Warhammer - The Old World

[Noserenda]

I wouldnt expect OW to follow the current AoD model because its godawful* and FW knows it, i would expect he upcoming box to switch it over to the more common Specialist games model where you just need a one rulebook and one splatbook to play your army with a decent plastic range to support the game ala Necromunda or Adeptus Titanicus. 

They have announced or implied a wildly optimistic set of releases for Old World, we shall see how that actually rolls out in a few years

*Having to drop well over £100 on rulebooks for some armies before buying even a single extremely pricy model is objectively bad, come on.

[Jator]

7 hours ago, Beliman said:

I think that @Neil Arthur Hotep and @EMMachine already explained everything about TOW. I just want to add how Warhammer 30k or Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness works.

------------------------------------hereIgo----------------------------------------

The game is based on 7th edition of Warhammer 40k, without following the main rules of Warhammer 40k (9th edition at this moment). The main rules are tweaked so it's not just a 1:1. You can find all basic rules in the main Rulebook:
 

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The main game is about Space Marines vs Space Marines (Legions). So, everybody is in the same ground (appart from some special guest, as Talons of the Emperor, Solar Auxilia or Mechanicum). That measn that there are 18 Space Marines Factions, and all of them can be played as Traitors and/or Loyalist.
That works really well because the balance is on the special rules for each legion/weapons or Rites of War, and not on units strength (that's not 100% true but you get the point). To pack all the rules, Horus Heresy has 2 books dedicated to Space Marines rules, one with all the special rules for each Legion (there are a few missing btw...) and the units that are shared by all the legions (that's 90% of them).

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Those books are the "Red Books", in other words, rules to play. There are a few more Red Books with rules for other non-Space Marines armies too but that's another story.
Note: there are a lof of units with rules but not models.

To follow the main (and ongoing) story, the game has Black Books. They are a bit diferent fro the Red Books. They have a lot of Lore and sometimes updated profiles/Legion Rules or even new Rites of War (imagine if rules for subfactions and warscroll battalions had a baby). The last one released was called Crusade, and it is the IX of this collection that talks about some wars between Night Lords and Dark Angels (with their rules, units, etc...).

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That's how the game works, but not how the game deals with miniatures. You can buy a lot of them from their Forgeworld webside (btw, some of them disappear for a few months or even a years to reappear later, magic!!), and they are really expensive:

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-AT/The-Horus-Heresy

But from time to time, GW release a Box based on the Horus Heresy timeline with cheap basic armies of infantry/walkers/whatever. We had two before and it seems that it will be another one at the end of the year:

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Both boxes pack two little armies that can be expanded in to any Space Marines Legion, giving you a good backbone for your army (burning of Prospero has two named characters, but whatever...). The other "special" units, as I said before, are expensive and most of the time, people just convert other units with some decorations and special weapons. Take in mind that the last rules even encourage people to convert their units, some of them don't even have miniatures! We can see some covnerted ones in the last free oficial rules/minicampaign:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/10/04/launch-a-daring-strike-into-the-heart-of-ultramar-with-the-night-lords/

Btw, every few weeks (or months?),  Forgeworld releases new/old units. The last one being the Sons of Horus Praetor (yep, a generic leader for the Big Man Legion!):

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Not sure if it will help, but I'm a big fan of the Horus Heresy!

If TOW can take the best parts of the Age of Darkness, I think we will have a really good game!

Those look like beautiful books! If TOW followed that route  my rulebook fetish would be enough to hook me.

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Noserenda said:

*Having to drop well over £100 on rulebooks for some armies before buying even a single extremely pricy model is objectively bad, come on.

Yeah, completely agree. Age of Darkness has a lot of problems that I would not like to deal with in TOW.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Beliman

[Greybeard86]

WH30k is a very ambitious project with what, at least from outside perspective, looks like no true backing.

It was marketed a bit like the "wargame" version of 40k, for "adults", with "more realistic rules", yet a bigger focus on "thehobby and lore". Also, more expensive than 40k and based (mostly) on resin.

