Warhammer - The Old World

[amysrevenge]

1 hour ago, edmc78 said:

Could you go for square and use these to convert and swap between rules? Maybe magnetise? Or maybe round bases in a square move tray … 

If I was relying on them as my only army I'd think about it, but it seems like a lot of effort for what would be my...  12th? 15th? AoS army.  I have other things I can play AoS with, so I'd stick to squares with an Old World army I think.  I don't need to double dip.

Not to say that this couldn't change, it's likely a few years off.  The only action I'm taking right now is to work on my Gitz and Beastclaw and SCE and Beastmen first.

[CDM]

Bit gutted that they've decided to stick to the old scale. I really thought this game, with the amount of models you need would just fit better in a smaller scale.

Happy for everyone though who can reuse old armies but it just seems they've missed a trick. WHFBs biggest problem for me was for one the amount of models and two the lack of movement tactics, this would of been better in a smaller scale I'm sure of it.

[Greyshadow]

A bit conflicted about the return of square bases. One of the great things about Horus Heresy is that you can take models from this side range and plonk them in to Warhammer 40,000 without much trouble. A different basing system sends a message that this isn’t how it should be done for the The Old World.  

On the other hand, Age of Sigmar plays just fine with models on squares. I plan to continue to rebase my old Warhammer Fantasy Battles models for Age of Sigmar. I just hope The Old World doesn’t have a negative impact on the health of the main game by splitting the player base.

[Darnok]

Looking forward to this like crazy.

Keeping square bases as well as mentioning now that old armies will be playable is a great move, ensuring there will be a player base ready from day one. If the rules as described - i.e. an evolution from the 3rd-8th rules rather than something new - remains to be seen, but I remain hopeful. Worst case scenario is GW  getting it wrong - boohoo, I still have what I always had, namely the previous rules and alternative games. It is new plastic crack now though!

 

2 hours ago, Greyshadow said:

A bit conflicted about the return of square bases. One of the great things about Horus Heresy is that you can take models from this side range and plonk them in to Warhammer 40,000 without much trouble. A different basing system sends a message that this isn’t how it should be done for the The Old World.  

Well, from GWs point of you you definitely should not do it like that. I have no doubts we will see multibases to rank up round-based models though - they exist already, GW will most likely do their own at x3 the price. I guess the parallel is more "two games set at different time periods of the same universe, with some overlap in miniatures". It's not like you can take all HH models and use them in current 40K anyway. On the other hand some stuff from AoS will always be cross-compatible: Empire, Chaos, Skaven, to name a few.

2 hours ago, Greyshadow said:

On the other hand, Age of Sigmar plays just fine with models on squares. I plan to continue to rebase my old Warhammer Fantasy Battles models for Age of Sigmar. I just hope The Old World doesn’t have a negative impact on the health of the main game by splitting the player base.

I do not see how there would be a split, except for people worrying about "I can't possibly afford both games!". Most AoS tournaments demand round bases these days, but that is pretty much it - nobody can stop you using square bases anywhere else. Yes, peer pressure in gaming groups is a thing, and yes, some people will be happy ith playing one game and not the other.

Overall though? There is no reason to not just do both. With some parts of the model range there will be overlap, with some there will not, just like with HH and 40K. Both of those are doing pretty good I think.

[Still-young]

Im not sure how likely it is these days, but one of the things I hope The Old World does is bring back really customisable characters. The way Vampire Lords, Chaos Lords etc had so many options for powers and equipment and magical artefacts and all sorts was one of my favourite parts of Warhammer Fantasy. 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

7 minutes ago, Still-young said:

Im not sure how likely it is these days, but one of the things I hope The Old World does is bring back really customisable characters. The way Vampire Lords, Chaos Lords etc had so many options for powers and equipment and magical artefacts and all sorts was one of my favourite parts of Warhammer Fantasy. 

This kind of post always reminds me that what people want out of their games can be really different from person to person

I watched a video on youtube about why WHFB failed, and the guy in the video was of the opinion that part of the reason was the decline in quality of the army books. His example was that they went from, like, two pages of artefacts in one book to only a handful in the next a few editions later. He kept saying that he thinks this is lazy and that he could have banged out two pages of artefacts in an hour. And the whole time I was just thinking "But not having to read two pages of artefact options that someone wrote up in an hour is a positive, not a negative!" Well, at least it is to me.

I'm still pretty interested in TOW at the moment, but I have a feeling I will not be the target audience of that game. But recognizing that fact makes me pretty hopful that TOW will not split the AoS player base too much. I think there might really be two distinct demographics out there for the two games.

