The Rumour Thread

[Kronos]

There are fomo boxes, and then there are fml boxes. 
 

I already have issues with boxes which have characters in what essentially is a miniature paywall. I’ve been pretty good to just wait the year out for any release where I didn’t want the infantry. But if that Dragon is tied down to those silly old Skeletons I think I might checkout from Old World.

 

How could we lose the Vampire counts kit but get these silly skellies back. 
 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Kronos

[flying_dutchman]

4 hours ago, Ejecutor said:

Dragon 

Tomb king

40 spearmen

32 archers

16 light/heavy cavalry

3 chariots
 

 

Can anyone tell if there plastic or resin yet

[Ejecutor]

3 minutes ago, flying_dutchman said:

Can anyone tell if there plastic or resin yet

Someone told me in a whats app group that the foot hero is supposed to be resin. Everything else should be plastic.

[flying_dutchman]

1 minute ago, Ejecutor said:

Someone told me in a whats app group that the foot hero is supposed to be resin. Everything else should be plastic.

That's my biggest fear.  I want to built the tk army child me always wanted but couldn't afford.  But I don't want to build resin either

[Ogregut]

13 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

Someone told me in a whats app group that the foot hero is supposed to be resin. Everything else should be plastic.

The tomb king on foot in the box is plastic. If you make a liche priest on the dragon you can make a tomb king on foot. 

[Goatforce]

24 minutes ago, flying_dutchman said:

Can anyone tell if there plastic or resin yet

Everything in the box is plastic to my knowledge. THey confirmed on stream the Dragon kit, which includes a spare Tomb King or Liche Priest depending on assembly, is a plastic kit and everything else is old plastic. I see no reason why there would be any resin in that box.

[flying_dutchman]

Just now, Goatforce said:

Everything in the box is plastic to my knowledge. THey confirmed on stream the Dragon kit, which includes a spare Tomb King or Liche Priest depending on assembly, is a plastic kit and everything else is old plastic. I see no reason why there would be any resin in that box.

I didn't know if they were gonna cheap out and do resin molds on the remade stuff.  I can't imagine those old molds are in the best shape.

[Hollow]

100% not going to have resin mixed in with army boxes. A whole host of reasons why, including manufacturing and legal guidelines. I'm also continually surprised that people don't seem to understand that tooling for plastic kits costs 10's of thousands of pounds. GW isn't going to make a plastic kit unless they are fairly sure they will at least see a return on investment. Gdubs are not going to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on tooling for half a dozen Bretonnian characters when it is only 1 of 9 planned factions. 

I also personally think that the aversion to resin is completely overplayed. It's a great material that allows for so much to be done. I think a lot of the "hate" just comes from hate-wagon jumping frankly. I could understand if we were talking about large blocks of infantry, but a few character models? Fine by me. 

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

Surely… no one is going to buy that box?

(I am exaggerating but I can’t imagine many people will?)

I love WHFB. I grew up with it, and I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than to return to it…

…but this is not the way 😔

[RyantheFett]

7 minutes ago, The Brotherhood of Necros said:

Surely… no one is going to buy that box?

(I am exaggerating but I can’t imagine many people will?)

I love WHFB. I grew up with it, and I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than to return to it…

…but this is not the way 😔

I think it could work if they priced it crazy cheap. Sort of how they did with the 10ed box which was like 60% off. Make it such a good deal that all those ****** models would be worth it.

Of course they will most likely just try and use FOMO of the new units in each box to drive sales.......

[The Brotherhood of Necros]

I getcha. It would have to be CRAZY cheap for me to consider it. And even then, I would just be doing it for the dragon. As in, no matter how cheap the box was, those old skeleton sculpt aren’t sculpts I would use. They were bad decades ago (!) and the standard today is so much higher. Why not put forward a box of updated sculpts that genuinely excite people? A box that even old-time players will look at and think “I need those new skellies — they’re insane!” We know they have the talent. And you can’t say they haven’t had time!

For the first time, I’m understanding people’s concern about them cashing in on nostalgia. That is the only reason I can imagine them thinking they can reproduce those awful old sculpts and assuming people will be excited about them. Perhaps people will fork out for the box to get the dragon, but will they be excited about the rest of those skellies? The rest of the box? The launch?

I don’t know the first thing about producing a wargaming product that will sell, but this just doesn’t feel right.

