Warhammer - The Old World

[Ejecutor]

On 11/25/2023 at 5:24 PM, RyantheFett said:

I am sure Kislev and Cathay are still somewhere down the line. GW works in years and right now the main focus is on the two starting factions. They should get some love at some point............ unless the game does not do well lol.

And I am still confused by so many decisions GW has made with this game. We really need to see the prices of all the old stuff and what is going to be in that starter box. Get the feeling Esty sellers and anyone with a 3D printer is going to be making bank.

I have completely no clue about this. Does GW and Forge work with so much time in advance in both cases? Maybe Forge, as it is a smaller team doesn't have that many stuff prepared as it would be the case for a main game from GW?

[Clan's Cynic]

Morale and Psychology rules preview.

[michu]

Orcs will have Animosity again!

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

36 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:

Morale and Psychology rules preview.

I saw some people speculating that charging a unit that fell back after combat would immediately restart combat in the same turn after last weeks article.

This article seems to suggest that this is not the case, and that the fight would continue in the following combat phase.

[Sception]

Ah, frenzy.  The most powerful debuff ever to pretend to be a buff.  It's good to see it again.

[SunStorm]

2 hours ago, Ejecutor said:

I have completely no clue about this. Does GW and Forge work with so much time in advance in both cases? Maybe Forge, as it is a smaller team doesn't have that many stuff prepared as it would be the case for a main game from GW?

I'm wondering if they have moved the scope of the game from Empire during the civil war, including Kislev as a major player, like way the old Tamurkhan campaign worked.

Instead they're now focusing on getting the old discontinued armies with no support in AOS like Brets and TK back, with a couple of new sculpts but then re-releasing older sculpts. 

Presumably this approach will get them a much larger player base quicker, but personally I was most looking forward to new sculpts and background for Kislev. 

 

[Clan's Cynic]

3 minutes ago, SunStorm said:

I'm wondering if they have moved the scope of the game from Empire during the civil war, including Kislev as a major player, like way the old Tamurkhan campaign worked.

Instead they're now focusing on getting the old discontinued armies with no support in AOS like Brets and TK back, with a couple of new sculpts but then re-releasing older sculpts. 

Presumably this approach will get them a much larger player base quicker, but personally I was most looking forward to new sculpts and background for Kislev. 

My guess is they're viewing TOW as a very broad setting with different dates they can yoyo around in.

IE Rather than AoS or post-8th 40k where you're very definitely playing in the 'modern day', they might drop TOW books taking place decades or centuries forward or backwards from the initial starting point of the War of Three Emperors. 

I think the reason we heard anything about Kislev was just because the cat was out of the bag due to Total War, but was probably never planned to be the initial focus of TOW.

 

Edited November 27, 2023 by Clan's Cynic

[michu]

Not sure about the "jumping the timeline" part, at least for now, but I agree with the 2nd one - Kislev was surely shown first to link it to the TWW3 release even if it wasn't planned as the part of initial release.

Edited November 27, 2023 by michu

[Ejecutor]

16 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:

My guess is they're viewing TOW as a very broad setting with different dates they can yoyo around in.

IE Rather than AoS or post-8th 40k where you're very definitely playing in the 'modern day', they might drop TOW books taking place decades or centuries forward or backwards from the initial starting point of the War of Three Emperors. 

I think the reason we heard anything about Kislev was just because the cat was out of the bag due to Total War, but was probably never planned to be the initial focus of TOW.

 

I always thought this would be he case. The VS boxes would come with a narrative campaign, and the setting can be moved drastically from one to another both in place and also in time.

[Sception]

my understanding is that significant portions of what was planned for the old world - including new factions, more significant model support, and potentially a more original ruleset - were ditched a good ways into development to be replaced with the much lower ambition version we've been seeing since the previews started getting more specific - supporting only existing oldhammer factions (and not even all of them), sticking mainly to existing models no matter how outdated, rule set that cleaves very closely to oldhammer design.

That sounds kind of like I'm criticizing the version of The Old World that we're actually getting, but really I'm not.  TOW is starting life as a side game, not a main game.  30k, not 40k, and honestly 30k's success early on was imo significantly attributable to the fact that it was marines vs. marines, basically a game with a single faction model range distinguished by faction rules and paint jobs rather than actual models, and only after actually establishing itself was it able to diversify with legion specific units and non-marine factions.

