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Warhammer - The Old World


Gareth 🍄

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14 minutes ago, Panzer said:

So basically what I said. Release new models. Not sure what your point is.

The amount of new stuff. Your post read like you were expecting re-designs of almost all Fantasy armies, while I agree more with the other post. Maybe we get a few new Tomb Kings/Bretonnia and the rest will be single models. So not 3-4 Dwarven infantry sets but maybe a new Anvil of Doom, etc...

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1 minute ago, Gecktron said:

The amount of new stuff. Your post read like you were expecting re-designs of almost all Fantasy armies, while I agree more with the other post. Maybe we get a few new Tomb Kings/Bretonnia and the rest will be single models. So not 3-4 Dwarven infantry sets but maybe a new Anvil of Doom, etc...

I do expect it. I didn't say anything about the scale or the pace they are going to get released though. That's completely on you if you interpreted it that way.

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Here's an interesting thought. If it does take three years to develop, then it would potentially be coming out to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Warhammer.

I think we're most likely to get Hero figures, and some conversion kits to make your Age of Sigmar models more "old worldy". I would love a Tomb Kings vs Bretonnians starter though, and those are factions which would be hard to do via conversion kits, since so much is missing from the iconic lineup of both ranges.

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There is another whfb meetup this weekend and they already have more people than we ever did in AOS.  Thats pretty frustrating.  (a lot of my play group is also going to play instead of practicing for an upcoming tournament)

I don't understand how they have so many people.  I was told no one played or cared about whfb so it was scrapped.

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3 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

There is another whfb meetup this weekend and they already have more people than we ever did in AOS.  Thats pretty frustrating.  (a lot of my play group is also going to play instead of practicing for an upcoming tournament)

I don't understand how they have so many people.  I was told no one played or cared about whfb so it was scrapped.

It wasn't that no one cared its that no one cared to "buy" it in sufficient volume from GW. Many people had legacy armies (it was out for 30 years or so); and GW wasn't pushing models nor updates so heavily. Heck look at Skaven, a massive and diverse army that were very very popular. Even now on ebay there are perhaps four thousand listings for them whilst many other armies have not even a quarter of that many listings for sale. However their army is full of models, old plastics, finecast etc... For such a popular wide ranging army they are still very out of date with updates. 

 

Also if you want to save your group the best thing you can do is EMBRACE the Old World stuff. Form a single club/group that plays and supports BOTH games at the same time. Then when people swap from one to the other its just changing what they put on the table; rather than changing what place they turn up too on what day of the week (which increases the chance that many will only turn up to one place and not the other and thus segments and splits the communities). 

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4 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

If we're playing both games, we aren't growing our tournament attendance for aos.  Thats my primary goal.  

But you're missing the point. If you want to grow your AoS fanbase then you've got to embrace both games because your AoS gamers are going to be Old World gamers too at the same time. If you push them out then you'll lose them as AoS players. 

Instead if you welcome them and give them space to play and support them just the same then they will hang around; they will bring in more people and sure Old World might end up more popular for a time; but because all they have to do is change which rulebook and models they use for a game - the place and location and time remain the same - then there's far more chance for them to come back to AoS. Or for Old World only players to try out AoS. 

 

You can easily build this into a growth campaign for AoS and tournaments. 

 

You need to stop thinking of them as two separate populations and instead view them as one single Wargamer population and treat the club and social structure like that. If you create artificial barriers then you create a warzone over the game, which means local division of the playerbase which might well form along social lines not just "game" lines (ergo you'll lose people who want to play AoS because the like to socialist with the Old World team more so). 

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40 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

If we're playing both games, we aren't growing our tournament attendance for aos.  Thats my primary goal.  

Yeah but if you are bitter and try to be AoS exclusive you'll exclude many potential players which is even worse for your goal.

Also keep in mind that it's probably still only the initial hype. In a few months many of those people might already lose interest in it again. Just like when Kill Team and such got released many local communities only played those for a few weeks before returning to the system they came from.
The alternative is of course that your local community is more interested in whfb than AoS, in that case you simply lost the fight before it even started and you are doomed to be the smaller part of the community. That outcome is pretty unlikely at this point in time though.