(And to make it perfectly clear, I so want The Old World to be a success and for lots of ranges to get exciting new minis! For me, at least, the nostalgia is returning to the setting! Not its oldest, jankiest plastic sculpts…)

Edited December 15, 2023 by The Brotherhood of Necros

[Matrindur]

3 hours ago, Hollow said:

I'm also continually surprised that people don't seem to understand that tooling for plastic kits costs 10's of thousands of pounds. GW isn't going to make a plastic kit unless they are fairly sure they will at least see a return on investment. Gdubs are not going to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on tooling for half a dozen Bretonnian characters when it is only 1 of 9 planned factions.

Looks over at the dozen sprues made for the monthly free minis that are never used again afterwards.

I understand that those are there to drive customers into the stores but I can't see them being a better investment than a new kit when they could just send out the normal kits and let customers/store workers cut those out. They already do that for some months so why not all of them and instead produce a new kit with the now available sprues

Edited December 15, 2023 by Matrindur

[Hollow]

1 hour ago, Matrindur said:

Looks over at the dozen sprues made for the monthly free minis that are never used again afterwards.

I understand that those are there to drive customers into the stores but I can't see them being a better investment than a new kit when they could just send out the normal kits and let customers/store workers cut those out. They already do that for some months so why not all of them and instead produce a new kit with the now available sprues

Because this is a multi-billion-pound market cap company and what you are talking about are two different pools of money from very different departments. The miniature of the month is produced as part of marketing/advertising and will come from that department's budget. Also, the size of the sprue is very important as the tooling will be cut in aluminum slates and the price is exponential when talking about a single mini sprue and one four times that size (or multiple sprues) 

Don't get me wrong. I would have loved to have seen new sculpts for Tomb King Skeletons, Chariots and Knights and I think the Bone Dragon, whilst cool, is a misstep. However, I can also step back from the project as a wargaming miniature fan and put my cold, dark, bean counter head on and see why they are going in the direction they are. 

ToW is being produced by the Specialist design studio. A design studio that has an almost fully fleshed-out game slate in Necromunda, LOTR, etc. They have a massive amount of existing artwork and miniature tooling which have been sitting in storage for the best part of a decade (depending on which kits) for ToW. They are looking to bring the ToW back, make a splash and for it to be profitable instantly. It's looking like they are going to try and aim for two Armies per quarter and these army boxes are looking like a single plastic leader model with older models (which cost nothing to produce) and a book (using a lot of recycled artwork)+ templates. So the upfront investment per army box is very low. 

The entire project looks like there is investment earmarked for a good 18+ New plastic kits with between 40/50 New Resin kits (and potentially 10+ hardback books) That is really significant. 

What I hope happens is that these boxes shift like hotcakes and the ToW sticks with the 9 factions they have outlined. Building a decent nest egg and calming the fears of those not sold on the project. With ToW 2.0 seeing the release of new replacement kits for armies (like the Tomb King Skeletons) 

PS: I think a huge deciding factor in the success of these boxes will be the price point. I really hope GW goes for an aggressive pricing strategy to kick the system off with a bang. £120 would be great as it would allow discounters to go for £99. 

Edited December 15, 2023 by Hollow

[Gitzdee]

4 hours ago, The Brotherhood of Necros said:

(And to make it perfectly clear, I so want The Old World to be a success and for lots of ranges to get exciting new minis! For me, at least, the nostalgia is returning to the setting! Not its oldest, jankiest plastic sculpts…)

This. 

I think its great that this system gets some refreshed rules and support again. I could try it with my old army if i want to. But i wont buy into ancient models at a premium price.

Edit: dont get me wrong, im happy for those who have been searching for these models for ages, but i think a large portion of the players dont fall under this category.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Gitzdee

[JackStreicher]

7 hours ago, Kronos said:

There are fomo boxes, and then there are fml boxes. 
 

I already have issues with boxes which have characters in what essentially is a miniature paywall. I’ve been pretty good to just wait the year out for any release where I didn’t want the infantry. But if that Dragon is tied down to those silly old Skeletons I think I might checkout from Old World.

 

How could we lose the Vampire counts kit but get these silly skellies back. 
 

tbh, they could've sold the old VC skellies with additional Khemri Shield bits and be done with it. If they'd wanted they coul've added 10-20 resin khrmi heads to make those looks more like Khemri. This ist frustrating to say the least. Very low effort - They're really taking is for fools.

 

This is not the way.

Edited December 15, 2023 by JackStreicher

[Elarin]

One of my sources believes that the Old World pre-order will be on the 20th of January with the release on the 3rd of February. The Flesh-eater Courts models and the latest Dawnbringers book should be on the shelves on the 27th of January. It is not my regular, most reliable source; though, so I'm not 100% certain that it's true 

[Ejecutor]

7 hours ago, Hollow said:

100% not going to have resin mixed in with army boxes. A whole host of reasons why, including manufacturing and legal guidelines. I'm also continually surprised that people don't seem to understand that tooling for plastic kits costs 10's of thousands of pounds. GW isn't going to make a plastic kit unless they are fairly sure they will at least see a return on investment. Gdubs are not going to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on tooling for half a dozen Bretonnian characters when it is only 1 of 9 planned factions. 

