into the Wildercorps Hunters to link back to Dwarf Rangers and Wood Elves.

I'm still convinced that whenever Malekith* comes out of hiding in the Age of Sigmar, all the Dark Elves will flee the Cities of Sigmar and join up with him.