While some elements of WH30k appeal to me, I am not sure I'd want TOW to follow it too much. The resin and prices get old fast, as do the lack updates.

[sandlemad]

I think support for the 30k idea has varied over time, with some of the issues plaguing it as a game reflecting that lack of support (updates, marketing, amount of staff, QA efforts) and some kind of inherent to the extremely high-investment model FW used for it (backlog of minis, some factions getting left behind even more than in other games, expensive rulebooks going out a date in a few years, the sheer amount of effort any one black book requires).

I’d agree with @Noserenda that FW/SG probably won’t use all that much of that ‘bespoke’ approach, it’s too much of a barrier for entry. We know they considered it for Adeptus Titanicus and dropped it nearly at the 11th hour because it wasn’t going to be as worthwhile as the ‘lightweight’ approach that characterises current AT. That partially reflects the use of resin over plastic not working out but also the book size, the update cycles, and what new rules they put out.

I do like the Middle Earth comparisons, there might be a lot in that approach that they draw on for TOW. 

[Noserenda]

5 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

WH30k is a very ambitious project with what, at least from outside perspective, looks like no true backing.

It was marketed a bit like the "wargame" version of 40k, for "adults", with "more realistic rules", yet a bigger focus on "thehobby and lore". Also, more expensive than 40k and based (mostly) on resin.

While some elements of WH30k appeal to me, I am not sure I'd want TOW to follow it too much. The resin and prices get old fast, as do the lack updates.

I dont think it was ever "marketed" in those terms, the most they ever came out  with was "more granular" but i think for all their sins the 40k team has solidly proven that to be ridiculous, at least in terms of differentiating sub factions. It was something fans of the product frequently spouted off though. 

I think ultimately AoD was most popular and successful as a 40k expansion with crossover potential and the major reason it ended up a separate system was Forgeworld being left out of the 8th edition loop entirely and the knock on problems from that. Then with the new starter delayed considerably (it was apparently meant to be out last year) they just figured no news was good news so until recently its just been rolling on momentum

Obviously Old World would not really work as a AoS expansion as the rules concepts and even basing is incompatible but i think having the models crossover may well be what the system lives or dies on, investing in a new system is always a gamble and a warhammer army is not a small investment! Having AoS to fall back on if it does not take off in your groups is a good safety net imho.

[Public Universal Duardin]

Heh, I'm really looking forward to TOW but while I expect getting a collected army list tome at launch, it'll take years until every faction is supported (and that includes rotating Made to Orders!). This leads me to weep bitter tears as I foolishly did not muster enough Brets in my youth, and now I'll have to make do with what I got hahah. I'm unsure about crosscompatibility as someone with a classic HElf army will have smaller (in width) regiment than someone using same amount of Lumineth models (which aren't designed to be rank-and-file'd!) on a mov-tray. I almost wish we'd have gotten smaller scale models just to prevent bloat of 8th and facilitate bigger battles with less miniatures.

I predict, by gazing into the entrails of a stray gnoblar, that we'll get Cathay one day in the distant future, most likely Dogs of War too based on the Border Princes map as maximum nostalgia bait and to get us to dip into evert faction to convert Regiments of Renown and buy as mercs. I'll also predict that we'll get Chorf rules at launch but no models. I'll make do with Brets/DoW/Empire (Marienburg will finally get some relevance if my memory of the map serves me well 👀) until that day.

[Kaleb Daark]

On 10/21/2021 at 11:25 AM, sandlemad said:

I think support for the 30k idea has varied over time, with some of the issues plaguing it as a game reflecting that lack of support (updates, marketing, amount of staff, QA efforts) and some kind of inherent to the extremely high-investment model FW used for it (backlog of minis, some factions getting left behind even more than in other games, expensive rulebooks going out a date in a few years, the sheer amount of effort any one black book requires).

