Warhammer - The Old World

[Gotz]

26 minutes ago, Chikout said:

It's kind of mindboggling that they would use that treeman kit in the promotional material. The plastic Treeman kit is infinitely better and was made for Warhammer Fantasy. Are they that determined to avoid cross compatibility between the two systems?

 

thats weird... cos almost the full range of chaos warriors and beasts of chaos is going to be compatible. And depending how they treat Cities of Sigmar, the non human range is going to be compatible (and the humans probably can work as "counts as").

I think it could be more of a thing of going back to a infantry block philosophy (as in 6th) and avoiding the really big centerpiece models.

 

Also... having this kind of info now.... can we hope of some sort of launch around the end of the year?

Edited May 23, 2023 by Gotz

[Lucentia]

To me the inclusion of the old treeman sculpt suggests that they're deliberately aiming heavily towards the nostalgia/oldhammer space, which makes some sense as I can't imagine that they really have the production capacity to revitalise all the old ranges in one swoop (or even at all).  Though that theory gets muddled if they're also including things like the flying chariots, which are obviously a lot more recent than the venerable treeman.

[RexHavoc]

For me, thankfully the armies not seeing support (Pity PDFs will go down about as well as the original AoS legends ones did) I have pretty much everything for them, or just need one or two more kits which are still available in the AoS range.

The main things I'm missing from being able to field pretty much any old world army is a whole lot of dwarf warriors (I have enough dwarf miner bits to make a zillion miners, just missing more bodies!), a whole bunch of plastic high elves and a handful of tomb kings. So this release pretty much covers everything I need to play any classic WFB game.

But I do feel sorry for those that have a force on the 'not supported at release' forces, or those that brought a ton of the new lizardmen to play or even those that wanted to run forces like lizardmen/skaven, as to be able to play both old world & AoS games.

There is no way I could sell this game to my local group now. There is no reason to play the old world over the older versions of WFB that we already own. Will I buy the campaign books? Probably. But they will be on the gaming shelf for anyone here to read and save anyone else having to buy anything. I see this release as nothing more as a 'made to order' run for those armies I'm missing things for.

[Clan's Cynic]

The more I think about it, the more arbitrary the selection of faction seems. Tomb Kings and Warriors of Chaos in the Border Princes, but not the Skaven even though Skavenblight is a five minute walk from there? No Vampire Counts?

It seems more cynically they're just focusing on the more popular factions, given that WoC and High Elves were the most popular armies back in the day and Tomb Kings are the posterboys of un-squattening. 

The spread of factions is fine unto itself, but it doesn't seem especially tight if it's allegedly for lore reasons.

 

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Clan's Cynic

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

43 minutes ago, RexHavoc said:

There is no way I could sell this game to my local group now. There is no reason to play the old world over the older versions of WFB that we already own. Will I buy the campaign books? Probably. But they will be on the gaming shelf for anyone here to read and save anyone else having to buy anything. I see this release as nothing more as a 'made to order' run for those armies I'm missing things for.

On the one hand, I want to say "you are not the demographic for this game". And I think that's true to an extent, because you already have a lot of armies and rule books, so have little reason to buy new stuff.

But on the other hand, GW is banking on nostalgia so heavily with their whole The Old World marketing that I don't really think that the game is aimed at new players, either.

Which of course raises the question, who if TOW is not for returning players or new players, who is it for?

[RexHavoc]

3 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

On the one hand, I want to say "you are not the demographic for this game". And I think that's true to an extent, because you already have a lot of armies and rule books, so have little reason to buy new stuff.

But on the other hand, GW is banking on nostalgia so heavily with their whole The Old World marketing that I don't really think that the game is aimed at new players, either.

Which of course raises the question, who if TOW is not for returning players or new players, who is it for?

Yeah it is all very strange. They stated before that its not really aimed at new players. But a good amount of old players probably have everything they ever need, and then some, to keep playing WFB games. So they can't be aiming for them either.

Its like they are aiming for the complete opposite of, 'in an attempt to please everyone, it pleased no one'.  😅

[Clan's Cynic]

It's aimed as a missile at other rank-and-file wargames which were filling the niche left behind by Warhammer Fantasy's execution. A lot of people will return to playing TOW for no other reason than it being GW's rank-and-file game, no matter how good or bad the ruleset ends up being. So long as it knocks the momentum out of games like Kings of War and Conquest then GW will probably see it as a win.

Similar to how Leagues of Votann were probably a response to the amount of third-party Space Dwarf models that were showing up in recent years.