[Kodos der Henker]

22 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

He kept saying that he thinks this is lazy and that he could have banged out two pages of artefacts in an hour. And the whole time I was just thinking "But not having to read two pages of artefact options that someone wrote up in an hour is a positive, not a negative!" Well, at least it is to me

the big difference is that GW made books with options to add flavour to the armies to make each sidenote on the fluff playable

than they removed most of it for no real reason while at the same time the balance got worse and fluff as well as pics were copy & paste from the previous book

they became lazy as in "minimum afford to make maximum profit" without trying to make a good product

to compare, if the new SCE book would have only Warscroll for the new Dominion models while fluff is from the old book with nothing new

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Still-young said:

Im not sure how likely it is these days, but one of the things I hope The Old World does is bring back really customisable characters. The way Vampire Lords, Chaos Lords etc had so many options for powers and equipment and magical artefacts and all sorts was one of my favourite parts of Warhammer Fantasy. 

That's exactly what I wanted for AoS. 1 trait and 1 to 3 artefacts, Imo, it's not enough to build my own Hero. When I remember the Runic-system... I mean... THE RUNIC-SYSTEM!!!!

[Jefferson Skarsnik]

Yeah I really liked being able to just say the general I have in my head rides x mount and carries a lance not a sword etc, it made it feel so much more like making your own thing, almost a role-playing, storytelling aspect, whereas AOS characters, for all the things that work about that system, feel a bit like selecting a preset character in a fighting game and just having some limited options to tinker with their play style

[Narissra]

That is one of the things I miss the most from Fantasy. I loved being able to pick out weapons, armour, mounts, artefacts, and such for my hero and then making up a cool model for them or using the hero kits that were a mounted and foot hero with lots of bits to pick from. Heroes are so bland to me now since most don't even have options at all for how to kit them out.

[Sarouan]

I'm glad to have more clarifications about what they want to do with the Old World project, but to be honest, it still seems so early in the development that I don't see the point of building a hype this soon.

I'll see where I am when we really get closer to the release date - expecting a few more years, TBH. Then I'll see if it will be worth it to try it or if I'll be busy on another project anyway.

[Bosskelot]

I still hope for support for round bases, just because I feel the game should take a page out of KoW's book and be about unit vs unit entities. There's no need for a game like WHFB to be on an individual base by base system.

This is sort of what I mean:
 

 

[RuneBrush]

My own take (currently - this will likely change).

The Old World will arrive with a bunch of brand new miniatures, including a selection of plastic troops to cover most of the options and then resin bits and bobs.  It'll be 25mm scale rather than heroic 28mm - will mean that you'll get scale creep in some ranges, but overall shouldn't be too jarring.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll see some old molds resurrected and things like the Fortified Manor be brought back to cater for scenery.

Looking at the way the Age of Darkness has been done, you have an overarching set of rules and then each Black Book focuses on a specific engagement.  I can see this transitioning into The Old World, but we'll get a small series of books (2 or 3) for each major engagement - bearing in mind some engagements lasted decades.  These books will include all the main protagonists for the engagement, plus a few you might not expect.

I think we'll get some kind of "catch up" book/books that will allow you to field your existing collection in games (similar to how we had the Grand Alliance and Index books).  Not sure if this will be a generic set of rules or if it's going to be themed for the engagement in question - it could be there's a clever matrix on what you can and can't do.

We're going to realise quite how far GW has come on in miniature design very quickly when we put down a 25 year old Orc next to one of the models designed for the new game.  That said, I can see there being quite a few made to order releases.

[Kaleb Daark]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

My own take (currently - this will likely change).

The Old World will arrive with a bunch of brand new miniatures, including a selection of plastic troops to cover most of the options and then resin bits and bobs.  It'll be 25mm scale rather than heroic 28mm - will mean that you'll get scale creep in some ranges, but overall shouldn't be too jarring.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll see some old molds resurrected and things like the Fortified Manor be brought back to cater for scenery.

Looking at the way the Age of Darkness has been done, you have an overarching set of rules and then each Black Book focuses on a specific engagement.  I can see this transitioning into The Old World, but we'll get a small series of books (2 or 3) for each major engagement - bearing in mind some engagements lasted decades.  These books will include all the main protagonists for the engagement, plus a few you might not expect.

I think we'll get some kind of "catch up" book/books that will allow you to field your existing collection in games (similar to how we had the Grand Alliance and Index books).  Not sure if this will be a generic set of rules or if it's going to be themed for the engagement in question - it could be there's a clever matrix on what you can and can't do.

We're going to realise quite how far GW has come on in miniature design very quickly when we put down a 25 year old Orc next to one of the models designed for the new game.  That said, I can see there being quite a few made to order releases.

I was saying the same thing from the beginning, and Tamurkhan is a great example of that.  A nice campaign story well told, and a nice army list in the back.

It makes the most sense as well, that way you're controlling your output as well.

The old plastic moulds can be dusted off, and restored as they've paid for themselves now, and some new stuff brought in. It would make sense to just keep the scale the same as the old whfb and then you have that clear demarkation between  the AoS scale and the old rank and flank scale.