I’d agree with @Noserenda that FW/SG probably won’t use all that much of that ‘bespoke’ approach, it’s too much of a barrier for entry. We know they considered it for Adeptus Titanicus and dropped it nearly at the 11th hour because it wasn’t going to be as worthwhile as the ‘lightweight’ approach that characterises current AT. That partially reflects the use of resin over plastic not working out but also the book size, the update cycles, and what new rules they put out.

I do like the Middle Earth comparisons, there might be a lot in that approach that they draw on for TOW. 

yea kind of.

It was actually a little side project for forgworld to promote a whole different line of minis and model variants.

The Black narrative books were written to work alongside the existing 40k rules as was as campaigns in their own right, think of it as AoS suddenly releasing a side order of stuff set in the age of myth at the beginning of the AoS lore so that it didn't interplay with current AoS lore or characters apart form the major players.

The black books were a story of a historic event timeline and in the back was the rules and battleplans you needed to play that thing at the time - actually the best equivalent is the Belakor book with the legion of the first prince army list in the back, story narrative, battleplans, army or faction composition.  The black books were only ever concerned with the factions within their own narrative.

Warhammer Forge did the same with Tamurkhan, which was the fantasy equivalent of a black book, and was set several hundred years before the then current fantasy battle setting.

To play heresy you had to be minted, hence the "40k for adults" rep it got, as you were talking armies which started at 3k points and rising.  When GW released the Betrayal at calth and Burning of Prospero boxes they sold in their droves because to a 30k player that was over 500 quid of miniatures equivalent in there, and all he'd have to do is buy shoulder pads and accessories if needs be.

When 8th edition 40k came along the community kicked off and in truth rightly so as it would write their gaming off overnight - Alan bligh had passed on, and there was no way they were re-writing the black books just to accomodate new rules format.

So FW just took on the old 7th rules and tweaked them for 30k.  That's when the red books started coming out in their own right, and the various lists and entries in the previous black books got compiled into one book such as Mechanicum and Solar Auxilia and Marine Legions.

30K players are fewer than 40k players but as a good friend of mine is a case in point will think nothing of dropping two or three large in one hit for a couple of titans, they spend, and when they do, they spend big, and as I've said before in the TOW thread, they are fiercly loyal.  they're alright with nothing coming out for months if not years providing you don't take anything away or start messing around with established rules.  A 30k player is in every respect locked in their own time bubble, and that's how they like it.  That's why they'll launch 800 quid straight off the bat on all the FW knights without fear that there's going to be a nerf in three months.

Probably no different to any FW customer really, after all, when I look at my chaos dwarfs, my two war mammoths and the ettin and think how much I spent on a boutique army, I was the fantasy battle equivalent, and we would have spent so much more had we been allowed them in normal gw events.

Seeing an empire landship on the table was a thing of beauty I have to say.

Edited October 22, 2021 by Kaleb Daark

[Noserenda]

I think you are being wildly inaccurate with the Stereotyping there Daark, people were playing Heresy on a budget before Forgeworld resin and hordes did it once we had those accessible plastic starters with a free bonus game included

Black books already managed a couple of edition shifts fine, Betrayal was written for 5th even though 6th slightly predates it after all, and by the time 8th rolled around half of the black books already had obsolete rules content, which is fine, they are godawful rulebooks anyway (lugging 3 around for a weekend event at WHW was character developing...) their value is in being gorgeous and full of fluff after all! 

Nooo FW got screwed over by the GW studio and then their star writer (and it seems pillar of the team) tragically died at the same time, they were screwed and desperately scrabbling to get the 40k indexes out let alone update the whole bevvy of 30k related rules, sooo they improvised reprinted the 7th ed rulebook with some FAQs built in and minor additions for the existing extra universal special rules and marked it "good enough" and left the game to limp on for a while.

90+% of the Heresy players i know have moved on to other stuff while its been neglected, what you currently have is absolute fanatics and 7th ed obsessives really, but the tip of the iceberg as far as player base goes. I am hoping a new edition fixes some of the current system problems and uneven rules but that seems to have been pushed back again  

I think the first Red books were back in 6th too? Regardless the current ones are a second edition, not something new. 

