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Not gonna lie, I'm very tempted to start a High Elf army, in spite of the fact that I'm already swamped with unfinished army projects. I love the look of the High Elves, and the Lion Chariots are especially neat!

 ZergSmasher wrote:
Not gonna lie, I'm very tempted to start a High Elf army, in spite of the fact that I'm already swamped with unfinished army projects. I love the look of the High Elves, and the Lion Chariots are especially neat!

High Elves were my secondary army after Empire from WFB days. Looking forward to actually being able to fill out the units from the Island of Blood set, especially the Sea Guard and the all plastic Reavers. I don't even remember those elite units such as Dragon Princes, Phoenix Guard and White Lions ever being released in plastic. Must have been a late 8th ed release. All of mine are 100% metal (except for horses of course) and I was collecting High Elves right up to about the end of WFB.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
CD are already confirmed as a new AoS force.

Wait? What?

I entirely missed that one!

Chorfs are a legacy faction, which means they wont be supported in TOW - and no, its not because of mini overlap, the current line of Chorf minis dont have rules in AoS4, theyre also 100% resin so we know they arent going to be used in the rumored upcoming AoS release. GW could have very easily added them to TOW as a core faction from the getgo (and IMO should have, but as someone who owns almost 6k points of them I may be biased), but didnt. Why? Because its not a minis thing, its a brand/IP thing - all indications are that the AoS range will be referencing the Legion of Azgorh range aesthetically, so they dont want the visual overlap even if the kits would be distinct.

It's a "they do not have infinite capacity to produce full lines of models" thing as well any other factors.

Even bringing back 9 armies worth over a year has been a huge undertaking and was quite a major investment for something they obviously weren't 100% sure would do well.

They were never bringing back CDs who don't even have plastic kits to rerelease.

This is why we’re seeing “low hanging fruit”.

We’ve had relatively few entirely new plastic kits for TOW. Some recut kits, but it’s mostly been “dust off the existing moulds”.

Given this is a somewhat risky product line, not only offering a form of competition to AoS, but picking up on a legacy somewhat soured by the dawn of AoS, it wasn’t guaranteed to succeed.

But, by going the route they went? Costs have likely been kept comparatively modest. Compare to HH and LI. With a mass plasticisation for both? They weren’t cheap.

You’ve got the cost of sculpting and setting out the sprue, then creating presumably multiple steel moulds for each kit so you can churn them out in volume.

By largely reusing existing moulds, TOW has kept its setup costs as modest as possible, giving the game as much of a chance at financially pulling its own weight in the early days as possible.

If it continues to sell comfortably (no I don’t know what that might look like, only GW does) we may see ever greater investment, in both new kits and hopefully, new armies.

Vorian wrote:
It's a "they do not have infinite capacity to produce full lines of models" thing as well any other factors.

Even bringing back 9 armies worth over a year has been a huge undertaking and was quite a major investment for something they obviously weren't 100% sure would do well.

They were never bringing back CDs who don't even have plastic kits to rerelease.

Thats just it though, Chorfs already have a full line of very modern *resin* models ready to go, maybe they needed to do a new set of production molds off the masters, but thats no different than what theyve done for a lot of the other resin and metal minis in the range and is a relatively quick and simple process with minimal cost (i know because ive dine it before myself). Its certainly easier than going dumpster diving for old kits that they need to remaster and make new molds for like the field trebuchet or tomb giant.

There is absolutely no way they would have brought back a full resin range into the game where every other faction has a fully plastic core lineup ready for re-release. That's all there is to it.

Not 100% impossible. Middle-Earth (which is the closest comparison right now) has a couple of FW exclusive armies in the Iron Hills and Beornings. There's always the possibility if there is a brand new force, it could end up 90% or more resin.

See also: Horus Heresy which was resin only for quite some time.

In other news, its going around that GW pulled support from the TOW LVO tournament because the organizers refused to ban the legacy armies from the event. Seems like GW is stull pretty adamant in its stance that they will not support those armies.

I can understand it from GW's point of view of marketing. They want a 100% as clear as they can make it stance on which armies they are and are not supporting. They don't want that Lizardman or Skaven player "waiting for their army to appear". They want them either going into AoS or joining OW with another of the armies that they are supporting

Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

Arguably its worked out for GW as theyve likely made more money than they wouldve otherwise this way, but theres a lot of folks who either dont know how to read or are bad actors who have encouraged noobies to buy inti these armies on the false premise that they will be fully supported in the future. The great irony is that as of late GW has made clear its willingness to straight up eliminate countless units and even whole armies (RIP Far Harad and Variags of Khand) during edition turnovers, so its actually more likely than not that a hypothetical TOW 2.0 has zero rules support for legacy armies than it is for them to provide those factions rules and model support.

chaos0xomega wrote:

In other news, its going around that GW pulled support from the TOW LVO tournament because the organizers refused to ban the legacy armies from the event. Seems like GW is stull pretty adamant in its stance that they will not support those armies.