I also personally think that the aversion to resin is completely overplayed. It's a great material that allows for so much to be done. I think a lot of the "hate" just comes from hate-wagon jumping frankly. I could understand if we were talking about large blocks of infantry, but a few character models? Fine by me. 

Also theres resins and resins. Forge resin has an outstanding quality. Even with that, I pass on resin mainly cause the heavily overpriced costs from Forge.

[Ejecutor]

7 hours ago, The Brotherhood of Necros said:

Surely… no one is going to buy that box?

(I am exaggerating but I can’t imagine many people will?)

I love WHFB. I grew up with it, and I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than to return to it…

…but this is not the way 😔

In the whats app groups that I am the main talk is that it is going to be overpriced and no one would buy it. Literally no one said they would and I am part of a CoS, FEC, Wiki and YT channel groups.

[Ejecutor]

3 hours ago, Matrindur said:

Looks over at the dozen sprues made for the monthly free minis that are never used again afterwards.

I understand that those are there to drive customers into the stores but I can't see them being a better investment than a new kit when they could just send out the normal kits and let customers/store workers cut those out. They already do that for some months so why not all of them and instead produce a new kit with the now available sprues

I don't think they produce those sprues from new molds. I could be wrong, but they are just minis from bigger sprues, right?

[Xil]

12 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

In the whats app groups that I am the main talk is that it is going to be overpriced and no one would buy it. Literally no one said they would and I am part of a CoS, FEC, Wiki and YT channel groups.

I don't know a single person from my group who wants to play Old world

[cyrus]

41 minutes ago, Elarin said:

One of my sources believes that the Old World pre-order will be on the 20th of January with the release on the 3rd of February. The Flesh-eater Courts models and the latest Dawnbringers book should be on the shelves on the 27th of January. It is not my regular, most reliable source; though, so I'm not 100% certain that it's true 

Thanks for the info !

Do you know beside Ushoran if there are more miniatures/boxes coming with Dawnbringers book 4 ?

[Jagged Red Lines]

12 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

In the whats app groups that I am the main talk is that it is going to be overpriced and no one would buy it. Literally no one said they would and I am part of a CoS, FEC, Wiki and YT channel groups.

I think at this point, they may as well just make rules and lore and allow third party sellers at their events.

They've spent five years effectively just producing a copy/paste rulebook, rather than using that time to refresh their miniature range.

The tomb kings from Highland/Lost Sword are head and shoulders above these for a fraction of the cost. 

 

 

[Marcvs]

27 minutes ago, Xil said:

I don't know a single person from my group who wants to play Old world

I know many (my club is the right demographic so the hype is real), but none of them was happy upon seeing this box. That being said, everybody just shrugged because there's so many alternatives for all the Old World factions and we're not really in an area where "official events" are a thing.

My problem is: I want the Old World to be successful, because my clubmates (and lots of other people) love it and I want them to be happy wargamers, but I really don't want this kind of box to sell well because it will send such a bad message to GW in terms of what they can get away with.

[sandlemad]

24 minutes ago, Jagged Red Lines said:

I think at this point, they may as well just make rules and lore and allow third party sellers at their events.

They've spent five years effectively just producing a copy/paste rulebook, rather than using that time to refresh their miniature range.

The tomb kings from Highland/Lost Sword are head and shoulders above these for a fraction of the cost.

Those are better minis, yes, but there’s zero chance that GW would ever take that approach. Where would the profit be? Better to sell minis they’ve already put the design effort into and get that market, however small, for relatively low effort.

Also more generally, while TOW is fundamentally not for me, I don’t think there’s much benefit in canvassing hardcore AoS players or AoS-centric social media to see if they’re going to pick any of this up.

[Goatforce]

8 hours ago, The Brotherhood of Necros said:

Surely… no one is going to buy that box?

(I am exaggerating but I can’t imagine many people will?)

I love WHFB. I grew up with it, and I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than to return to it…

…but this is not the way 😔

I am very tempted, it all comes down to price. If they try to charge £150 as if just because there are a lot of models it is some crazy big thing then I may nope out. They have to realise that all but one of these kits are incredibly dated so I am hoping for at least a semblence of reasonability (then will take the 20% discount on top from 3rd parties).