[Kaleb Daark]

On 10/22/2021 at 7:32 PM, Noserenda said:

I think you are being wildly inaccurate with the Stereotyping there Daark, people were playing Heresy on a budget before Forgeworld resin and hordes did it once we had those accessible plastic starters with a free bonus game included

Black books already managed a couple of edition shifts fine, Betrayal was written for 5th even though 6th slightly predates it after all, and by the time 8th rolled around half of the black books already had obsolete rules content, which is fine, they are godawful rulebooks anyway (lugging 3 around for a weekend event at WHW was character developing...) their value is in being gorgeous and full of fluff after all! 

Nooo FW got screwed over by the GW studio and then their star writer (and it seems pillar of the team) tragically died at the same time, they were screwed and desperately scrabbling to get the 40k indexes out let alone update the whole bevvy of 30k related rules, sooo they improvised reprinted the 7th ed rulebook with some FAQs built in and minor additions for the existing extra universal special rules and marked it "good enough" and left the game to limp on for a while.

90+% of the Heresy players i know have moved on to other stuff while its been neglected, what you currently have is absolute fanatics and 7th ed obsessives really, but the tip of the iceberg as far as player base goes. I am hoping a new edition fixes some of the current system problems and uneven rules but that seems to have been pushed back again  

I think the first Red books were back in 6th too? Regardless the current ones are a second edition, not something new. 

 Thanks for clarifying my inaccuracies.

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by Kaleb Daark
But in truth…I don’t really care.

[Public Universal Duardin]

Man, I'm starting to feel really antsy...not that I expected anything for yesterday, but I would have guessed a final "half tease" about TOW. I had half expected the TW:WH3 delay to be about timing the game with some sort of Dominion-esque battlebox - my guess would be to mimic TWWH3 and have Kislev vs Khorne/Chaos, using current models for the latter. But with no word about TOW that seems unlikely - and thus, any release happening in first half of 2022 seems unlikely. Maybe this will really be a 2023 game, dang 😞

[Noserenda]

Yeah theyve been pretty clear its still years away unfortunately, it just feels closer because of the computer game tie in.

[Clan's Cynic]

On 10/22/2021 at 7:32 PM, Noserenda said:

90+% of the Heresy players i know have moved on to other stuff while its been neglected, what you currently have is absolute fanatics and 7th ed obsessives really, but the tip of the iceberg as far as player base goes. I am hoping a new edition fixes some of the current system problems and uneven rules but that seems to have been pushed back again  

I think the first Red books were back in 6th too? Regardless the current ones are a second edition, not something new. 

30k had two camps of players. The people who played it because they wanted to play 30k because it's 30k (especially when Calth/Prospero lowered the barrier to entry) and the disgruntled 40k players who were tired of 7th being a mess but still wanted to play something 40k. A lot of the latter category were buying/running Legion armies that were going up against 40k lists a lot anyway, so inevitably when 8th came along they just followed the most current edition of the game.

7th could've been the best written, most fun, most balanced wargame ever conceived but if GW said "that's enough, 40k is 8th now" you can bet 99% of people would still have followed it into 8th and complained that HH should do the same "or it's a dying game." For a lot of those people it's less "I want to play 30k with 8th/9th rules" so much as "I want to play my Legion army in 40k 8th/9th."

I'm happy with 30k being it's own thing. I don't want to see the new edition - if it is that - as just a copy/paste of 9th. The leaked pictures having a scatter die on them does suggest it isn't that though. Personally I hope FW use the opportunity to really make HH it's own ruleset, drawing on the best of both 7th/8th and other, new, exciting things, but there's always going to be a very loud portion of people who will not be happy unless 30k is tied to the hip with whatever 40k's current edition is - no matter how good or bad it is. 

Edited October 31, 2021 by Clan's Cynic

[Noserenda]

Plenty of your first category dont like AoD staying 7th either though, i was literally reminded today that our group worked through multiple Heresy armies and projects before FW even released Betrayal, the love for the setting is definitely there but the 7th edition is such an unwieldy mess its outright unpleasant to play now we have the much cleaner modern 40k rules (even if GW are apparently busy sabotaging that right now) to contrast it against, so none of us have touched that particular set of mechanics in years now.

