So, who does want Tomb Kings and Bretonnians back?

[Clan's Cynic]

28 minutes ago, Melcavuk said:

I keep seeing this come up and frankly it seems short sighted and boils down to:

Agree with what I want and you must be awesome

Disagree and its because you have anti fantasy bias and therefore your opinion means nothing.

 

To be honest its getting slightly repetitive as a way of dismissing the opinions of those who dont agree with bringing back faction X or Y. You might not like the opinions of those who disagree with you but tarring them all with the "Anti fantasy brush" to try and insult huge swathes of the playerbase is less passive aggressive and more deliberately divisive.

Short-sighted is telling people to get over hundreds/thousands of pounds worth a collection being invalidated because it doesn't suit their aesthetic preferences.

Now that's the part which gets repetitive. 

I know I'd rather see a discussion about, "Hm, how can we blend Old World armies into the Mortal Realms?" rather than "TIMES CHANGE, JUST MOVE ON."

[Twisted Firaun]

1 hour ago, Thiagoma said:

I will concede on the Derp Skeletons ( the term is hilarious).

But that said, Charriots, Sepulcrals and Sphinx are awesome plastic kits with assembly options.

Make a skeleton kit with bow/melee options and a new Settra/Khalida and you are good to go on Tks.

and possibly a hierotitan or two

[dekay]

Arguably, only iconic unit with derp skeleton problem are the chariots.  Skeletons in both warsphinx and necropolis knight kits look very decent, same with Tomb Guard.

And that's what baffles me, just.. how easy it would be to add Tomb King flavoured Death faction. They have their obvious battleline unit with Tomb Guard kit. Three units out of Warsphinx box: Necrosphinx, Warsphinx, Warsphinx with hero [so a plastic leader is availible too], plus two elite units - Stalkers and Knights. As the construct theme serves them the best, re-realease of resin Ushabti [two more units, close combat and ranged] would help and... that's more units than Fyreslayers or Beastclaws already? And whatever they don't have they can easily ally from other  Death armies?

They COULD of course make a plastic mid sized non-ushabti-construct kit too. They could add plastic heroes for more diversity. But they don't NEED to, there's enough good models to just re-release.

I have no idea WHY GW decided to nt re-release those kits if they could do a reasonably diverse faction with zero miniature design cost. Maybe it'll happen at some point, who knows.

 

As for Bretonnia - I wouldn't like them to return as a faction. I would, however, give enough diversity to future Free Peoples tome to make full on armoured knight lists viable, with some classic medieval knight aestethic thrown in because no fantasy setting is complete without those. It is very much doable to make Empire and Bretonnia fans happy with a proper free peoples army while simultaneously giving fans something completely new.

[Thiagoma]

Specially if you check e bay and trade groups.

Those TK plastics are sold for fortunes!

[EccentricCircle]

4 hours ago, dekay said:

Arguably, only iconic unit with derp skeleton problem are the chariots.  Skeletons in both warsphinx and necropolis knight kits look very decent, same with Tomb Guard.

And that's what baffles me, just.. how easy it would be to add Tomb King flavoured Death faction. They have their obvious battleline unit with Tomb Guard kit. Three units out of Warsphinx box: Necrosphinx, Warsphinx, Warsphinx with hero [so a plastic leader is availible too], plus two elite units - Stalkers and Knights. As the construct theme serves them the best, re-realease of resin Ushabti [two more units, close combat and ranged] would help and... that's more units than Fyreslayers or Beastclaws already? And whatever they don't have they can easily ally from other  Death armies?

They COULD of course make a plastic mid sized non-ushabti-construct kit too. They could add plastic heroes for more diversity. But they don't NEED to, there's enough good models to just re-release.

I have no idea WHY GW decided to nt re-release those kits if they could do a reasonably diverse faction with zero miniature design cost. Maybe it'll happen at some point, who knows.

 

As for Bretonnia - I wouldn't like them to return as a faction. I would, however, give enough diversity to future Free Peoples tome to make full on armoured knight lists viable, with some classic medieval knight aestethic thrown in because no fantasy setting is complete without those. It is very much doable to make Empire and Bretonnia fans happy with a proper free peoples army while simultaneously giving fans something completely new.

Agreed, those later skellies are actually quite good, Tomb Guard are my all time favourite undead kit to paint.

