EccentricCircle

Oh dear, that doesn't bode well. I'm just hopeful that even if GW aren't too fussed about the license, they at least won't want to let it go and have one of their competitors snap it up. We shall see I guess!

Has there been any word on what's going on with middle earth? Or even informed speculation. I knew the rights had changef hands and was worried by the lack of support this year. It's always been my favourite GW game, but it seems to increasingly be the odd one out in a lineup otherwise dominated by their own IP. Feels like they are only keeping the license so that their competition can't pick it up... but that sure makes me concerned about it's continued support!

Gah, I literally just finished painting the Seraphon ruins from the last warcry box, patted !myself on the back for completing a project, and now there's going to be more? looks fantastic though. Hopefully it comes out soon!

Something occurred to me the other day. We don't know precisely what GW are manufacturing, but we have some evidence. If ToW is around the corner they must have spun up their metal casting machinery to put the old models back into production. Those machines gave mostly been used for Made to Order over the last few years (and topping up the odd Skaven and LotR unit.) But it has been a long time since we last got a made to order. They've not done many wfb ones at all, but last year we were getting one for LotR or 40k almost every month as part of the Range Rotation scheme. Then they just stopped happening more or less. I don't recall quite when, but I bet that's around the time ToW went into full production!

I love the new fyreslayers. Great designs, the skirts and maybe even trousers on a couple of them are a big improvement. The female dwarves are excellent, and the baby magmadroth is great. I kind of wish there was more than just one pet!

I love the lore and hobby sides of things but don't play the games as much. The last few years I've mostly played 40k, as that's what my friends wanted to do. Done some warcry and Frost\stargrave\ rangers of shadowdeep all of which I enjoy much more than army scale stuff. Would love to play more lord of the rings, but no one I know even collects it.

I still have five whole WFB armies from back in the day: Lizardmen, Tomb Kings, Dwarfs, Vampire Counts and Chaos Dwarfs. So I should be good to play out of the gate. I was then dabbling with some elven factions when end times hit, which became CoS and DOK armies, but are still mostly on squares. I'm tempted to make my first old world project a full wood elf army, repaint everyone nicely and get that set up for old world. the humans i got for cos could then be a small empire force, though my cos was always more about dwarves and elves. my Gloomspite are on round bases, but functionally should still be a perfectly playable night goblin force. Likewise my older sylvaneth can stay on rounds and slot right into wood elves. My Slaves to darkness are mainly warcry models, so might need some work to make them fit. the big question is skaven. I have them unbuilt from a couple of the vs boxes and the old spire of dawn models on squares, so could make that a full old world army too!

Those dwarves may be from the old world but they really aren't that old. They came out at the back end of eighth edition, so not long at all before AoS was announced. Given the lead times on new models, especially big waves, thry could well have been designed after the first wave of stormcast and in the same R&D phase that would give us fyreslayers a year or so later.

Thanks!

The answer kind of lies in the concept of "network externalities" . Essentially th e value of a tt game to the end user gets higher the more other users there are. One telephone is useless, two can be handy, but has limited utility. A million telephones though? Now we're talking! because of this, the bigger a game the more accessible it becomes, and the more it grows. Games bigger than a certain threshold enter positive feedback loop, i increasing their market share, while those below it enter a negative feedback where just maintaining their popularity takes a lot of work. The fact that market share is a bit of a zero sum game also helps. GW doesn't need to be best. They just need to be biggest. But how did they get to be biggest in the first place? First by genuinely being good. Warhammer lore hit the ground running with some massively talented writers, sculptors, artists and game designers making a really compelling world. That made them stand out from other fantasy properties at the time and the legacy of that still serves them well to this day. But just as importantly they did it "first". Sure historical war games were around, fantasy was popular and D&D was taking America by storm, but GW put all those things together to create something that was pretty unique. They made a fantasy game more accessible than Chainmail and the handful of medieval wargames that were around at the time. By putting fantasy and sci fi front and centre they captured a new demographic. They cornered the market for a popular accessible fantasy game in the UK and just grew from there. 40k let them capture th sci fi market in the same way they had the fantasy one. More so perhaps. Wfb was always going to be going up against D&D once it broke out of the Uk market. While there have always been many small sci fi games in the tt space, there wasn't really a juggernaut before 40k, and again its dark gritty lore made it stand out too. They then did it again when they secured the Lord of the Rings license. By combining the most popular wargame with the most famous fantasy IP they were able to break out of the niche hobby of tt gaming altogether for a few years. Those movies gave them reach which nothing else before or since has. It was the perfect storm of popularity, and cementd their position as the market leader, a position which is now very difficult to dislodge them from. Warhammer is now a house hold name in a way which nothing else except D&D and Magic can rival. each of those games coexist only because they are different game formats so while they do compete its less of a zero sum game. For another mini focused wargame you really need a strong external ip like star wars or marvel to have a hope of breaking that stranglehold. Even then those games only overtake the leader when the leader messes up ans temporarily loses some of their momentum.