Instead we are taking that love of the setting and playing loads of Adeptus Titanicus (which is an outright good system) a bit of the 8th ed conversion folks did and even epic scaled heresy instead. I always find it weirdly gaslightly when people insist you only love the setting when you play one specific half arsed rulesset (not that you are here exactly but folks definitely do it) rather than growing beyond its limitations, the Age of Darkness is far from the be all and end all of Horus Heresy gaming.

AS it is i have high hopes for the new edition, the current one is hardly what FW wanted, just what they could bodge together in a rush, rip the guts out of 7th and its not utterly broken, just bringing in a move stat knocks a dozen pages off the rulebooks horrific movement systems, armour modifiers and damage stats fix a lot of jank and giving vehicles toughness fixes a chunk more. Let alone them exploring new avenues. 

Certainly the idea that Old World is drawing from every edition of Warhammer gives me hope that a new version of AoD will draw from all of 40k rather than bending over backwards to not be like 2nd edition (Or 8th and 9th) decades later!

[Noserenda]

But currently AoD is pretty obviously at a nadir of players recently, just looking at online activity and events, obviously my own circle has dropped it so i cant draw anything there.

[Public Universal Duardin]

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2021/11/rumors-details-on-what-old-world-will-be.html?m=1

Clan's Cynic. Take your Dawi down the left flank. Daark, follow the Elector Count's banner down the center. Noserenda, take your company right, after you pass the wall. Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of The Old World! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises! Ride now!... Ride now!... Ride! Ride to ruin and the old world's ending!

[EccentricCircle]

Hmm, That all sounds ok, but it also seems like a pretty safe guess more than inside info. Some of it (such as which editions it will take after), should eventually be falsifiable, but by that time its proved true or false I don't think there is much else in there which we'll care about.  Interesting though.

[Twisted Firaun]

1 hour ago, Public Universal Duardin said:

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2021/11/rumors-details-on-what-old-world-will-be.html?m=1

Clan's Cynic. Take your Dawi down the left flank. Daark, follow the Elector Count's banner down the center. Noserenda, take your company right, after you pass the wall. Forth, and fear no darkness! Arise! Arise, Riders of The Old World! Spears shall be shaken, shields shall be splintered! A sword day... a red day... ere the sun rises! Ride now!... Ride now!... Ride! Ride to ruin and the old world's ending!

While I’m personally happy for more news/rumors regarding the release of TOW and the rules that it will use, I’m more concerned about what model kits will be produced. In other words, when is GW gonna bring back the plastic Tomb Kings kits from 8th?!

[AaronWilson]

Last night I went through my collection of High Elves! I still have 30 Shadow Warriors, 20 Pheonix guard, 10 sisters of the watch & 5 dragon princes new in box! 

I'd like add a few more regular chariots but bar that I'm happy with it all. Very excited for The Old World!

[Clan's Cynic]

 

[AaronWilson]

Oh Nurgle I'll take all of your gifts. 

[Sorrow]

Reject Nurgle, embrace Slaanesh!

[Sharkbelly]

On 10/22/2021 at 4:09 PM, Kaleb Daark said:

30K players are fewer than 40k players 

That's basic math. 30,000 < 40,000

Wait, never mind...

[Kaleb Daark]

37 minutes ago, Sharkbelly said:

That's basic math. 30,000 < 40,000

Wait, never mind...

I see what you did there

[Kaleb Daark]

On 11/15/2021 at 7:54 AM, AaronWilson said:

Last night I went through my collection of High Elves! I still have 30 Shadow Warriors, 20 Pheonix guard, 10 sisters of the watch & 5 dragon princes new in box! 

I'd like add a few more regular chariots but bar that I'm happy with it all. Very excited for The Old World!

everything is very tall.. other than that, top darts sir.