[dekay]

I've done some counting. Considering the scenario where only sphinx, kinghts, guards + ushabti sets are used to create a faction, we' re at 9 separate warscrolls. That's less than current smaller battletome factions, but! With some creative stretching (like they did with flesheaters for instance. Flayer box alone provides 4 separate scrolls!) we can make it into more! Tomb guard split in 2 depending on their weapon? Why not. Necropolis knight champion turned into a separate hero? Flesheaters do that already! Same with tomb guard champion becaude why not at this point. Warsphinx with no howdah attached maybe? Who's stopping them? 13 scrolls. Add liche priest and necrotect to have some hero selection and we have a proper faction. With zero new models.

[Vanger]

21 hours ago, Overread said:

Please tell me which of GW's armies ARE copyrightable as of right now, because besides the name and lore and the specific sculpts there isn't a single army GW produces that is protected by Copyright as you are suggesting was the reason for the downfall of bretonnia.

Well, you answered your own question. But here is the definition of copyright: " Copyright is a form of intellectual property that grants the creator of an original creative work an exclusive legal right to determine whether and under what conditions this original work may be copied and used by others ". And intellectual property consists of the names, looks and background story they created. Or what's you guess, why we don't have elves, orcs and dwarves in AoS, but aelves, orruks and duardin?

You seem to forget the history of Games Workshop, how triggerhappy their lawyers were under the previous management, even going so far as to send cease and desist letter to a writer, who published a book called "Spots the space marine".
They were laughed out of court, because no judge will decide that you can copyright a general term like "space marine" (or for matter of fact a name like Brettonia, or lore that is based on Arthurian legend).

You can spin your own conspiracy theories on why WHFB was killed off and replaced by AoS, but it's clear as day, that it was a badly realised attempt to redefine the fantasy IP of Games Workshop that is defendable in copyright court. Guess why we still don't have proper replacement armies for free people, druchii, disposessed? And why the grots and greenskinz have been erased? Because they are so generic, that they won't bother with them, untill they figure out how to reimagine them. (Or in case of grots, they have been reimagined into gloomspite gitz)

Edited May 12, 2019 by Vanger

[Overread]

@Vanger you name greenskins as one example of a removed army because of copyright protections. So I'll ask what difference there is between greenskins and bonesplitters that makes bonesplitters more copyright protected as an army than greenskins.

 

Because both armies are basically a mirror of each other - they have greenskinned apelike bipedal peoples; they have boar riders heck I'd wager we might even see a chariot pulled by boars added to bonesplitters.

The only difference is the name of the faction. GW doesn't need to remove a whole line of models to change the name - heck they've changed the name of multiple armies in 40K without having to end the whole of 40K and re-release to make it protected.

 

 

 

Now I'm sure copyrighting the name of their factions was part of AoS's objectives; but in the end I think it was only one small element of the change and not even the most major. GW invested a massive amount of resources into AoS to launch it and if name changing was all that was required then they could have done that in an afternoon and simply changed the name on the box art for the next wave of packaging and it would have had the same effect. 

 

Again copyright protection is important to GW, but at the same time they produce not a single army in any of their ranges where the concept of the army is protected as you are describing. I can go out tomorrow and I can produce a game and have in that game big heavily armoured humans riding on griffins and GW can't do anything about it.  I can have medusa with bows and medusa with spears and pleasure demons and GW can't stop me. 

[dekay]

Also, isn't that mostly a naming issue? Yeah, you can't copyright elves while you can do so with Idoneth Deepkin. However, I am perfectly able to make and sale a model of sea themed dude wearing a greek-ish helmet and riding a shark, call it a Sea Elf Compatibile With A Popular Wargame and GW can do nothing about it. I haven't used their copyrights and didn't pirate the sculpt.

That's why the 'they're removing everything too generic' argument is a bit weak. They clearly want to give AoS less generic identity, that is true, but how does that mesh that among models they deemed good there are basic lizardmen and orcs, both fantasy staples, skeleton warriors, as generic as it gets, sexy dark elf warrior cultists, and literal Ents? It's not genericness that's the issue, clearly.

They're removing things that simultanously didn't sell and for which they don't have an idea how to properly rebrand it into the new setting. Only role being generic plays here is that some generic models sold less because competition offered too many solid alternatives. Brets might be worst offenders here. Basic lizardmen warriors clearly weren't because despite relative abundance of alternatives they were still seling good enough.

[Overread]

Honestly I think the redesign is more that the world has moved on in terms of fantasy. 