There was so much still on the drawing board for fantasy before AoS that it's not going to be difficult.

Like the Age of Darkness Rules, I can see the old world rules set being a refinement and a shaving of the whole whfb rules across the ages, with some flourishes to cater and cope for what they have in mind for the game.

it'll be interesting.  Like many I'm looking forward to character building again.  AoS was model focused - if it was in the box it was on the scroll.  whfb did a better job of making you feel the army was yours.

Aos could still learn from that, just like the 40k grand master in dreadknight - an amalgam of two models, AoS could do the same, such as a chaos lord riding a warshrine for instance.

I'm looking forward to cracking my war mammoths out again with all the options that they had.

What will be interesting is the rules treatment of mounted characters - a real bone of contention in 8th where you could attack the character if he was mounted on a monster.  Funnily enough we never really saw amazing conversions of lords on dragons etc.

Whereas back in 5th or was it 6th and before, if the mount was destroyed he could still run around on foot if you had a mounted and foot version of a character.

These are the details that will be of interest to me.  

I'm cautiously optimistic, and one truth will still hold true... elven armies in all their forms will still be bent as.

[KriticalKhan]

I stumbled into  getting an entire 6th ed Orcs and Goblins army and I've been wondering about how I'd ever translate it into a viable AoS list for the past year or so. So this is all pretty good news.

I'm almost tempted to hold off on the Soulblight stuff I have until we figure out how cross-compatible stuff will be. At the rate things are going with my Mawtribe army, I'll have plenty to do in the meantime.

Here's to hoping the Old World is as good as we all want it to be.

[Lord Veshnakar]

Not really interested anymore. I loved WHFB at the time, and it was a great segway, but I am mentally invested into AOS. And knowing the WHFB world ends kind of kills a lot of the narrative drive for me. Plus I love my dwarfs on dragons and flying ships just fine. 

[Jefferson Skarsnik]

There's still time for Karl Franz to blearily stagger into the shower, see Ludwig Schwarzhelm in there and be like "huh, I just had the weirdest dream. The lore was kind of all over the place to be honest"

[Noserenda]

Cant lie, i was a lot more excited for an Epic scaled warhammer tbh. 

I think this game is either going to get a release that dwarfs most 40k edition shifts and be a seismic shift in the balance of GW customers, or be an utter shitshow/disappointment and explode. Fingers crossed eh?  

Round bases on movement trays wouldnt really work in any of the previous warhammer editions, as your base would be considerably bigger than usual and cause problems. It does remind me of all the advances in kits since they stopped having to rank them up in tight formation too, id be interested to see how that all shakes out, not sure even GW knows yet! 

[Ggom]

I like the idea of facing, but I don’t like the idea of static poses. KoW has a cool system where you have blocks of units that are actually multiple models on one base, and I think that allows for alot of beauty and creativity in modelling. It means you can have dynamic poses AND cool terrain built together!
 

That said, I am nevertheless tempted to start acquiring and painting wood elves on squares starting now. At my painting speed, I may just have a small set done in time for release! Does anyone know if the Asrai are featured in TOW?

 

[Zeblasky]

First of all, splitting out Old world from AoS with square bases seems like a very bad decision, that can potentially badly hurt both games. You won't get a lot of old players back with that (only a very few will go back for long), and you will not make a lot of AoS players to go to fantasy because of rebasing (for them it would be kinda like going into 40k). You would be mostly fishing for new players, that are interested in Old World lore, but are not playing AoS. I guess the main reason could be that GW wanted to revive Fantasy ruleset with all of its uniquness instead of making it Fantasy with mostly AoS rules. Makes some sence, but risky.

Second, this is still barely any news as of now. We got a very few bits of info on the game format, a map and a bunch of game concepts from CA, not GW. This seems to indicate to me that either GW wants to keep almost total secrecy on the resease as of now or they do noy have much to show. A second case could lead to some dire implications.

[KriticalKhan]

3 hours ago, Zeblasky said:

This seems to indicate to me that either GW wants to keep almost total secrecy on the resease as of now or they do noy have much to show. A second case could lead to some dire implications.

Not really. It takes about three years to design and release a single army, and they're making an entire game system that was likely delayed due to Covid. They announced it really, really early and even admitted that we'd be looking at a 3+ (probably around 5, honestly) year wait time. You can debate whether or not it was worth revealing they were working on it so soon, but the fact is that they probably DON'T have a lot to show, and that's nothing to be worried about, or if they do, they don't want to start heavily marketing something that won't be out for several more years.

Their strategy right now of the occasional update to let people know the game still exists and is being worked on is probably the best way of handling things. Otherwise people would start doomposting if they said nothing and get pissy over how long things are taken if they show too much.

