[The Rumour Thread]

I think a lot of people also buy models with the intention of playing with them... at some point, they just never actually do. 

[The Rumour Thread]

11 hours ago, Ejecutor said:

About Grugni's duardin look, I think they would follow the Hobbit Iron Hill dwarves' aesthetic. Very geometrical, with some turtle reminder, with scales and big chunky shields:




That in addition to some golemkind similar to what we have in WoW:



Those two have a very cohesive look, IMO.

 

The problem with that is it is pretty derivative of the LOTR aesthetic. 

I think a cool aesthetic for Grungi's Duardin would be to have a prevalance of fur, pelts, hide and leather. The Khardon have the heavy metal armour look already. 

Have a hunter/mountian-man aesthetic. Big pipes, cross-bows, hammers and tool boxes with big fur lined cloaks made from leathery hide. Buckles, belts . Sleigh-chariots pulled by Rhinox style creaturers, Stone tricycles. Funnily enough, GW touched on what I think would work with the Leagues of Votann's Grimnyr model.

With it being AoS they could really push the "magical rock and ore" dynamic. With them being used to power wacky vehicles and war machines. You could even have them "becoming one with the mountain" with rock and crystal sprouting from their skin and beards, fusing with and becoming part of the moutains themselves. I played around with Image creator for some concepts. This is something approaching how I thinik Grungi's Duardin could work. 

 

 

 

[The Rumour Thread]

27 minutes ago, DD-Lord said:

The designers will need to really give it their all because, currently, the other two Dwarven factions have taken and claimed for themselves many things the original dwarves had.

In terms of a "design ethos" and style guide for a potentail Grungi's Duardin Faction I could see an approach of -

Fyreslayers - Fire & Axe. 

Kharadron - Air & Powder.

Grungi's Duardin - Stone & Hammer. 

You could have Duardin with stone-scale skin, Mountian "Goat" cavalry and rock and ore Gholems. With characters incorporating elements of different rare stones and different types of Hammer being the weapon of choice. 

[The Rumour Thread]

Why they only made 2500 Copies of the leather bound The End And The Death I just do not know. They could have easily sold triple that amount. It really does feel like GW leaves a lot of money on the table. 

2 hours ago, Ejecutor said:

I think we won't see Grugni's Duardins

I'm not so sure. I personally would really like to see them and there has been so many hints that Grugni is up to something. On the one hand AoS has both Fyreslayers and Kharadron, which are two decent Duardin factions, but they are pretty small and could really do with some more unit option to flesh out their ranges. Does AoS really need 3 full Duardin factions? (Potentially 4 with the rumoured Chorfs on the horizon) I suppose it really depends on what the AoS studio aspires for in terms of faction count for AoS.

There's currently 24 AoS factions. They could just straight up add "Grugni's Duardin" "Malerion's Aelves" "Kragnos's Drogrukh" and "Chorfs" into the mix, bringing the total faction count to 28. 

Although I suspect that with ToW having traditional Dwarves. You might be right. 

[The Rumour Thread]

2 hours ago, Luperci said:

Also I never said wood elf archer spam is broken, I said that's what I've heard from others, I have no clue about ToW rules myself

 

3 hours ago, Hollow said:

(Not having a go at anyone specific, was just an example)

 

[The Rumour Thread]

56 minutes ago, Chikout said:

Within the next 5 or 6 years, they will have updated every faction they want to keep. New and improved sculpts have been their business model for so long. What do they do when they can't improve anymore? 

This is a great question and one I ruminate over pretty frequently. As/when GW updates or releases a new model,unit or faction these days, they are generally of a quality that will carry them for many more years to come. I have come to the conclusion however, that there is so much potential design space within the Warhammer settings that I really don't see the. hitting creative blocks any time soon. 

With AoS you still have the vast majorty of factions with what I consider to be pretty significant gaps within their ranges. You have several that could go through complete redesigns/refeshes, several that could be expanded significantly and that's before you even consider the pleothera of potential new factions could be explored. 

There could also be new games that take place in the setting of The Mortal Realms. New Skirmish, New scales etc. 

[The Rumour Thread]

19 minutes ago, alyra said:

yup.

i love elves and clean order faction.

so i bet u like chaos and daemons factions?

 

[The Rumour Thread]

1 minute ago, alyra said:

dont need to play even 1 game to prove it.

Yeah... we are oil and water. 😅

[The Rumour Thread]

A personal hot take. I hate "Meta", balance, Math-hammer and those who are obsessed with comparing theoretical matchups of specific units in isolation. I can't stand the prevalance of online whinging and moaning that comes with people exlaiming that things are broken and need nerfed or boosted after rules have been avalible for a matter of days. Worse more is the fact that those who scream loudest are then just parroted and their takes are taken as the prevailing conventional wisdom. "Woodelf archer spam is broken" when it is something I bet my bottom dollor on hardly anyone having actually played and having practical real-world experience of. (Not having a go at anyone specific, was just an example) The rush to have a hot take, breakdown or to look through rules for a couple of hours and proclaim the the sky is falling and that certian things are over/underpowered.