In the context of the sentence it almost sounds as though "Castelite" is a word for people from Greywater fastness. The city doesn't really have an existing demonym, and making one the usual way is a bit clunky in that case A fastness is a type of castle so I reckon that's what it means.

Amazing work. Some really creative designs!

I won't begrudge the 40K folks a rumour engine if it does herald a Kroot update. They are basically the patron saints of small factions which really need fleshing out to achieve their true potential. By all accounts they were originally designed as an independant army, but basically souped with the Tau before they even came out, and have waited for new exciting models, or plastic updates to their resin and metal for longer than AoS has existed. We grumble about Fyreslayers being undersupported, but they don't have anything on the Kroot!

It can take that long, but these days it frequently doesn't. I reckon they now have a fair idea how many they need, and do make them in advance, so I've had some ship the next day after ordering them before. However, there is no guarantee. Sometimes it does take much, much longer, and I have had it take six months in the past. Probably the sooner you order, the more likely you are to get it quickly, but basically don't rely on it coming soon, assume it will be a while, and if it isn't, that's a nice bonus.

It's a bank holiday in the uk, so while they could have queued up articles, I wouldn't expect much.

Like many of us, I've collected quite a lot of AoS warscroll cards over the years. I would like to put them all in a folder for ease of reference. Does anyone know where I can get card sleeve folder pages in the right size format? Online I find many, many options for standard playing card sized cards, but am unsure where to look for the larger, landscape format warscrolls. Many thanks.

Are the proportions of the horse right though, it seems really tall to me? I don't know, just something not quite right, but it could be the angle or tje short barding? Maybe I'm just imagining it!

Interesting that the warcry roadmap talks about paired warband releases, but not big vs boxes. I'd certainly assumed that these arcs of warcry and kill team would roll right into the next, but keep their format. Maybe the big boxes aren't selling as well as they wanted (my flgs has a ton on its shelves.) It would be no bad thing for them to move away from locking every new band in a fomo box for sure.f Disappointing lack of lotr news, but at least i don't want to buy absolutely everything...

As a follower of both the Tomb Kings and both flavours of Dawi, I can only say... Why not both?

Probably best wait for it to come out. I'm sure they'll try to capture the play styles of the old wfb era armies, but I wouldn't like to put money on them succeeding!

I'm not going to re-base anything. Every army I started in WFB is still on squares, every army I started for AOS is on rounds. There are a couple where I've ended up with a mixture due to new AoS armies assimilating models from my WFB collection. It looks a little untidy, but in the grand scheme of things, I just don't care. I'm sure I'll be able to slot every permutation into the relevant movement tray, and play with them without any issues. At the end of the day unless you're playing in massive tournaments it doesn't actually affect game play that much. If mm differences in placement give the one or other player some huge advantage then you're probably missing something, because almost every other variable in the rules, and the skill levels of the players is going to have more of an effect on the outcome of the game than that.

They wouldn't even have to retcon anything to include the new rapterdon riders or whatever they are called. Long before the rise of the derpy cold one knights, the lizardmen army featured metal skinks, riding really hard to build and pose raptor like creatures!

They already have supply chain issues. I cannot believe they'd try to keep an old kit in production when they have a newer version of the exact same thing. I can though see them doing made to orde runs of the older kits in order to appeal to the midhanmer fans. TK and Brets (and O&G) are an edge case as the only way to bring them back are to redesign them, or reprint the old kits. I can see why they'd do the latter, though i was personally hoping for a mix. I'm sure we will get that eventually though. i posted a list many pages back of which AoS ranges were basically ready to go in TOW, and I stand by that. I'm sure luminetg will proxy for high elves, soulblight are vampire counts, and there is literally no reason not to use the new saurus or chaos warriors.

Hmm, kind of looks like varanite, or its precursor at any rate. Very cool. Let Chaos reign, the Dawi Zharr march to war!

Thanks, and to the others who replied. I've kind of gone off the hobby content, and haven't played a game of AoS since Covid, so I was mainly just subscribing for the cool Sorcerer model, and the off chance I'd like the cartoons. Between the exclusive model and the voucher a few months back, its not been a horrendous price to pay for some 40K cartoons, and I went into it knowing there wouldn't be much fantasy content. Still I don't think I want another year of it. I can watch most of the stuff I'm still interested before the summer when I need to renew or not, but will be slightly sad if I start Blacktalon and don't get to finish it. We shall see I guess!