And this isn't related to what you said at all, but it's pretty funny (and a little annoying) about how dismissive of the game a lot of people are here. Most AoS players spent 5 years getting shat on for liking something, and now the moment things turn around, they go and do the same thing. I don't know if people are actually scared TOW could kill AoS or if they're just bitter the "dead grog game" came back, but I'm getting a little sick of seeing it.

[Whitefang]

11 hours ago, Zeblasky said:

First of all, splitting out Old world from AoS with square bases seems like a very bad decision, that can potentially badly hurt both games. You won't get a lot of old players back with that (only a very few will go back for long), and you will not make a lot of AoS players to go to fantasy because of rebasing (for them it would be kinda like going into 40k). You would be mostly fishing for new players, that are interested in Old World lore, but are not playing AoS. I guess the main reason could be that GW wanted to revive Fantasy ruleset with all of its uniquness instead of making it Fantasy with mostly AoS rules. Makes some sence, but risky.

Second, this is still barely any news as of now. We got a very few bits of info on the game format, a map and a bunch of game concepts from CA, not GW. This seems to indicate to me that either GW wants to keep almost total secrecy on the resease as of now or they do noy have much to show. A second case could lead to some dire implications.

The overall art design of Cathay and Kislev are all done and good enough to make a video game though. 
It’s just the production process taking time 

[ian0delond]

And with a work in progress things can  always change, be discarded. 

What if they showed something that doesn't make the cut in 2024 ? People will be disapointed, even angry about the most minor details. 

And they always keep the best reveal for the end. 

[Kaleb Daark]

12 hours ago, Ggom said:

I like the idea of facing, but I don’t like the idea of static poses. KoW has a cool system where you have blocks of units that are actually multiple models on one base, and I think that allows for alot of beauty and creativity in modelling. It means you can have dynamic poses AND cool terrain built together!

You had this also in fantasy, where you would have unit fillers.  So for instance a large scenic piece in the unit movment tray would take the place of X models up to a maximum of say 25% of the unit.

[Kaleb Daark]

8 hours ago, KriticalKhan said:

Not really. It takes about three years to design and release a single army, and they're making an entire game system that was likely delayed due to Covid. They announced it really, really early and even admitted that we'd be looking at a 3+ (probably around 5, honestly) year wait time. You can debate whether or not it was worth revealing they were working on it so soon, but the fact is that they probably DON'T have a lot to show, and that's nothing to be worried about, or if they do, they don't want to start heavily marketing something that won't be out for several more years.

Their strategy right now of the occasional update to let people know the game still exists and is being worked on is probably the best way of handling things. Otherwise people would start doomposting if they said nothing and get pissy over how long things are taken if they show too much.

And this isn't related to what you said at all, but it's pretty funny (and a little annoying) about how dismissive of the game a lot of people are here. Most AoS players spent 5 years getting shat on for liking something, and now the moment things turn around, they go and do the same thing. I don't know if people are actually scared TOW could kill AoS or if they're just bitter the "dead grog game" came back, but I'm getting a little sick of seeing it.

I'd agree with this.

It's not like they are just dusting off the 9th edition (that was ready for release but never made it to press) rulebook and rebadging it.  If they're revising and revisiting it then its going to take time.

I also get why they don't want a cross over, and in truth it gives them the opportunity to retire some old model lines from AoS completely to be replaced with a whole new AoS aesthetic and scale.  I can see for example, say beastmen will be eventually pulled back into WToW, and maybe a whole new line of larger more dynamic beastmen in whatever form be replacing them, and eventually, as the updates roll out, what we will have is two very different aesthetics and looks and feels.

Lets look at say chaos warriors and skeletons, the new warriors are dynamic and varied, the old ones were designed around ranking up on 25mm squares.  Skeletons the same, cursed city skellies are bigger than the old skeleton warriors and will struggle to sit on 20mm squares.

I'd bet that a goodly percentage of people who have older fantasy armies never rebased, I certainly didn't as the bases took a lot of work.

There was a comment above about Age of darkness and 40k, the difference was that 40k was never a square bases game, it was always rounds from day one.

And I also think that there is another thing which we all had to do when being forced into AoS after fantasy died, and it works the other way now as well, and that is we just find a way of making what we have model wise work with it.

Don't forget that they may well change and shuffle some base sizes around - after all, are they really going to create a new blood thirster to fit on the old 50mm base? of course not.  Still lots to do and still lots to reveal.

From a financial point of view, they want you to go buy cool stuff for both systems if you play them, they don't want to have little Johnny buying one army and running in in AoS, 40k, age of darkness and WToW - unless he's a daemons player of course then fill your boots!

We the players want to not have to spend out.  they the business want us to have one of everything. It's the way it's always been and it's the game we play to find ways around it.  But ultimately it's far to early in the day to be frothing and getting nerd rage about something that fundamentally we know nothing to hardly anything about.