Then mad props to the organizers for not bowing down, we need more like them.

So fully back to the old days
Next step, not waiting for GW fixing the rules and adding house rules to tournament combs

Vorian wrote:
It's a "they do not have infinite capacity to produce full lines of models" thing as well any other factors.

Even bringing back 9 armies worth over a year has been a huge undertaking and was quite a major investment for something they obviously weren't 100% sure would do well.

They were never bringing back CDs who don't even have plastic kits to rerelease.

If that were true they woukdnt have just teased that they are investing into creating a whole new faction amd model range in the form of cathay as a 10th faction. The obvious "low capacity impact" move would have been to continue with the legacy factions.

Not sure how that follows.

Committing to releasing a further 7 factions of old models vs releasing a new army are two very different things.

Both in terms of having to manufacture and stock all those things and the amount of time tied up in the release schedule

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

For the very low cost of having to make up some rules they support all the old players (thus giving new/mini-supported players more opponents and the game scene more life) and generate some AoS mini sales as well. I think that's worth more to GW than "oh no what if mixed messaging causes a bit of angst in some players even after we clearly say they won't be supported further"

 RustyNumber wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

For the very low cost of having to make up some rules they support all the old players (thus giving new/mini-supported players more opponents and the game scene more life) and generate some AoS mini sales as well. I think that's worth more to GW than "oh no what if mixed messaging causes a bit of angst in some players even after we clearly say they won't be supported further"

GW has been pretty explicit on their stance regarding the legacy armies. Anyone who hasn't caught that message is living in delusion. Sure, I'd love to see Dark Elves get official support, but I'm not expecting it.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

For the very low cost of having to make up some rules they support all the old players (thus giving new/mini-supported players more opponents and the game scene more life) and generate some AoS mini sales as well. I think that's worth more to GW than "oh no what if mixed messaging causes a bit of angst in some players even after we clearly say they won't be supported further"

GW has been pretty explicit on their stance regarding the legacy armies. Anyone who hasn't caught that message is living in delusion. Sure, I'd love to see Dark Elves get official support, but I'm not expecting it.

Honestly I wish GW would just say what their plans are for the DE range. It's just sat in AoS for ever - a whole army that's basically been untouched save for 1 expansion book where they could pair up with DoK for even more Dark Elf goodness. However I think everyone is still on the fence with them because they really don't feel like GW is going to do anything with them and one day we'll wake up and BOOM they'll be gone.

 BorderCountess wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

For the very low cost of having to make up some rules they support all the old players (thus giving new/mini-supported players more opponents and the game scene more life) and generate some AoS mini sales as well. I think that's worth more to GW than "oh no what if mixed messaging causes a bit of angst in some players even after we clearly say they won't be supported further"

GW has been pretty explicit on their stance regarding the legacy armies. Anyone who hasn't caught that message is living in delusion. Sure, I'd love to see Dark Elves get official support, but I'm not expecting it.

GW have been explicit about many things in the past and then gone back on it. It's standard corporate communications.

I wish this topic would just bloody die, the people who are adamant the legacy armies will never return even if TOW becomes a raging success, are so tiresome as those that read every GW decision as fuel for 'legacy armies will return'.

Let's wait and see.

Vorian wrote:
Not sure how that follows.

Committing to releasing a further 7 factions of old models vs releasing a new army are two very different things.

Both in terms of having to manufacture and stock all those things and the amount of time tied up in the release schedule

Youre right, the 7 legacy factions are easier to do than one new faction. It takes years of art, sculpting, writing, toolmaking, and manufacturing to produce a new faction. The hardest part of putting legacy factions out is resurfacing the steel molds and dumpster diving and mold remastering for old resin/metal kits, which is done by an entirely different team of folks that havent been particularly busy for quite some time until recently.

