Sarouan

Well, that's exactly why 3D printed miniatures are considered risky. Ash from Guerilla Miniature Games recently interviewed the creator of Bestiarum Miniatures (known for his "Dark Soul-like / Horror Fantasy" 3D models) who recently decided to have its own production of physical miniatures, and the main reason for that is quality control. When you sell the "license" for 3D printing services, you basically lose control of the quality of your models in physical : and that can influence greatly the way people see your miniatures in the end. Because it's "official" and yet you can have a bad model or a great one. Depends on the 3D printing service itself. Bestiarum Miniatures are particularly vulnerable to this because of how thin they are on a lot of their details (they tend to have "realistic proportions" : it's somewhat ok for big monsters, but human-sized 32mm miniatures tend to break veeeery easily if you use a cheap resin - I know, I have tried and broke fingers while trying to drybrush ). Asking people to "test order" a couple of minis isn't really serious. It's like saying "well you're not sure about that phone ? Test order one !" : basically, it's asking people to still buy something they're not sure it will be the quality it looks like on the advertised renders. And if it's not, it's lost money and you throw the horrible miniature in the bin. Awful feeling. That's why GW business model has still a lot of great years ahead of them. And that's why a lot of quality 3D sculptors who are on patreon for years are shifting now to a controlled physical production on their own : because that's the only way to make sure the quality of 3D printing is good and selling reliably their brand in retail stores.

Well as soon as Cathay and Kislev will be officially previewed on Warhammer Community, you can be sure all the known patreons for 3D printed "not TOW" miniatures will "suddenly" work on "Bear and Vodka Kingdom" and "Celestial Dragon Empire" models. What a coincidence it will be. There's an interesting debate to have on that topic, to be honest some already did (I suggest people to listen to Guerilla Miniature Games' videos made on that matter). Suffice to say here that no matter what 3D printer fans say about it, it's still a privilege to own and use a 3D printer "at home" - and 3D printing services can vary greatly in quality depending of the resin used, the scale made "right", the way miniatures are cured / prepared, and so on. It's still not replacing miniatures sold in retail for a lot of reasons other than "GW bad grrr". Having printed a whole army of Highland Miniature dwarves with my own, sure, I can say it "looks" easy. But to get where I am now, I did have to learn a lot of things in 2 years before having a quality I can say is "close" to professionnal production in terms of quality and durability. Still not beating the pleasure to build GW plastic models, though...but yeah, I love conversions and now that I know how to use 3D software, I can convert models directly with the files before printing and it adds a whole new universe of possibilities (I even sculpt my own models from time to time). Again, that's not something you can do when you receive your first 3D printer you just purchase with bottles of cheap resin...and not everyone enjoys to do that either.

Honestly, he would find its place easily in a bretonnian army. And if you put knight on foot next to him, the difference in height would be less striking I believe. This picture shows how much better it is to have your basic infantry on 25x25 base than the old 20x20 one. Sooo much easier to use AoS miniatures to TOW.

3D printing is an obvious way to build your army from scratch, but communities advocating for it are specifically those who tend not to care about official GW events and rather play among themselves. Or don't really care about supporting their local stores. Some well known 3D patreons / 3D printed stores have been hit by a "cease and desist" order from GW because their products were advertised as miniatures for TOW - which, obviously, they were designed for but GW really doesn't like it when other people try to make it look like it's "fine to play for TOW officially" (they never say it straight, but they always suggest it because they know that's how they sell more of it ).

High elves are an elite army akind to a glass cannon : they're certainly one of the armies that suffer the most from good shooting armies like dwarves and Empire. Heroes on foot aren't necessarily bad, they just play differently than your almost mandatory prince on dragon (because he's an absolute beast ). The main issue is that high elves are expensive and you have rarely the opportunity to take a lot of heroes in comparison to other numerous factions like Empire and goblins. Nagarythe's style is about skirmish. They rather ambush and trap the enemy than fighting them straight front on the battlefield. That doesn't mean they can't have repeater bolt throwers, archers, spearmen and silverhelms like the other provinces (those units are all present in all the Ulthuan provinces, because it's tied to their universal levy system), but obviously their armies are more based on their shadow warriors than anything else. Not all nagarythe nobles need to take the shadow stalker honour, actually : only those who want to fight like shadow warriors. So you can use mounts if you don't take a elven honour (it's not mandatory, it's just an option) or the Pure of Heart one (it's not tied to a province in particular). If you want to have a nagarythe hero leading your spearmen / silverhelm units, you can do it without breaking its theme : even if Nagarythe is a desolated province and there are plenty of shadow warrior camps in it, they still have villages and cities that demand more regular militia / nobles to protect / manage them. Not all elves from Nagarythe are shadow warriors. Edit : if you want more information about Nagarythe and what are its official province colors, this page has some : https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Nagarythe - and it used some pages from official Battle supplement about the different provinces of Ulthuan and their regiment colors (it was such a great book, very inspiring) : that's where we know Nagarythe isn't just populated with shadow warriors.