 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Clan's Cynic

[Austin]

I think based on today's announcement and the latest news from Warhammer Fest, it is time for me to really put hope to bed on this project. Sad to say. I will take a look much more closely at Kings of War.

I just can't get over the vanishing of Kislev. What in the world happened.

[madmac]

Just now, Austin said:

I think based on today's announcement and the latest news from Warhammer Fest, it is time for me to really put hope to bed on this project. Sad to say. I will take a look much more closely at Kings of War.

I just can't get over the vanishing of Kislev. What in the world happened.

I never held much hope for The Old World in the first place, but yeah, this is enough to snuff out whatever last tiny spark of interest I may have had in it. I was never hoping for much, maybe some cool models I could poach for AoS, or a chance to play WHFB with some of my AoS armies, or just looking forward to table top versions of Kislev and Cathay, who I consider pretty neat factions.

Instead I'm seeing a mass reprinting of old models, armies that were potentially cross-compatible with AoS being shoved in the forgotten closet category, two new resin character models shown that don't impress me at all, and pretending they never mentioned Kislev and/or Cathay as being a thing. Unless you're really a die hard fan of one of the 9 factions being supported, (while hating their AoS spinoffs like LRL and Sylvaneth, etc) I'm not sure what's even left to look forward to really.

[GhostShark]

I don't really understand the "who is this for" questions. People have been asking for this for years. It looks like TOW will be a new system that allows:

- Older players to play their classic WHFB armies

- New player to pick up re-released armies to get started.

- New models expanding those ranges for both old and new players to buy.

- A focus on 9 specific armies for now, but rules for all armies.

- The suggestion of even more armies in the future.

- Ongoing support.

What's the actual problem? This seems like a dream come true. 

[madmac]

3 minutes ago, GhostShark said:

- A focus on 9 specific armies for now, but rules for all armies.

 

Just focusing on this one point for now, those of us who have been playing GW games in the last few years have been down this road before, and it's not a good road. Those free PDF rules for old armies will get updated once at the start of the game and then probably never touched again, quickly becoming outdated and functionally useless. There's a reason getting moved to "Legends" in both AoS and 40K is rightfully considered a death sentence.

[GhostShark]

1 minute ago, madmac said:

Just focusing on this one point for now, those of us who have been playing GW games in the last few years have been down this road before, and it's not a good road. Those free PDF rules for old armies will get updated once at the start of the game and then probably never touched again, quickly becoming outdated and functionally useless. There's a reason getting moved to "Legends" in both AoS and 40K is rightfully considered a death sentence.

OTOH, they'll be playable right out of the gate. You'll be able to put your armies on the table and play them against your friends. Yes, they probably will be outdated in a year or two. That's a real concern, but not one that WHFB players haven't faced even when that game was still alive. A lot of armies went a few years without updates. So i don't want to dismiss your concern, because it is a real concern! But I also think that this isn't so bad and is infinitely better that what we have now.

I also think there is a real possibility that if the game is successful they will expand into the armies they don't plan to support on release. they said as much with Chaos Dwarves, that they COULD happen after a few years. "Could" certainly doesn't mean will. But I think its pretty likely that the first few years will be spent just getting the initial 9 armies up to speed. Which is a pretty huge undertaking, even making use of old models.

I'm really not trying to be too optimistic. In fat, up till now I've kept my expectations extremely conservative. This is much more than I expected.

 

[Austin]

1 minute ago, GhostShark said:

OTOH, they'll be playable right out of the gate. You'll be able to put your armies on the table and play them against your friends. Yes, they probably will be outdated in a year or two. That's a real concern, but not one that WHFB players haven't faced even when that game was still alive. A lot of armies went a few years without updates. So i don't want to dismiss your concern, because it is a real concern! But I also think that this isn't so bad and is infinitely better that what we have now.

I also think there is a real possibility that if the game is successful they will expand into the armies they don't plan to support on release. they said as much with Chaos Dwarves, that they COULD happen after a few years. "Could" certainly doesn't mean will. But I think its pretty likely that the first few years will be spent just getting the initial 9 armies up to speed. Which is a pretty huge undertaking, even making use of old models.

I'm really not trying to be too optimistic. In fat, up till now I've kept my expectations extremely conservative. This is much more than I expected.

 

What were your initial expectations?

[GhostShark]

4 minutes ago, Austin said:

What were your initial expectations?

Well...