Its not much different than the codex/battletome releases GW does like 16 times a year already for 40k/AoS. Every one of those basically involves them putting the entire model range for that faction back into production (no, they arent all in constant production, they get rotated in and out constantly, we just dint see it - thats why thubgs go out of stock) at the same time, packaging them into new boxes, and shipping them around the world. Most 40k/AoS factions have a larger model range and more skus than TOW factions, so thats another point in TOWs favor. And those 40k/AoS releases? Theyre doing a handful of major refreshes/expansions for each of those games in parallel to that schedule, including up to a dozen or so all new kits for any guven faction that have to go through the complete design, toolmaking, and manifacturing proceess, whereas for TOW so far the most any one faction got was 2 new plastic kits, and several got none whatsoever.

Another point in legacy/TOWs favor - generally smaller production lots, more use of MTO, and the releases are broken up into waves over several weeks (whereas product reboxings for 40k/AoS are all released at once). Overall, its easier to launch a legacy TOW faction than it is to update a 40k/AoS faction or launch a new faction for any game system.

As for commitment? Thats just it - GW didnt need to say anything. They could have just given us a vague roadmap civering the first handful of factions, like they do for all their other games, and said nothing about legacy at all until the time came. They told us up-front what legacy status meant for a reason, and its not because they might change their minds down the line. They didnt need tk commit to anything up front, yet they did.

And lets not pretend that the release schedule ends with faction 10 (ie cathay, probably). Theyve already committed to continued releases, even if they havent quite told us yet. Theres definitely another 6 legacy faction releases worth of models in development for TOW to be released after Cathay, they arent just going to stop one day and say "thats it, thats the game, k thnx bai". Whether those are fkr the legacy factions, or kislev, fishmen, halflings, araby, estalia, and tilea is irrelevant. The legacy factions are lower cost, lower risk, and have better margins than anything new. Its clear given that, that there is no justification to argue that doing the legacy factions was a bigger challenge or a greater burdej to GW than developing a whole new model range from the ground up.

Yes, adding a faction release, any faction release, to a packed schedule just makes it more packed, but thats why GW hired hundreds of new staff and built new factories and warehouses - so that they wouldnt have the capavity cinstraints that woukd otherwise make doing this difficult.

 Overread wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

For the very low cost of having to make up some rules they support all the old players (thus giving new/mini-supported players more opponents and the game scene more life) and generate some AoS mini sales as well. I think that's worth more to GW than "oh no what if mixed messaging causes a bit of angst in some players even after we clearly say they won't be supported further"

GW has been pretty explicit on their stance regarding the legacy armies. Anyone who hasn't caught that message is living in delusion. Sure, I'd love to see Dark Elves get official support, but I'm not expecting it.

Honestly I wish GW would just say what their plans are for the DE range. It's just sat in AoS for ever - a whole army that's basically been untouched save for 1 expansion book where they could pair up with DoK for even more Dark Elf goodness. However I think everyone is still on the fence with them because they really don't feel like GW is going to do anything with them and one day we'll wake up and BOOM they'll be gone.

It's likely that entire range will immediately be retired (for 5.0) once Malekith skulks out of Ulgu with a couple of new units. That said, if GW was inclined to bring an army out from Legends, DE would be the best candidate along with Ogres. Given how little attention Ogres have gotten since AoS launch, I think they'll be getting the Beastmen treatment. The longer we go without a plastic Butcher, Slaughtermaster or named character, the more convinced I am.

 Overread wrote:
I can understand it from GW's point of view of marketing. They want a 100% as clear as they can make it stance on which armies they are and are not supporting. They don't want that Lizardman or Skaven player "waiting for their army to appear". They want them either going into AoS or joining OW with another of the armies that they are supporting

Of course, it backfires in some cases. Combine the lack of DE, Lizardmen, or Skaven in TOW with the change in base size and my interest in TOW died.

Some of the minis are cool, though, so I keep an eye on things. May pick up some more Seaguard to bulk out my own units.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

I think that a lot of Oldhammer players would simply have refused to even consider switching from whatever edition of WHFB they were playing to TOW if that is what GW had done. For a game like this to be successful, it needs to have a critical mass of players. Let's not pretend that tournament games are the only ones that matter for GW's sales.

GrosseSax wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:

 RustyNumber wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Tbh thats the exact situation they created By providing the pdf lists, even after multiple explicit statements that those factions will not be supported going forward. They should have just left it at the statements and not provided the rules.

For the very low cost of having to make up some rules they support all the old players (thus giving new/mini-supported players more opponents and the game scene more life) and generate some AoS mini sales as well. I think that's worth more to GW than "oh no what if mixed messaging causes a bit of angst in some players even after we clearly say they won't be supported further"

GW has been pretty explicit on their stance regarding the legacy armies. Anyone who hasn't caught that message is living in delusion. Sure, I'd love to see Dark Elves get official support, but I'm not expecting it.