If we can avoid the uninteresting debate "TOW iS a BeTtEr gAMe thAn AoS", I would be grateful. I really don't need to relive the times when old Battle and new AoS / 40k communities were throwing poop at each other's faces for useless ego / pride purposes. Let's just accept they are both games meant for different sensibilities of players, shall we ? As for the real % of sales, unless we have a real leak from people working in GW sales department, we'll never know (and you'll never find that kind of reliable information from Valrak ;) ). But knowing how Battle sales were always lower than 40k even in its golden age from official GW stats released at the time, and knowing that TOW is here a "secondary game" to AoS like Horus Heresy is to 40k...yeah, I totally expect the stock numbers are just low.

No problem ! You can take one unit of rangers as core, I highly recommand to do so since it's freeing space in the rare spot. I saw some equiped with crossbows and two handed weapons for versatility - they can thus shoot but also do a salvation charge against some really annoying units on your flanks / support your main infantry. I guess you could take a big unit of rangers to fill your core minimum, but it will be a very big unit that will be tempting for the enemy to focus on. I'm not saying it won't work, mind you...actually, maybe it will !

Yeah, gyrocopters are surprisingly tough in close combat (well of course you don't send them against, say, a chaos lord). One time I "charged" one with 2 surviving squig hoppers and didn't manage to kill it (he wiped them out in ripost, lol). For its cost, it's performing a lot of key roles in the army very well. Trollhammer torpedo looks indeed good on the paper, but a unit of 5 irondrakes doesn't work like a war machine : it doesn't pivot for free on its axis for line of sight. Plus 24'' range only works if the enemy is effectively coming at you - you'll be in trouble fighting other armies that stay out of range and use their own war machines to force you to go forward while they pummel your 18/24'' range infantry shooting units from a safe distance (be warned, even greenskins can be nastily good at this game ). It's also a bit harder to shoot flying big monsters who are delighted putting themselves on your unit's flanks or back and force you to reorient / reform. I'm not really sure they effectively replace a cannon on that matter...or even a couple of ballista, to be honest.

Given than GW has traditionnally a much lighter release window during July / August and AoS v4 isn't exactly "a small release" in itself...and given what happened with, you know, Legion Imperialis that should have been launched in last august...I still maintain it's "optimist at the very best".

IMHO (well, for now, mostly as a vile greenskin player who play against the bearded shortstacks ), rangers, Ironbreakers, Hammerers, Gyrocopters (3 because can't take more thanks to tournament restrictions ) and a good melee character on shieldbearers with runic two-handed weapon and the rune canceling killing blow are solid bases. Irondrakes used as detachment of a solid unit of ironbreakers can be a nasty surprise too for your opponents. Gyros are the key to keep dwarves mobile and go after some threats your heavy infantry has difficulties to reach (duh !) Rangers in skirmisher formations can fire their crossbows on technical 2 ranks without the need to be on a hill (and they can be deployed where they're the most helpful too), adding to the fact they are much more useful to protect your flanks than classic dwarf shooters (they can shoot / charge 360° as skirmishers, after all !). Ironbreakers are simply the toughest anvil you'll ever see, while hammerers hit very hard. I'm not convinced at using an anvil of doom at this format : it's really expensive and the rest of your core army will need also a lot of points to be efficient. It's also an easy target that can be completely useless if you deploy it wrong (since you can't move it at all afterwards). In fact, at this format, I'll be tempted to play without a runesmith and use some gyro to "shut down" enemy wizards by charging them / their unit if they are a bit too annoying...

Valrak is entertainment, never information. There's the 4th edition of AoS that will clearly launch in early summer. Putting that many TOW releases in the same time period is...optimist at best, to be polite.