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The old world is dead long live the old world. 

When people get back on their Brettonian horseys and crank up their screaming skull catapults I think many will realise how much they miss the old world. 

And I think AOS will find itself in big trouble. Look at The naked fire dwarfs and fish elves they have none of the history of the predecessors none of the great story lines. Malekith getting burned and living in agony for millenia only too realise woops. I am the phoenix king. I mean when AOS can pull off narrative like that I'll be pleased but it seems to still just be I'm god sigmar summon my new BIGGER storm cast chamber, nagash has made BIGGER bone men. 

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I think that it's an error to think that we are going to recieve a big number of factions. I think we're going to be lucky if we get four, five or six factions.

Other big error is to think that GW is going to make a enormous number of new references (new models, old models and/ir models with square bases)

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GW have no idea what they're doing . Plastic sisters taught them that sometimes the moaning and bitter complaints from some of their customer base can actually be turned into sales. They'll do as they did with sisters, tease individual models and rules ideas over the next 3 years and if the hype is as much, they might launch with multiple full armies. Otherwise it might just be a ruleset for existing models/aos models with some limited release of new models. 

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10 minutes ago, hughwyeth said:

GW have no idea what they're doing . Plastic sisters taught them that sometimes the moaning and bitter complaints from some of their customer base can actually be turned into sales. They'll do as they did with sisters, tease individual models and rules ideas over the next 3 years and if the hype is as much, they might launch with multiple full armies. Otherwise it might just be a ruleset for existing models/aos models with some limited release of new models. 

Seems to me they do exactly know what their doing because the Sisters sales seem to be crazy! 

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No, this strategy of flooding with references is crazy, it could mean bankruptcy for the company.

GW is a miniature company and if they launch this game it's for we stop looking at proxies from other companies. So they're not going to launch armies without troops for sale. 

Edited by Nezzhil
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My biggest issue with this Old World stuff is .... what now ?

I re-based 2 of my armies, both of which are horde styled (BoC and DoK) to circular bases. Not gonna go into the lengths of explaining how long this took to do. I was just about to start the same with my CoS, when this thing dropped.

I mean... what now ? Should I re-base my CoS ? should I keep the squares  ? And what about the new additions to the army ? Big monster units that have large bases, that I`ll be turning into nice scenery themed bases. What do I do with those ? Let say I place my Dragons on circular ones and then they drop the bad news we are going back to squares.... FFS !

I like the Old World as any other fan boy who started his Warhammer addiction way back in those days (and its not even THAT much for me, just a decade or so, there are people who have been around for much much longer), but hell.... I aint going through all of this AGAIN no matter how nostalgic or good the rule set is.

So what do you guys think ? Squares ? Circles ? What would be the best course of action for me to do with my new additions ? Base them on circles for AoS use, or go pre-emptive, put them on squares, and add the conversion template base under it ? Sigh....  

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2 hours ago, Icegoat said:

And I think AOS will find itself in big trouble. Look at The naked fire dwarfs and fish elves they have none of the history of the predecessors none of the great story lines. Malekith getting burned and living in agony for millenia only too realise woops. I am the phoenix king. I mean when AOS can pull off narrative like that I'll be pleased but it seems to still just be I'm god sigmar summon my new BIGGER storm cast chamber, nagash has made BIGGER bone men. 

Don't forget a LOT of people never read a Black Library publication. Heck I've been into Warhammer in various forms for years and years (ok well over a decade) and it wasn't until Brian Blessed read Gotrek in Realmslayer that I actually sat down and read a Black Library book cover to cover. Before then I'd dabbled in bits of story in the White Dwarf and in Battletomes/Big Rulebooks; but I'd never actually read any of the main stories from either game. 

Many people are the same; the lore and history of factions that they need is what's in the Tome - that sets the tone and flavour for the army. The extensive history is more a side element that just builds into that. The actual stories that detail those events in the BL publications might be something they never touch; or don't even look at for years and years. 

 

AoS lore does need to grow more roots and elements to itself; and the Old World is much easier and quicker to relate too (it's basically built on Tolkien based fantasy tropes); but the weight of lore is an incidental part to many. 