Back when Warhammer started Lord of the Rings was KING. It was fantasy for several generations and influenced the whole era of fantasy; GW saw that and ran with it. Now in more modern times we've still got a vast dominance of Lord of the Rings, but things have shifted somewhat. We've got MMOs and far more epic scale fantasy than there ever was. Furthermore new plastic technology and investment by GW means that they can make bigger and far more dynamic models than ever before; plus removing rank and file designs meant they could go even more wild with designs and spill over the base more with poses. 

So AoS was not just about renaming, it was about a new design opportunity that was also proving popular with 40K whilst GW was seeing dwindling sales for fantasy. They wanted to appeal to the epic fantasy fan; those who are playing mmos and who have grown up with heavy magic influences rather than low magic.

I think this extended into the lore as well, GW wanted to break their LotR and Real World analogy shackles and break out. 

 

Now there were also other elements too. GW clearly had AoS in mind as a totally different wargame product approach. Gone were large formal armies; in was large "soup" alliances comprised of many smaller armies. In was the idea of having only one or two show-case big armies whilst the rest were fragmented into smaller forces that GW was likely planning to use to monitor sales and thus we'd likely have seen many smaller armies removed over time; however at the same time one release wave could release a new army. We'd have likely seen a lot of Daughter's of Khaine scale releases with the intent that most who were gaming would just be taking big Grand Alliance armies for the most part. 

You can see this in how they did the rules - or rather didn't do the rules. They threw out the rules on day 1 and gave us some fun rules. Because at that time the intent was that the only thing they were selling were boutique models with a fantasy connection. GW at that time wasn't caring about making armies and factions; they were all about just making and selling models. It didn't work and AoS has had a massive turn around in its design approach. It's why we didn't really have a proper setup until AoS 2.0 - several years after launch and why AoS 1.0 wasn't even ready for launch. GW didn't think they needed it at the time; they weren't going to give us 1.0 at all. It was only catastrophic marketing results that forced their hand to change things; coupled to a change of their CEO and their overall appraoch to their products across the board. 

 

Note this isn't saying no one bought AoS at launch, but more that sales were dismally lower than expected and that the market at large reacted very badly to its launch. Heck most sites were burning in vast flame wars, especially because GW missmanaged their own marketing by making a big "end world" campaign for Old World which got all the established players back then excited and then kicked the carpet out from under them by ending the world and not just making new background lore; but removing big armies; shattering others; removing all the rules and generally giving the middle finger to their original fanbase. 

[JPjr]

In terms of renaming/relaunching old factions I’ve also assumed it was probably less to do with creating some unassailable copyrighted concepts and more a kind of brand SEO.

After all as many have said for all the talk of AoS being about getting away from old fantasy tropes there’s nothing that super new and unique there.

But, for example, change Dwarves to Duardin, Firelayers, Kharadron etc and (a) it just gives the new game a bit more of its own identity & (b) probably more importantly makes it so when you search online for them you get Age of Sigmar products and then related info first.

Rather than say lots of results for Tolkien, D&D, real folklore, other games etc etc etc or most importantly other companies models with the same generic name.

It doesn’t stop companies making models for your game but it means people will need to actively hunt them out and search for something like ‘Raging Hormones Massive Boob Elves for Nerds that Don’t know how to search for ****** online’ rather than just have them show up.

[Lowki]

4 hours ago, JPjr said:

In terms of renaming/relaunching old factions I’ve also assumed it was probably less to do with creating some unassailable copyrighted concepts and more a kind of brand SEO.

After all as many have said for all the talk of AoS being about getting away from old fantasy tropes there’s nothing that super new and unique there.

But, for example, change Dwarves to Duardin, Firelayers, Kharadron etc and (a) it just gives the new game a bit more of its own identity & (b) probably more importantly makes it so when you search online for them you get Age of Sigmar products and then related info first.

Rather than say lots of results for Tolkien, D&D, real folklore, other games etc etc etc or most importantly other companies models with the same generic name.

It doesn’t stop companies making models for your game but it means people will need to actively hunt them out and search for something like ‘Raging Hormones Massive Boob Elves for Nerds that Don’t know how to search for ****** online’ rather than just have them show up.

Yeah, good point I think

[Panzer]

On 5/11/2019 at 1:22 PM, Thiagoma said:

While i agree about mixing Brettonian things into Free Peoples the issue with TK is Settra.

TKs like army without him would be kinda boring.

 

I can't say I agree on that. While I love the lore of Settra I've never used him even once in any of my games with Tomb Kings and it never resulted in it being 'kinda boring'. Neither for me nor for my opponent.

