Golgfag

Hopefully with the new factory getting going, we will see Forge World follow main GW in becoming heavily plastic based, as that is the only thing stopping me from collecting a HH army and would be nice if in three years the new fantasy models are plastic, ideally along with the re release of a lot of the former plastic kits too.

When I say rules support from the start for all armies, I don't mean army books and the like, that would be an unreasonable expectation, I mean at the very least PDF rules or the index books similar to the start of 8th edition 40k, so none of the armies that existed during the final years of WFB are left waiting for support. As I know the guys in my current club who are excited for this like I am would just lose interest if they are left waiting even longer to have official rules for their favourite armies when GW has shown they are capable of doing get you by rules for all armies at launch of a new system as they did with the initial launch of AoS & then with 8th edition of 40k.

Speaking of the more negative elements of the discussion, one complaint I have seen repeated on so many sites online is people saying GW will deliberately change the models available it so that it is impossible for people to use their past collections, I doubt that heavily as GW is clearly basing this heavily on nostalgia so what would be the point of bringing back the Old World but changing all the armies. I can't believe that for example Dwarfs are back but the basic infantry won't be able to have shields, hand axes, handguns, crossbows, great axes etc It makes much more sense that the selling point will be updated sculpts, new units to add to those classic armies and those updated sculpts for example Dwarf Warriors now coming with a new bonus weaponry option on top of the classic ways of arming them. That is how they have handled Blood Bowl which is has been my favourite GW game for the last seven years before GW started supporting it again, they have added player options to some teams, rather then change them so that people would struggle to use their old team miniatures. Hopefully they bring back most of the plastic kits that have vanished from AoS as with the new factory they should be able to manage it, as most of them are still great plastic kits even in the modern era, the one thing they need to avoid is not to do something silly that in my opinion would kill it on launch like only having rules for example Empire vs Chaos, then adding rules for another couple of armies a few months down the line. Support all the armies from the start, even if for most of them it does not include any new models.

My local club started small, only six of us the first night but now half a dozen years later has over thirty regulars, we rent an old hall once a week normally only used for things like scouts, luckily they have an area that allows us to store scenery & spare club figures when needed in plastic containers. We charge a weekly fee or a monthly fee which is cheaper if you plan to be there most weeks, also helps to raise extra cash by selling cans of drinks & snacks. The main reason I believe our club has been such a success at recruiting new players while other clubs in our area have struggled is that it is so open to new games and variety, if someone has a new game fresh from a kickstarter delivery, they are likely to be able to find players willing to give it a chance who then may buy in to it themselves. I have seen my fair share of clubs struggle because they are so focused on one or two games, that anyone who is not interested in those is made to feel unwelcome even if it is not intended.

In an ideal world, the new WFB would be like the old LOTR rules, have both a skirmish version and a ranked up version that you can play with the same models.

Maybe it really depends on the area, can only speak from my own experience as never attended a tournament in my life but I did help out and spent a lot of time around gaming stores in my part of the UK during the last few years of WFB but the main reason we heard time after time from dozens of new players who went from excited to burnt out was the lack of desire to paint up fifty of the same model for one unit due to the rules favouring one or two large units over more small units, so while the actual model count may not have changed too much, to people completely new to the miniature wargaming hobby, one unit of forty is psychologically more intimidating a prospect to finish then two units of twenty, especially if those two units of twenty are different models. If the game had favoured more reasonable unit sizes, more variety and had a more enjoyable way of playing smaller point games then I don't believe WFB would have failed. Simpler rules would help too though, I just never heard that as a reason from those players who dropped out or switched to 40k in my area during that period of time, possibly due to in my part of the UK at that time, anything not being made by GW might as well not have existed, so GW did not have competition from other companies putting out more beginner friendly rules.

I went almost completely magnet based storage in various forms the last couple of years and have never looked back, for that little bit of extra effort my models feel so much more secure now when transporting them to my gaming club.

I am delighted with this news, spent fifteen years playing & enjoying the background setting of WFB, so pleased it is coming back in some form as hopefully means the setting as a whole will get support again long term, new BL novels etc. Nothing against AoS, I have just spent the last few years trying and failing to really engage with it in the same way, not really my cup of tea compared to the Old World but glad it is loved by so many other hobbyists. Whatever style the game comes back as, ranked or skirmish I will likely play it, as the game purely as a game was never the big selling point for me. I will keep my small collection of Fyreslayers I purchased but my fantasy hobby time will now likely be devoted to painting up models that can fit in just as well the Old World as the Mortal Realms such as my large Maggotkin collection, who will ideally be invading the Empire in the not too distant future. Hopefully this shows that GW has learned that WFB did not fail because of the setting or the models, the lack of sales was purely because their last edition of the game pushed the model count way above what most new players could be expected to collect before playing a regular game, I know it put me off starting a couple of new armies in those final years. If it is ranked combat as we knew it, then they just need to take it back to how the game was for many years, average sized units twenty & horde units thirty or forty at most, also make the game work better at a lower points value so new players can buy in at their own pace.