I thought they'd probably do a big index book with 6-10 of the most popular armies and leave the rest out entirely. And I didn't really expect any new models at all outside of a starter set. I also was worried that they'd only reprint a small selection of models. My biggest concern is that they might do 2 new armies in a big starter box (which of course would be cool) but otherwise not actually release any models for any of the other armies at all. Or cutting them down to whatever AOS models exist.

[Tervindar]

Just because you don't get rules for your army right away, doesn't mean that it won't happen down the road. IMO - I think that a smaller scope is probably a better idea at least for the beginning, to "test the waters" of sorts. Do they really have the resources to release everything at launch? I think folks may have been expecting far too much, and hoping that its a new edition of fantasy, which really its not, its a new game that they are launching with the name of The Old World. 

They already mentioned that further books, supplements, etc. 

Edited May 23, 2023 by Tervindar

[JackStreicher]

No real Dark Elf support is disheartening 

[GhostShark]

Also, I wonder if "armies we're focusing on" means rules, fluff, models or all three? I believe they said before that they'd be releasing all armies as an index (or something like that ) at the start and then considering individual army books later. If this is the case, it may be that the difference between focus and non-focus factions is more about fluff and model releases than rules. It may be that all armies will just be index armies and we won't see army books at all.

It would also make a lot of sense for them to say "Here's the first 9 armies we'll be releasing (and re-releasing) models for, so those are also the armies that will get narrative focus. After that we'll move on to other armies."

Edited May 23, 2023 by GhostShark

[Tervindar]

1 minute ago, GhostShark said:

Also, I wonder if "armies we're focusing on" means rules, fluff, models or all three? I believe they said before that they'd be releasing all armies as an index (or something like that (at the start and then considering individual army books later. If this is the case, it may be that the difference between focus and non-focus factions is more about fluff and model releases than rules. It may be that all armies will just be index armies.

It would also make a lot of sense for them to say "Here's the first 9 armies we'll be releasing (and re-releasing) models for, so those are also the armies that will get narrative focus. After that we'll move on to other armies."

I really think this is the logical thing that folks are maybe not realizing, but essentially what you said in the second paragraph. 

[Noserenda]

3 hours ago, michu said:

What? Marienburg is one of main Empire subfactions in the game. They are not DoW. But also, just because first book will be set in the Border Princes doesn't mean Civil War won't be the focus. And "avoid 40k kits in 30k" is also not true. You can use Indomitus terminators, you can use old dreadnought, you can use old Rhinos and Land Raiders. You can even use Hammerfal Bunker, a 9th ed unit, in 30k.

1. Marienburg has long been known for using its vast wealth to pull in loads of mercenaries and in several depictions has fielded essentially a Dogs of War army with an Empire flavour.

2. If the focus is on the Border princes its fairly obviously is not on the Empire civil war. Like, obviously? Id also mention Kislev and Cathay but they never seemed particularly likely to me, but then they are both coming up around the place in other places.

3. So those units are in the main army lists? Or are they tucked away in a notoriously half arsed PDF? Its hardly a complete list either is it? 

 

1 hour ago, GhostShark said:

- A focus on 9 specific armies for now, but rules for all armies.

- The suggestion of even more armies in the future.

What's the actual problem? This seems like a dream come true. 

I mean, there arent rules for all armies, and there isnt a suggestion that will change, so its hardly a dream come true if those are one of your armies is it? 

I think its worth noting that this is a remix of previous editions right, those army lists already exist in some form that probably require minimal work to get functional and put in a PDF, mark em off as legends or whatever if you cant put resources into balancing them, but having the option for people to use their forces would be good.

[GhostShark]

5 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

1. Marienburg has long been known for using its vast wealth to pull in loads of mercenaries and in several depictions has fielded essentially a Dogs of War army with an Empire flavour.

2. If the focus is on the Border princes its fairly obviously is not on the Empire civil war. Like, obviously? Id also mention Kislev and Cathay but they never seemed particularly likely to me, but then they are both coming up around the place in other places.

3. So those units are in the main army lists? Or are they tucked away in a notoriously half arsed PDF? Its hardly a complete list either is it? 

 

I mean, there arent rules for all armies, and there isnt a suggestion that will change, so its hardly a dream come true if those are one of your armies is it? 

I think its worth noting that this is a remix of previous editions right, those army lists already exist in some form that probably require minimal work to get functional and put in a PDF, mark em off as legends or whatever if you cant put resources into balancing them, but having the option for people to use their forces would be good.