It was probably never even possible to support TOW with a full range of new faction lines out of the gate in terms of production capacity, it also would have been a bad idea financially, setting it up to fail with way too much up front cost and, lets face it, a very uncertain player base.  Will Oldhammer players really come back after what happened with AoS's launch?  Will TW:W players really convert to tabletop players?  Even if they do, that's a subset of a single video game series' player base.  Starting as small as possible and only ramping up proportional to the interest the game actually generates is a much healthier approach, one much more likely to lead to long term success.

...

I still wish we had gotten new skeleton infantry and horse sprues instead of the dragon, though.  The dragon's grown on me, but those old skeletons just don't hold up, and the 8e TK plastic releases included big centerpiece monsters that still hold up perfectly fine.  Honestly, a bone giant/heirotitan plastic kit would also have been preferable to the dragon, but that may still be coming, I don't think we've seen the old bone giant kit in the background of any TOW pictures or videos to de-confirm a new one.

Going by the Brett release, we're probably getting at least exactly one other new plastic kit.  Mummy infantry is depressingly likely, since that would be a brand knew unit like the infantry knights were.  I've still got my fingers crossed for plastic ushabti though, as I never much cared for the last round of resin ones.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

11 minutes ago, Sception said:

my understanding is that significant portions of what was planned for the old world - including new factions, more significant model support, and potentially a more original ruleset - were ditched a good ways into development to be replaced with the much lower ambition version we've been seeing since the previews started getting more specific - supporting only existing oldhammer factions (and not even all of them), sticking mainly to existing models no matter how outdated, rule set that cleaves very closely to oldhammer design.

I think this is quite likely, especially given how early in development they were when they announced that TOW was in the works. They were still in an extremely early part of the project when they made their announcements regarding Kislev and Kathay. I don't think they were straight up lying about those factions being considered for TOW. I am sure they actually wrote rules for them just like the articles said and worked closely with the Total War: Warhammer people on their development.

But of course, working on these factions as part of the TOW project and actually committing to putting their models into production are completely different things. Even though we knew about the development of TOW early, for a long time the shape the game would take was really unclear. I definitely think a scaling back of the scope of the game happened at some point, but then again the original perfect vision for the game (all factions supported with new kits) was never all that realistic in the first place.

[Sception]

39 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:

My guess is they're viewing TOW as a very broad setting with different dates they can yoyo around in.

I hope so.  The old world has a long, long timeline full of exciting events.  The elven civil wars, the chaos incursions, the vampire wars, plenty of smaller but perfectly compelling engagements.  I always thought it was a mistake to firmly ground the game in a time period when, frankly, nothing much was happening, with the idea of slowly building up to the great chaos war.  Why slowly build up to something cool happening, when you could have instead dived straight into the cool bit for maximum hype and excitement, and then next season / year / edition moved on to another cool bit featuring another 2 to 3 returning (or, if engagement and sales justify it, new) armies?

[michu]

Re: "jumping the timelines".
While I believe they can do that in the future, it is not needed to introduce new and old non-core armies to the game. For example, Druchii invaded Ulthuan right before Great War. Ogres were fighting for both sides during it. I think we will see the ranks of Core Armies expanded with time.

[Noserenda]

Yeah they clearly moved the setting and goalposts around during development, we dont know for sure but i could see the team getting all excited about something like a Kislev army before things shifted and they get like 2 plastic and a handful of resin kit "slots" for new kits and had to change their plans.

I am a bit concerned by them focusing their launch apparently solely on the two least popular armies in old Warhammer, but i can see the logic, they are armies grognards are less likely to have lying around already so might get caught up in and buy, but im not sure how likely that is to work? 

We will see i guess! 

[michu]

It's less "two least popular armies", it's more "two only armies that were dropped completely when AoS launched". Sheer unavailability made them more desired by players.