 

 

I'd actually say that for AoS GW is doing really well. Besides the Realmwars novels (which were mostly all about Stormcast) their current offerings from BL are quite well spread out. If you include short stories and novellas as well then most races have got a good few stories. Heck the recent Gloomspite novel gets some really high praise in general. Pushing forward even though Stormcast are the poster-army for the game; we don't appear to be approaching a time when "stormcast" dominate what's published and produced for stories in the same way that marines do for 40K (esp if you include the mammoth series of Horus Heresy novels)

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I think I've figured out the real reason GW is bringing back the Old World. Paints. Look at how many of these old paints are named after WHFB stuff. They wanted to make sure their paint names were aligned with current IP, but there are just too many to rename and would have thrown the entire hobby into disarray and invalidated all their painting guides and tutorials in print and on YouTube. So in the end, it was easier to just bring back the game where many of those paints get their names.

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16 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

I think I've figured out the real reason GW is bringing back the Old World. Paints. Look at how many of these old paints are named after WHFB stuff. They wanted to make sure their paint names were aligned with current IP, but there are just too many to rename and would have thrown the entire hobby into disarray and invalidated all their painting guides and tutorials in print and on YouTube. So in the end, it was easier to just bring back the game where many of those paints get their names.

That must be it!

I'd dispute that the old world is based on Tolkien. I'd argue that it is based on the "standard fantasy setting", now for sure Tolkien originated many of the concepts that go into that, but D&D codified them, and created the interpretations which Warhammer then subverted and deconstructed. These days it can look like a bit of a Lord of the Rings ripoff, because being older than a lot of modern fantasy settings, it is closer to that paradigm. However I think if you want to sell the setting in todays crowded fantasy market then its defintiely the pseudohistorical grimdark stuff that is the selling point, not the (at first glance) stereotypical elves, dwarves etc. You really need to lean into the Moorcock inspired Chaos Stuff, the crumbling dysfunctional empire, and the counterpart culture nature of a lot of the factions, because that is what the setting became known for in the end.

 

In some ways I feel like The Old World and Age of Sigmar have the opposite problems. Original Warhammer was a not especially original setting, which was executed perfectly. Over 30 years the lore built from a fairly uninspired set of fantasy counterpart cultures, to really examine and parody all of those classic fantasy tropes. The result is one of the best fantasy settings of all time, and one which is always going to be a classic, just because of the mould breaking position it holds in the history of created worlds.

Conversely Age of Sigmar is arguably a much more interesting and ambitious setting, which has a scope and freedom to it that old school warhammer never could. However it is still early days, and not everything they've written for it yet has been golden. It definitely has a lot of potential, and there is a lot of really good stuff that is gradually making it a very compelling world. However it will always be in the shadow of its predecessor, and to and extent that may hold it back from being all that it can and should be. It can never quite capture the same anarchic energy or satirical sophistication of old warhammer, because its not being made in the same way, or in the same time. However it has the potential to rise beyond that and become something truly great in its own way, in much the same way that 40K escaped the gravity of its predecessor, and became the more popular setting overall.

In some ways having both games being supported simultaneously could be great, as it would allow AoS to go in whatever direction it wants, rather than trying to balance the grittyness of the old world, with the superpowered heroics of its stormcast stories etc. We shall have to see I guess.

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5 hours ago, hughwyeth said:

they might launch with multiple full armies.

I think they will just do that. Kinda ready made game in a box for two persons. I think they also want to target the people who play the fantasy games on pc or console and ready made boxes would lower the barrier immensely. 

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We know so little. Hard to justify getting in a camp at this point haha.

Personal bias, but I hated the fantasy game system. I remember walking into a Games Workshop for the first time and seeing the twin demo's set up. 40k Blackreach and I believe High elves and someone else. I actually preferred the fantasy aesthetic. Not to shame 40k, its one of my favorite narrative worlds, but I had always preferred swords and magic to Sci fi. But the blocks of tightly packed models just looked awful on the table for me when compared to these cinematic diorama's of the Marines and Orks.