It was, though. The rest you describe is simply a fear to angry reactions that people posted after some twitter affirmations that Cursed City wasn't limited production on first pre-order (it was), and lack of internal information. There was no conspiracy involved, only people telling stuff without being informed on the real situation and not wanting to repeat that mistake again ("if you don't know, say nothing"). But it honestly didn't have any consequence on Cursed City sales (it was sold out already, anyway). When the second wave happened, situation was different : no more Hype, no more Covid confining at home (that's why selling a solo game was interesting at that time), no more "new miniature only available in the box" situation (Cursed City happened before the new battletome for vampires, and was indeed the first place to have the new skeletons / zombies miniatures) so people weren't that interested anymore into buying a copy. Here, with TOW, situation is certainly another, but I'm pretty sure the fact game is still new and hyping is still playing in its apparent popularity. Like Horus Heresy in its time, and like it, I believe we will be in a same "stagnant" situation a couple years later...when Hype is down and people will start to see the same disadvantages of Old World as they already existed in WHFB (complexity of the game, difficulty of recruiting new blood, "lack of new releases"...)

Warcry rules will be fun. I expect same treatment than Gotrek : completely OP and meant for special scenarios rather than tournament stuff. The miniature looks great, but also its design is a bit "old school". It seems to have less hollow elements you'd find on "new style" miniatures, like hollow robes and such. I personnally love that, at last a miniature I'll enjoy to paint without worrying having a spot unreachable for my brush.

Here is a night goblin boss mounted on a giant cave squig. It is a conversion from the Squig Mangler kit...the other one is also intended to be treated the same, but it's still WIP.

Here is a Doom Diver Catapult from Avatar of War. It is based on a 50x100mm - while it's normally 50x75, I decided to put the servants directly with the catapult itself. So the bigger size should be fine in game terms.

Hello everyone, I'll be using this thread to post my paintings of my ongoing greenskin army for The Old World project. So expect a lot of square bases. This is an old collection originally meant for the last edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle (commonly called "V8"), this is why you'll see some models on old bases. I simply didn't want to ruin the ones I made a long time ago, and I'll use adapters for them. Some new miniatures will be directly built on the new base sizes. A lot of them are obvious GW models (old and new, but mostly new ), but there are also other sources like Mantic Games, Avatar of War and the occasionnal 3D printed obscure miniature range. Hope you don't mind ! You certainly saw my first painted models in the Old World army projects thread, I'll put them here for coherency.

It had nothing to do with competition, just a question of GW building up the Hype and failing to estimate correctly what would be the demand in this COVID time period. Once the sale window is missed, you can't go back. Here with TOW, you could argue competitors are "way better" and already established (Conquest, Kings of War, 9th age (lol)...). Still didn't stop people from buying same old design miniatures. Because it's not really about the "quality of rules" or "playing a better game" ; it's about going back to Warhammer Fantasy Battle, most of the time.

That's not true. There are heroes on foot that can really shine in battle, but the thing is : they're not meant to fight everything. Meaning they have strong and weak points, thus they can be countered with the right tool. Gotrek is meant to be fighting everything and still surviving because that's his core design - not because the design team can only do "weak heroes or OP ones". He's OP on purpose, that's what he is. And yes he's not very fun to fight against, since the real counter against him is to make sure he's wasted on a meaningless battle (basically ignore him). That's what happens with untouchable god characters in game designs : they're not very fun because they inherently have a very easy way to play and counter them that's way too much one-sided. I'll take instead the "weak AoS hero" every time, personnally.

There are indeed other games where heroes on foot are absolute untouchable gods by troopers, but neither AoS or WHFB / TOW are them. You're thinking more about Lord of the Ring, and even so it's debatable. Design of such games are very different and tend to talk about actual gods / demi-gods or mythical history flavour like Achille against the Troyens. IMHO, they tend to have very one-sided battles where the hero is indeed completely cleaving his way through multiple "mere mortals" and can effectively be stopped only by another hero. Depends where you find your fun. It's true AoS foot heroes are more about combos / synergies with other units than real battle beasts (though some do that job actually well, when handled properly). I don't mind it.

These miniatures are lovely. Old school chaos dwarves look really great on these new TOW 25mm square bases, thanks for the pictures.