 

On 5/11/2019 at 1:24 PM, Overread said:

It depends if you want TK or the visual design of TK. If you want TK like AoS has Skaven and Lizardmen then its a harder battle to win over and less likely to happen. However if you want magical constructs iwth an Egyptian theme and some of the old sculpts brought back (remembering make of the construct models were actually pretty darn new models). Then the latter - throwing them in with an existing army - is perfectly possible to happen. 

 

 

I'd prefer getting TK as they were before (with updates and adjustments of course), but I'd settle with egyptian skeletons and constructs. Not sure if that would make any difference to the naysayers though as those probably don't even care for the TK lore anyway.

[Jetengine]

I wish people would drop this ridiculous "AOS was made for copyright" theory. 

It was Money. It was always Money. Fantasy wasnt selling enough. Paints were selling more then Fantasy. So it was either revamp or kill it off.

[Sleboda]

11 hours ago, Jetengine said:

Paints were selling more then Fantasy

In fairness, paints are GW's #1 seller. At least that's what I was told when I worked in sales there. It's why we were super excited to redo the paint range into the bolter shell bottles. Sell everyone the entire range again? Yes, please!

[gjnoronh]

12 hours ago, Jetengine said:

I wish people would drop this ridiculous "AOS was made for copyright" theory. 

It was Money. It was always Money. Fantasy wasnt selling enough. Paints were selling more then Fantasy. So it was either revamp or kill it off.

Copyright protection is one part of the money issue.

Mantic was doing a lot of business copying GW army style and selling lower quality lower priced models to people playing WFB.  Kings of War 1st edition had almost zero players almost all of Mantics sales were to Warhammer Fantasy Players.   No one cared about whatever Kings of War rules/fluff was associated with their ghouls - they were using them to be part of the players games in the Warhammer world.  

The Chapterhouse legal decision really made it clear GW couldn't copy right non specific tropes in the general world of fantasy or science fiction themes.   

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/ChapterHouse_Studios

Given that Warhammer Fantasy was largely based on D and D that was largely based on Tolkien, GW didn't have a lot of room to argue the key components of the world were copy rightable.  AoS gave them a chance to move in their own more unique IP direction, most of the releases have pushed things further from Tolkien/D and D tropes to something more GW home grown.  

So yes the big issue is money -but having people undercut your sales to your player base with very similar models  (that  you can't take trademark action against) cuts a  chunk of GW's sales for Fantasy from them.    There are other issues for why WFB wasn't selling in particular that it wasn't new player friendly.   

AoS on launch was easier and  open to be played at a smaller scale then WFB ( so more new player friendly)   but by now it's a highly complex game with fairly large army sizes for the horde armies and a fairly stable 2000 point default game size.   So I think those benefits for sales in AoS vs WFB haven't been consciously continued as AoS matures.  

[Jetengine]

Id say thats debateable. Especially with the "We've made 1000pts more balanced" thing. 

[dekay]

3 hours ago, gjnoronh said:

Given that Warhammer Fantasy was largely based on D and D that was largely based on Tolkien, GW didn't have a lot of room to argue the key components of the world were copy rightable.  AoS gave them a chance to move in their own more unique IP direction, most of the releases have pushed things further from Tolkien/D and D tropes to something more GW home grown.  

 

But nothing really changed, didn't it? Mantic Ghouls will still look good in FeC army despite it having a non generic name. We might argue it's because FeC are made up of older models but hell, look at Mantic Naiads, that's some good Idoneth material right there. Everything AoS has to offer is nearly as easy to proxy as earlier WFB stuff was.

So while i agree AoS was definitely a push towards originality and more unique character i don't think that making it harder to find alternatives and easier to trademark was a big factor here. They seem to genuinely want to sell more by making cooler models, not by purposefully starving out competition.

Edited May 15, 2019 by dekay

[novakai]

42 minutes ago, dekay said:

But nothing really changed, didn't it? Mantic Ghouls will still look good in FeC army despite it having a non generic name. We might argue it's because FeC are made up of older models but hell, look at Mantic Naiads, that's some good Idoneth material right there. Everything AoS has too offer is nearly to proxy as earlier WFB stuff was.

So while i agree AoS was definitely a push towards originality and more unique character i don't think that making it harder to find alternatives and easier to trademark was a big factor here. They seem to genuinely want to sell more by making cooler models, not by purposefully starving out competition.

well GW fights proxying by saying their models are better quality wise than their competition. 