You're right. It isn't all armies. Just most. And you're right that it probably wouldn't be a huge undertaking to include the rest. Which makes me think they will, eventually. 

[Twisted Firaun]

1 hour ago, GhostShark said:

Also, I wonder if "armies we're focusing on" means rules, fluff, models or all three? I believe they said before that they'd be releasing all armies as an index (or something like that ) at the start and then considering individual army books later. If this is the case, it may be that the difference between focus and non-focus factions is more about fluff and model releases than rules. It may be that all armies will just be index armies and we won't see army books at all.

It would also make a lot of sense for them to say "Here's the first 9 armies we'll be releasing (and re-releasing) models for, so those are also the armies that will get narrative focus. After that we'll move on to other armies."

I think this is the most likely scenario for me as well. I won't lie, I'm pretty happy that of the factions "returning," my two favorites are getting rules and models straight off the starting gun (Tomb Kings and Warriors of Chaos), but I understand that this can be frustrating for everyone else. I would argue that the reason certain factions are not getting rules immediately (Vampire Counts, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, etc), is because GW currently has plans for them over in AOS. We just saw the Lizardmen get a massive glow-up (pun), and the Vamps have gotten a pretty decent refresh over the past three-four years. We also know that there is some kind of plan for Cathay, since apparently CA has an entire army book to draw units from (an ARMY BOOK!). 

Good things are coming my friends, they just take time.

[Noserenda]

1 hour ago, GhostShark said:

You're right. It isn't all armies. Just most. And you're right that it probably wouldn't be a huge undertaking to include the rest. Which makes me think they will, eventually. 

Well their idea of "soon" turned out to be over a year with 30k, lord knows when eventually will end up being unfortunately.

[Grimrock]

4 hours ago, Austin said:

I think based on today's announcement and the latest news from Warhammer Fest, it is time for me to really put hope to bed on this project. Sad to say. I will take a look much more closely at Kings of War.

I just can't get over the vanishing of Kislev. What in the world happened.

I think the only thing I was actually excited for was to see the new Kislev and Cathay models. It wasn't super likely I'd buy in on the older factions or re-base my last existing warhammer fantasy army, but if I liked the new rule set and enjoyed the game I could have absolutely been pulled in on a brand new faction with bear riders or sky junks and dragons. Saying those factions were coming and then just quietly pretending like that never happened is an absolutely bizarre choice to me.

I get that they probably want to make sure the game sells well enough to justify the financial investment on a totally new faction, but It feels like a situation where they're being over cautious. Like they don't want to invest too much until they know the game will take off, but that hesitation is going to lead to poor sales because so many people already have the old models. Then the poor sales make them think it's not popular and then they don't make the new factions. Who knows though, I'm not running a multi billion dollar corporation so who am I to say, but I think the last snippet of hope I had for the game is pretty much dead. I guess if the game works out, generates a following in my area, and against the odds they do end up making Kislev/Cathay a couple years for now I'll take another look. 

[KingKull]

GW apparently removed the "good" and "evil" labels from their list LOL 😂😂😂 At least that means they're keeping a pulse on online discourse 

[HorticulusTGA]

Today's article REALLY goes into the right direction for The Old World (and I say that as a mainly Daemons Of Chaos aka Legend'ed army player - which will still get initial TOW rules).

• The focus on nine Core Factions is an evil a good thing, because it really means focusing ressources (and it was in the title and on the map since the beginning). I expected a few resin characters and 1-3 plastic kits per revisited Core factions.
• The decades before the Great War Against Chaos are a great timeframe, it means a certain freedom for new lore and characters (with minor rewritings) and still an "impeding doom" / "Storm of Chaos" feel to the setting. 
• A clear distinction with AOS is necessary in terms of games "branding". The use of 6th-7th ed. scenery and models gives (back) to TOW a distinctive aesthetic (also sweet nostalgia).
• Larger bases still allows for the use of AOS models (given the article, I WILL use the new Daemon Prince with a new TOW Warriors of Chaos army). 
• Looking forward to the Border Princes as the first narrative location for campaigns / supplements (BLACK FIRE PASS book anyone ??).

Also, we could see a initial launch in November 2023, which is exactly four years after the initial announcement, still in the year of Warhammer's forty anniversary, and still within the original timeframe (3-5 years, taking in COVID, etc.).

As far as I can tell, it took around four years because : 1. the TOW team is relatively small (within Forge World/Specialist Games) and 2. its ressources were sometimes dedicated to Total War and Creative Assembly (confirmed at least for Kislev and Cathay