It's a bad idea because points aren't linked to a unit in a vaccuum, but also to how the list is built and how units interact with other choices in it. When you have units available in Core and others in Special, it already limits you how you take them (freely or limited to a special amount of points). Try to take Black Orcs and Bestigors in Allies for your main list, and you'll instantly see why Chaos Warriors are superior. It's not a question of power or usefulness. There's simply a natural limit on how many Black Orcs you want to have in a Orcs and Goblins army list, first because they're actually expensive and second because you also need other kinds of characters in your list. Like wizards, specifically level 4, who are also expensive. Or night goblins, because they're also needed to unlock those juicy night goblin units. If you play Orcs and Goblins like me, you will be faced with that dilemna everytime you're building your list. In comparison, you can take as many chaos warrior units you want, and you don't need to take an expensive character for every of them. That's why it's bad to compare them only on point value : they don't fit the same role and most importantly, they don't have the same restrictions to include them in your army list. Of course taking 2 units of Black Orcs is doable - but it's not optimized. Because that means you must have 2 Black Orc characters that are also costy and if you do, you actually restrict yourself for the rest of other Orc and Goblin units you need to have in your army to fit important other roles. Shields aren't necessary if you kill your opponent before they have the chance to strike - and even less necessary if the enemy has a huge save modifier that will nullify whatever armor you have. Chaos Warriors have high initiative, high CC, good strength that's even better with +1. Why do you think halberd were considered the best option for them in 6th edition of Battle ? Because the point is for Chaos Warriors to strike first, then the enemy has no one to strike back at them. Halberds are still a very solid option for them in TOW because of that. Bestigors wish they had them instead of automatic heavy weapons that force them to strike last and waste their otherwise good Initiative 4. Chaos Warriors are more worried by losses due to shooting. Good thing shields can still be used with halberds against that (and that was really their main purpose in previous editions of Battle too). That's the trick with their high stats : they don't need as much volume of attack like other core units, it's the opposite. They can work very well in smaller units and still have the advantage. Hitting on 3 and wounding on 2 on average is awesome. Depends on how you want to build your army. Marauders and warhounds are cheap, so you have a take a lot to fulfill your core tax. With Chaos Warriors, it's easier. Freedom is the most important here, in the end. You don't have that with Black Orcs and Bestigors, and that's the point.

Comparing with units from other factions is a very bad idea. Black Orcs and Bestigors are Special units, Chaos Warriors are Core. Black Orcs have severe limitations as to how many you can take (you must take 1 Black Orc character to fit 1 unit of Black Orcs), meaning you can't have easily several units of Black Orcs because they have to pay a character tax. Dwarves are an all-heavy infantry list, they don't have cavalry or beasts and lack severely in mobility. M3 is a bigger deal than you think, low initiative means they can't really rely on killing enemies before they strike. Chaos Warriors have halberds for that. I think Chaos Warriors are fine as they are. They are meant to fill the core percentage, so of course they're not the most interesting choice of their list. That's why other units you're citing in different lists aren't core. While full plate armor is surely nice, having a save of 4+ with shields isn't to be laughed at in this game, since save modifiers are way rarer than in Battle.

There's a big difference between a campaign for a game you intend to make another edition and another that is intended to be last ever made before removing said game to replace it by another. One, you still have to worry about what you write in your background that's driving all the factions (you don't want to blow up the planet, for example ). The other, you can really go wild, it's the last thing you'll write anyway so better enjoy it to the fullest ! That's why all world campaigns GW made rarely made the background story go forth in a significant way, and why mostly everything that was described in them barely mattered in the end. In Warhammer Battle, it was always a bit more trickier than 40k, because the scale of the world was vastly different. in 40k, a campaign could be happening and deciding the fate of an unknow star system and effectively destroying it but not really mattering at the scale of 40k universe. In Battle...even a "small country" like Tilea being blown up was actually a big deal. It was a bit disappointing everything made for Storm of Chaos "didn't matter" in the end for the next edition (even the special armies, sic), but even so, it was really fun and exciting while it was going on. That's why it's still remembered fondly by us players who experienced it. Here, with The Old World, we know what will happen in the end but we don't know the details of that covered time period. That's where the campaign will focus, IMHO : in the Arcane Journals, they are already telling the invasion of Settra and how it went with the different factions, but it always stops at a specific point (generally a battle you have a scenario for in the journal). It will keep progressing as more books are released, maybe some events like a Warhammer World narrative tournament could decide of some of these future details. I think that's how they'll tend to be going rather than "wild results from a world campaign without any control".

When Cursed City box was sold the first time, sales expectations were also "blown away". Turned out they simply made a way too small number of boxes initially. So it really doesn't mean anything in comparison to AoS. It's also messy because people can perfectly buy some AoS kits for TOW (Gloomspite Gitz for night goblin units is one of the obvious ones), and vice versa. Better talk about stock numbers in 1 or 2 years ahead. That's where the real long term standing of the game can be truly seen. Cursed City after its initial release was...much less enthousiastic, to say the least. There are still unsold boxes in my GW store, and that's already telling a lot...

Storm of Chaos is not End of Times. Storm of Chaos' story conclusion was basically ignored for next Warhammer Edition as if it never happened, because of...we don't exactly know why, to be honest. Legends say it was the players who weren't happy how it concluded in the White Dwarf's novel. Still, it was a fun world campaign everyone at that time was excited to play part of.