Honestly I wish GW would just say what their plans are for the DE range. It's just sat in AoS for ever - a whole army that's basically been untouched save for 1 expansion book where they could pair up with DoK for even more Dark Elf goodness. However I think everyone is still on the fence with them because they really don't feel like GW is going to do anything with them and one day we'll wake up and BOOM they'll be gone.

It's likely that entire range will immediately be retired (for 5.0) once Malekith skulks out of Ulgu with a couple of new units. That said, if GW was inclined to bring an army out from Legends, DE would be the best candidate along with Ogres. Given how little attention Ogres have gotten since AoS launch, I think they'll be getting the Beastmen treatment. The longer we go without a plastic Butcher, Slaughtermaster or named character, the more convinced I am.

Ogres were once amongst the top selling factions in AoS and have been a fan favorite. They arent going anywhere.

 Londinium wrote:
GW have been explicit about many things in the past and then gone back on it. It's standard corporate communications.

See, for example, the previous 40k roadmap, which had Imperial Knights in the same group of books to be released as the Guard and the Eldar - and who have, going by this LVO update, gotten lost in the Warp somewhere, given there are four Chaos 'dexes in their place, and they don't even seem to feature in the black & white teaser art...

chaos0xomega wrote:

Vorian wrote:
Not sure how that follows.

Committing to releasing a further 7 factions of old models vs releasing a new army are two very different things.

Both in terms of having to manufacture and stock all those things and the amount of time tied up in the release schedule

Youre right, the 7 legacy factions are easier to do than one new faction. It takes years of art, sculpting, writing, toolmaking, and manufacturing to produce a new faction. The hardest part of putting legacy factions out is resurfacing the steel molds and dumpster diving and mold remastering for old resin/metal kits, which is done by an entirely different team of folks that havent been particularly busy for quite some time until recently.

Its not much different than the codex/battletome releases GW does like 16 times a year already for 40k/AoS. Every one of those basically involves them putting the entire model range for that faction back into production (no, they arent all in constant production, they get rotated in and out constantly, we just dint see it - thats why thubgs go out of stock) at the same time, packaging them into new boxes, and shipping them around the world. Most 40k/AoS factions have a larger model range and more skus than TOW factions, so thats another point in TOWs favor. And those 40k/AoS releases? Theyre doing a handful of major refreshes/expansions for each of those games in parallel to that schedule, including up to a dozen or so all new kits for any guven faction that have to go through the complete design, toolmaking, and manifacturing proceess, whereas for TOW so far the most any one faction got was 2 new plastic kits, and several got none whatsoever.

Another point in legacy/TOWs favor - generally smaller production lots, more use of MTO, and the releases are broken up into waves over several weeks (whereas product reboxings for 40k/AoS are all released at once). Overall, its easier to launch a legacy TOW faction than it is to update a 40k/AoS faction or launch a new faction for any game system.

As for commitment? Thats just it - GW didnt need to say anything. They could have just given us a vague roadmap civering the first handful of factions, like they do for all their other games, and said nothing about legacy at all until the time came. They told us up-front what legacy status meant for a reason, and its not because they might change their minds down the line. They didnt need tk commit to anything up front, yet they did.

And lets not pretend that the release schedule ends with faction 10 (ie cathay, probably). Theyve already committed to continued releases, even if they havent quite told us yet. Theres definitely another 6 legacy faction releases worth of models in development for TOW to be released after Cathay, they arent just going to stop one day and say "thats it, thats the game, k thnx bai". Whether those are fkr the legacy factions, or kislev, fishmen, halflings, araby, estalia, and tilea is irrelevant. The legacy factions are lower cost, lower risk, and have better margins than anything new. Its clear given that, that there is no justification to argue that doing the legacy factions was a bigger challenge or a greater burdej to GW than developing a whole new model range from the ground up.

Yes, adding a faction release, any faction release, to a packed schedule just makes it more packed, but thats why GW hired hundreds of new staff and built new factories and warehouses - so that they wouldnt have the capavity cinstraints that woukd otherwise make doing this difficult.

7 factions worth of releases is committing to nearly 2 years of further quarterly releases and god knows how many plastic kits to produce and manufacture.

1 new army is a quarter and a limited number of plastic kits.

I'm saying equating those two things when they were committing to an initial run of the old world is wrong.

They committed to bringing back 9 factions, a new army and potentially other things before the release. Before having any idea if it was going to be popular.

The risk is much higher to commit to the legacy armies rather than Cathay and you also don't get to see how a new army would perform.