Its all well and good that total war has such a great following, and we can all meme it up with old world stories, but the failing for Fantasy for me was the game system, not the fluff. It will be interesting to see the game system, and What Old World will be, and if the interest in the lore is enough to convince people to play the tabletop.

 AoS is the opposite for me. I enjoy the system, even its warts, and now I'm waiting for the fluff to grow into interesting, grounded stories. That's what AoS is missing for me. The big picture is fine, but right now its still empty.

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I am delighted with this news, spent fifteen years playing & enjoying the background setting of WFB,  so pleased it is coming back in some form as hopefully means the setting as a whole will get support again long term, new BL novels etc.

Nothing against AoS, I have just spent the last few years trying and failing to really engage with it in the same way,  not really my cup of tea compared to the Old World but glad it is loved by so many other hobbyists. 

Whatever style the game comes back as, ranked or skirmish I will likely play it, as the game purely as a game was never the big selling point for me.

I will keep my small collection of Fyreslayers I purchased but my fantasy hobby time will now likely be devoted to painting up models that can fit in just as well the Old World as the Mortal Realms such as my large Maggotkin collection, who will ideally be invading the Empire in the not too distant future.

Hopefully this shows that GW has learned that WFB did not fail because of the setting or the models, the lack of sales was purely because their last edition of the game pushed the model count way above what most new players could be expected to collect before playing a regular game, I know it put me off starting a couple of new armies in those final years.

If it is ranked combat as we knew it, then they just need to take it back to how the game was for many years, average sized units twenty & horde units thirty or forty at most, also make the game work better at a lower points value so new players can buy in at their own pace. 

Edited by Golgfag
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1 hour ago, Golgfag said:

I am delighted with this news, spent fifteen years playing & enjoying the background setting of WFB,  so pleased it is coming back in some form as hopefully means the setting as a whole will get support again long term, new BL novels etc.

Nothing against AoS, I have just spent the last few years trying and failing to really engage with it in the same way,  not really my cup of tea compared to the Old World but glad it is loved by so many other hobbyists. 

Whatever style the game comes back as, ranked or skirmish I will likely play it, as the game purely as a game was never the big selling point for me.

I will keep my small collection of Fyreslayers I purchased but my fantasy hobby time will now likely be devoted to painting up models that can fit in just as well the Old World as the Mortal Realms such as my large Maggotkin collection, who will ideally be invading the Empire in the not too distant future.

Hopefully this shows that GW has learned that WFB did not fail because of the setting or the models, the lack of sales was purely because their last edition of the game pushed the model count way above what most new players could be expected to collect before playing a regular game, I know it put me off starting a couple of new armies in those final years.

If it is ranked combat as we knew it, then they just need to take it back to how the game was for many years, average sized units twenty & horde units thirty or forty at most, also make the game work better at a lower points value so new players can buy in at their own pace. 

I don't personally think it was model count.   


For me I think it's really that the rules were so dense new players  weren't coming into the system.   One of the things that was really noticeable during 8th was we weren't seeing new players in our club, and I wasn't seeing new players at the Grand Tournament level events I was hitting.    Now admittedly it could be model count keeping players away but I don't think it was, it doesn't really seem to have stopped the growth of AoS and hordes of 20-40  models per unit are fairly common. 

 As background  I played WFB since 1990 was involved in running multiple Grand Tournaments in 6th/7th/8th and was an elected representative to the Direwolf FAQ council that used to work with the GW head rules writer to develop FAQ's in the 6th/7th/8th era, my club in 8th was arguably one of the strongest in the country with multiple ETC representatives and GT championships.    So I'm both a long term fan of the WFB system, and someone who had a lot of experience with the rules intricacies of 8th and several of it's predecessors.   