I think the problem stems that Mantic released Empire of Dust which was a straight rip-off of their Tomb kings and they couldn't do anything about it. 

regardless from a recent Q&A looks like they have no plans for bringing back TK

[Saxon]

On 5/11/2019 at 10:03 PM, Clan's Cynic said:

Short-sighted is telling people to get over hundreds/thousands of pounds worth a collection being invalidated because it doesn't suit their aesthetic preferences.

Now that's the part which gets repetitive. 

I know I'd rather see a discussion about, "Hm, how can we blend Old World armies into the Mortal Realms?" rather than "TIMES CHANGE, JUST MOVE ON."

I agree with this so much. Telling people to get over it is a horrendously arrogant and insensitive thing to say and is a rather average business model from GW. You don't want to be hacking off rusted on collectors. 

There are a few times on this forum where i've seen some usual suspects tell people to get over their large investment (army) being unsupported. 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Saxon

[Thiagoma]

1 hour ago, Saxon said:

I agree with this so much. Telling people to get over it is a horrendously arrogant and insensitive thing to say and is a rather average business model from GW. You don't want to be hacking off rusted on collectors. 

There are a few times on this forum where i've seen some usual suspects tell people to get over their large investment (army) being unsupported. 

Agree 100%

[dekay]

Agreed. GW discontiuing an army is one thing, fans telling people to stop liking it after this is much stranger.

Especially pretty hilarious (if sad) argument of 'it doesn't fit into current setting'. The best thing about current setting is that it's ridiculously open. Basically anything can fit in there somehow, it's almost like Magic the Gathering in that regard. We have a universe where one of the main themes is a death god creating vast undead armies... and egyptian themed undead nation venerating death DOESN'T fit into that? 

We're repeatedly told about huge diversity of humans in the realms. And there is a faction of noble nights who went insane and turned into monsters... is it such a stretch of imagination to think that faction of noble knights who *didn't* go insane fits into this hugely diverse human population?

All that while, I'll just assume, in early days of the setting the same people were CLEARLY thinking that the setting desperately need flying dwarves and water elves. And, of course, armies build entirely around themes of old witch elves, crypt ghouls and dwarf slayers. Why wouldn't they if it's so clear to them what fits into the setting and what doesn't right?

So, well, ok, I understand if GW's priorities shifted (even though I'd like those removed factions to return in some way, possibly addition to the undead line and expanded free cities, respectively), but people telling others to stop enjoying things and buy what is new seems, as Saxon said, arrogant and insensitive.

[Huanchi]

i started TK in 8th Edition.. and looking into different threads and boards... we can see that there clearly is a demand to bring back settra and the gang.. most of us have models anyway.. we just need updated rules in a general handbook... or forgeworld picking it and make rules and models.. like they do with chaos dwarfs

[Jetengine]

I also think from a buisness perspective dumping the 8th ed TK moulds is a dumb idea. Your literally throwing money away. 

[gjnoronh]

16 hours ago, dekay said:

But nothing really changed, didn't it? Mantic Ghouls will still look good in FeC army despite it having a non generic name. We might argue it's because FeC are made up of older models but hell, look at Mantic Naiads, that's some good Idoneth material right there. Everything AoS has to offer is nearly as easy to proxy as earlier WFB stuff was.

So while i agree AoS was definitely a push towards originality and more unique character i don't think that making it harder to find alternatives and easier to trademark was a big factor here. They seem to genuinely want to sell more by making cooler models, not by purposefully starving out competition.

But the new armies released for  AoS including the posterboy Stormcast (and  , Fireslayers and even Idoneth) aren't generic, even Khorne really pushed the chaos aesthetic in slightly unique directions (there are Khorne symbols on everything which is copyrightable) .  They certainly have used existing older IP to release  books and made most of the older IP playable if in nothing else Grand Alliance system. But what they are expending resources in building new molds and IP for is largely less 'generic fantasy world' and more AoS world.   

There are certainly 'counts as' switches but Mantic hasn't released a SCE /Idoneth/Fireslayers equivalent yet and suspect they won't.  

I'm not suggesting it's either or by any means.  But timing of AoS a year or so after Chapterhouse and the trends in the rest of GW's offerings (40K) suggests to me they are trying to put their own unique stamp on things - you can make a cool generic fantasy elf lord or you can have a cool elf lord rising up out of a wave.    Either would sell by rule of cool but one is easier to protect as your own unique design.