If you're not committing to armies at launch, but want people with existing collections to be able to play (to help people get games in the early days of the game) then your only option is what they've done.

Could they bring back more of the legacy armies in the future? Sure, they now have sales info to make decisions and we've been told the "scope has changed". All the other factors may or may not dictate if other factions return or not, we don't know. We don't know if they committed to Kislev ahead of launch or just Cathay. We'll find out in time and their messaging will change based on what they decide.

I would imagine there's very little chance Chaos Dwarves come back as just a rerelease of the Forgeworld line. If they come back I would guess they'll be much closer to a brand new army.

As I said in one of the other comments - they didnt have to make any "commitment". They could have just left it open ended as to which factions were coming when. Instead they were very up front in committing to 9 factions being returned and committing to 7 factions in the dust bin. Think about that. You cant have it both ways, you cant say "nuh uh its too much to commit to because once they commit they cant change their minds" and then go "they committed to not supporting the legacy factions but they can always change their minds later".

We don't know if they committed to Kislev ahead of launch or just Cathay

As it stands, the first two factions ever announced for TOW were actually Kislev and Cathay, before we knew anything about core factions or legacy factions we had direct statements from Warhammer Community that Kislev and Cathay would be tabletop armies in TOW.

chaos0xomega wrote:

We don't know if they committed to Kislev ahead of launch or just Cathay

As it stands, the first two factions ever announced for TOW were actually Kislev and Cathay, before we knew anything about core factions or legacy factions we had direct statements from Warhammer Community that Kislev and Cathay would be tabletop armies in TOW.

Which baffles me, because you'd think they'd be among the first armies to be released. Because you know, that's what GW showed off to push their "new" system.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

We don't know if they committed to Kislev ahead of launch or just Cathay

As it stands, the first two factions ever announced for TOW were actually Kislev and Cathay, before we knew anything about core factions or legacy factions we had direct statements from Warhammer Community that Kislev and Cathay would be tabletop armies in TOW.

Which baffles me, because you'd think they'd be among the first armies to be released. Because you know, that's what GW showed off to push their "new" system.

The thing is when GW made the choice to bring back multiple old armies with old models in those armies they almost had to put those armies first. Do you think Brets would sell as well as they have if just before you had two totally new armies with full model rosters of utterly new modern models? Chances are you'd still have had some nostalgia buying, but it would have felt very bitter to fans to get super-old clunky models after two big fresh armies went out. Plus those two fresh totally new armies had to kick start a whole new game on their own. They are popular yes, but at the same time they are new and one is completely untested in the market.

Put the old models first and tease people with some updates sprinkled in to tickle the nostalgia itch and also show that GW are supporting them. Plus they can launch big full armies much faster and get the game going because people are instantly able to put old model armies they've still got right back onto the table along with new purchases of some of the totally new/unreleased models coming out.


Do the old first THEN hit the market with the brand new armies full of modern designed models. Then start updating the old armies with fresh resculpts. Give Brets new knights; give TK new Skeletons etc.

 Overread wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

We don't know if they committed to Kislev ahead of launch or just Cathay

As it stands, the first two factions ever announced for TOW were actually Kislev and Cathay, before we knew anything about core factions or legacy factions we had direct statements from Warhammer Community that Kislev and Cathay would be tabletop armies in TOW.

Which baffles me, because you'd think they'd be among the first armies to be released. Because you know, that's what GW showed off to push their "new" system.

The thing is when GW made the choice to bring back multiple old armies with old models in those armies they almost had to put those armies first. Do you think Brets would sell as well as they have if just before you had two totally new armies with full model rosters of utterly new modern models? Chances are you'd still have had some nostalgia buying, but it would have felt very bitter to fans to get super-old clunky models after two big fresh armies went out. Plus those two fresh totally new armies had to kick start a whole new game on their own. They are popular yes, but at the same time they are new and one is completely untested in the market.

Put the old models first and tease people with some updates sprinkled in to tickle the nostalgia itch and also show that GW are supporting them. Plus they can launch big full armies much faster and get the game going because people are instantly able to put old model armies they've still got right back onto the table along with new purchases of some of the totally new/unreleased models coming out.


Do the old first THEN hit the market with the brand new armies full of modern designed models. Then start updating the old armies with fresh resculpts. Give Brets new knights; give TK new Skeletons etc.

Fair enough then. I guess that is the safer route, yes. Though why Tomb Kings? I understand Empire, Bretonnia, Dwarfs and Chaos, but why TK? Aren't they a little far from the setting's focus? Is it because of memes?