The amount of models in an army was pretty much the same through 6th-8th.     There were advantages to having larger size units in 8th,  but the total number of models you could fit into a completed force was pretty static.   If you had 200 models in an army in 7th you'd probably have about 200 in 8th.    You might have a unit of 40 instead of two units of 20 but you still have the same total number of  models in the army total in 8th vs 7th.    Admittedly I'm not recalling specific  details anymore but I don't recall major across the board points reductions in the cost per model in 8th vs 7th (heck some books were still using their 6th or 7th ed books and same old point values  for much or all of  8th)   Game size in terms of total points was pretty stable throughout 6th-8th.   If I'm recalling correctly  2400 ended up being GT standard but could just as easily have been 2000 or something else particularly for basement play.      Theoretically you could play WFB at 1000 points or 1500 points etc. it's certainly what I would have recommended to new players   That's not really much different then 6th/7th ed.  That's ignoring that 8th brought us monstrous cavalry and made unridden monsters more interesting with Stomp/Thunderstomp that would drive model count down.    You also have to note that while 8th wasn't drawing new players into the system, 40K was doing generally better even if late 7th 40K wasn't a great tournament game (as I've heard, no personal experience.) 

WFB and AoS  (and 40K) are both really very large model count games compared to their main competitors on the scene (Warmachine for example),    WFB was always throughout it's history a high model count game where 100-200 models in a force was fairly common.  That's pretty unique in 28mm miniature games.  Plenty of games at anything other then 15mm  historical type scale will have 4 models in an army (Battletech, Xwing etc)     I recognize KoW and 9th are potential competitors that rival WFB in size of a force but I think their player base is largely ex WFB players  and they aren't reflective of new players to the miniature gaming world.   

 The 8th ed rule book was quite large and the rules intricacies were pretty significant.    That really made it hard to attract new gamers particularly as systems like Warmachine were championing streamlined easy to learn rules.   For example in WFB   8th figuring out who you could charge and how you could move for a charge was often  non intuitive. (That model an inch away from you - sorry you can't charge it, it's not in your charge arc.  That model 12 inches in front of you sorry you can't get that either as you'd have to make two wheels to make contact.)      Despite a lot of  8th experience even my clubmates  and I would be pulling out a rule book  or needing to look up  an interaction almost every game.   

There may be other reasons for it's decline (how many potential new players grew up reading Tolkien vs playing World of Warcraft) but I think the rules complexity  were not a help to 8th's success. 

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9 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

There is another whfb meetup this weekend and they already have more people than we ever did in AOS.  Thats pretty frustrating.  (a lot of my play group is also going to play instead of practicing for an upcoming tournament)

I don't understand how they have so many people.  I was told no one played or cared about whfb so it was scrapped.

That's definitely not the case.

WFB had a longstanding and loyal player base.  The reason there are so few old time WFB players around now with AoS  is they loved WHFB so much they rage quit GW when AoS happened.   During 6th and maybe 7th  roughly the top two selling miniature systems in the world were consistently WFB and 40K with a large lead over everything else. 

The problem as in my above post is that it wasn't attracting new players to make those purchases.    The people playing in 8th were a subset of the people playing in 7th (we had a 25% drop out rate roughly between 7th and 8th when people rage quit with 8th ed's significant rule changes from 7th)   So the player pool was shrinking over time, and more importantly there weren't the new starts that actually were making new purchases. 

I'd suggest if your goal is to build the AoS tournament base spend less time worrying about tournaments   and more time about making AoS enjoyable and accessible to new players or players who have dabbled with the system but not committed.    It takes  time from someone going from new player to really excited about spending the money and effort to  go to a travel event.  The bigger the pool of player enjoying the game in store and basement games the larger your eventual pool of tournament players will be.    It's always going to be a small  subset of the player population who want to go to a tournament.  Grow the base and the folks interested in more competitive play will eventually declare themselves.    

  I recently did the math and during 7th/8th the largest tournaments in New York State were multiple 100 person events probably totaling well over 300-400 slots combined  in large events alone.   One tournament Crossroads GT was able to do a 100 person event twice a year every year - selling out every slot for the next event during the previous one.      This year with Da Boyz being the biggest (as it has been throughout the AoS era) in the NE USA at 72 registered we're going to probably only have 120 total slots adding all the Grand Tournament events  together in NYS.    AoS tournament play is still a very small  fraction of where it was in it's 6th/7th/8th ed peak.   

The problem wasn't a lack of committed tournament players in 8th it was developing it's base.  Right now AoS is still building it's player base (tournament or otherwise)  in much of the world.      Focus on the new players and some will get hooked enough to want to spend money on travel to large events.    

 

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