[Ejecutor]

27 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Yeah they clearly moved the setting and goalposts around during development, we dont know for sure but i could see the team getting all excited about something like a Kislev army before things shifted and they get like 2 plastic and a handful of resin kit "slots" for new kits and had to change their plans.

I am a bit concerned by them focusing their launch apparently solely on the two least popular armies in old Warhammer, but i can see the logic, they are armies grognards are less likely to have lying around already so might get caught up in and buy, but im not sure how likely that is to work? 

We will see i guess! 

Could be the least popular ones, but also the ones (mercenaries appart) selling higher at second hand. So it is a good demand (and whillingness to buy at high price) indicator.

[Noserenda]

12 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

Could be the least popular ones, but also the ones (mercenaries appart) selling higher at second hand. So it is a good demand (and whillingness to buy at high price) indicator.

Not exactly, its the rarest stuff that fetches the highest prices and that usually means the least desirable things when they were out on release even when the market is fairly small. Like, i watched an aution for the objectively awful Captain Coteaz model go over £200 because noone bought him (He was a running joke in our stock take in fact, and a specific item on the dusting list ) in the olde days and some collectors be crazy

[The Red King]

I'm so abused by GW I'm just happy when they remember beastmen exist.

[Beliman]

3 hours ago, The Red King said:

I'm so abused by GW I'm just happy when they remember beastmen exist.

Wait until they say that the DO Shagoth is part of Warriors of Chaos instead of Beastmen 🤣

 

 

Edit. A comparison between old Shaggoth stats and the new TOW one:

6th edition Beastmen:

Spoiler

7th edition Warriros of Chaos:

Spoiler

8th Edition Warriors of Chaos:

Spoiler

The Old World:

Spoiler

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by Beliman

[Clan's Cynic]

Magic rules preview.

Quote

That’s not to say that there aren’t lores – there are eight in the core rulebook alone, each representing a particular approach to the study of magic: Battle Magic, Dark Magic, Daemonology, Elementalism, High Magic, Illusion, Necromancy, and Waaagh! Magic. Most mages will have access to two or more of these, selecting one Lore at the start of each battle.

Grail Knights preview next week, of all things. 

Edited December 4, 2023 by Clan's Cynic

[Baron Klatz]

GK are a surprise focus but I’m guessing they want to address if they’re even still a unit(which lorewise made little sense with how crazy rare they are) or broken up into hero models only or something new like special champions that can lead the lance formations.

[RyantheFett]

5 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:

Grail Knights preview next week, of all things. 

 

3 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

GK are a surprise focus but I’m guessing they want to address if they’re even still a unit(which lorewise made little sense with how crazy rare they are) or broken up into hero models only or something new like special champions that can lead the lance formations.

Grail Knights sort of makes sense since Bretonnia need an elite unit and they have shown most of the generic stuff and the heroes. They should also have a lot of rules that cover most of the game mechanics. Still wonder if they will cut out questing knights and Knights Errant to make it easier to understand (they look so close lol).

Still its sort of crazy how little we know about the game this late before release. Like will/when GW release these old models, how many old models are going to be sold, how much they will cost, and will they ever redo other units?

Still think that GW is setting up the game to fail, but who knows? On the bright side, I accidentally ordered some Etsy Grail Knights by mistake (like I said really hard to tell them apart lol) so win for me!!!

[Lord Krungharr]

Just read about the Magic...more and more (besides the movement trays/square bases) Old World is looking kinda like Horus Heresy, which I like!  Guess depending on the base sizes of stuff not in a tray, if I could use my AoS stuff I'd give it a try for sure.  Skaven and Ogors were around back then right?

[Ejecutor]

20 minutes ago, Lord Krungharr said:

Just read about the Magic...more and more (besides the movement trays/square bases) Old World is looking kinda like Horus Heresy, which I like!  Guess depending on the base sizes of stuff not in a tray, if I could use my AoS stuff I'd give it a try for sure.  Skaven and Ogors were around back then right?

Skavens werent. They were in the middle of a civil war or recovering from that. I am not sure about Ogors.

[michu]

Justification for Ogres is that they are not in the Old World part of the world and are currently quite insular.
EDIT: But both Ogres and Skaven will have rules, just no new and returning minis.

Edited December 4, 2023 by michu