Bit of a rant, and unfortunatley it isn't going anywhere. I just really dislike it. Bluergh. 

 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

1 hour ago, Kitsumy said:

how do u know that?? 300 workers in that little building seems way too much for me

This is a direct quote from GamesWorkshop's most recent 6 month financial report for 2023/24. 

"The total number of jobs in our Warhammer Studio is 310" 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

3 minutes ago, Draznak said:

Is there a source for this?

 

You can read about staff (and lots of other interesting GW info) in their 6 month reports which can be found here - https://investor.games-workshop.com/annual-reports-and-half-year-results

[Warhammer - The Old World]

11 minutes ago, alyra said:

what do i think????

i allready think that deleding half of the most iconic armies is one of the biggest failures in the warhammer history

So deleted that they have rules and huge ranges of new models! If only Lizardmen had a complete new range of updated plastic models that can be used. Oh wait, they literally do. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

7 minutes ago, Public Universal Duardin said:

I want to believe this is people buying minis to use in TOW , rather than basic GW supply issues.

A lot of the Beastmen kits have sold out with the release of ToW, many were avalible before the ToW dropped. 

(Same with the CoS Dwarf Kits) 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

I just do not get the uproar regarding factions being "squatted" (which is completely the wrong term.) I assume these folk haven't read the Arcane Jounrals yet. They are 50 page 'booklets' that add a little flavour and a few options, but that's about it.

For all intents and purposes the "Legacy" factions are in a better spot than the Core factions! They are getting free rules and most of them have entire ranges of updated new models which are for sale today! Like... it just seems mad to me that people are screaming "my faction has been set on fire" when you can literally play the armies, you can buy the armies and you are getting rules for the armies AND they have models you can buy NOW and are updated sculpts. Unless you only attend and play in offical GW tournments it really doesn't make any kind of difference. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

3 hours ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

He might've just heard it at the Open Day, not sure. It's Honest Wargamer's WFB channel.

The Square Based Youtube channel is great. I'd highly recommend it to folks interested in all things ToW. The army breakdowns Rob has done are genuinely the best I have come across so far. The Square Based Podcast with Val are entertaining, informative and open with some super spicy interpretive dance! lol 

https://www.youtube.com/@SquareBasedOldWorld

[The Rumour Thread]

18 minutes ago, dmorley21 said:

Just want to add that the stuff for Dwarfs is out there… like advanced copies. I think they will be revealed soon. So that adds to this person’s credibility. 

So it will be a..... short wait? 

[The Rumour Thread]

28 minutes ago, Luperci said:

He'll have to wait though I suppose, not sure on the odds of a new dark aelf faction showing up in the same ed as chaos duardin getting their own army.

2025 is a curious one. 40k 10th was in 2023 and 11th edtion wont be until 2026. AoS 4 is scheduled for 2024. There could be a new HH starter set as Age Of Darkness released in 2022, although I suspect they want HH (and ToW) to have longer cycles than 3 years. I wonder if we will see a new system, an updated one, or if they will go for significant releases for the current editions. (Which could mean multiple large scale releases for 40k, AoS, HH and ToW.)

I'd love to see AoS kick into high gear with the launch of 4th edition. Skaven, Beasts, Ogors, Chorfs, Malerion. Yes please. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

14 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

This is simply untrue, you are wrong about Empire and you are wildly misleading about 40k.

No it is not. No I am not. and again... no I am not.

14 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

The imperium isnt popular,

Yeah... ok. 

15 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

they've previously made up half gws sales in total

This is forum talk that has been taken and repeated so often that it has become "fact". There has never been confirmation of this. What you have read on Warseer and Dakka isn't gospel. 

 

16 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

best debateably human aesthetic wise.

So what would you "debate" they are then? Orks? Elves? Dwarves? Reptiles? I'd say the super humans that look like humans, are written about as humans, operate as humans and are tasked with defending humanity are.... infact, human. 

18 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Alan Merret

In the interview he said that the sales were dissapointing, which is not the same as being bad. They were dissapointing because of the amount of resources they allocated to them. As a side note Rountree giving Merrett the boot was one of the best things that happened to the company in 2016. (Which coincidentaly was the beginning of GWs meteoric rise in value) 

26 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Meanwhile, from extensive sales experience I can tell you first hand the human Warhammer armies were never top sellers, certainly in the 00's

As someone who had a trade account in the early 00's I consider my direct sales experience to be completely irrelevant to how GW operates today. It's such a different company. (Although WOC, HE and Empire were the top 3 in my experience) 

 

Anyways... this is all off topic and irrelevant. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

What do you use for that?  Last time I tried, I found the converters I used couldn't handle GW epubs, always ended up with messed up formatting.  Haven't tried in a long while, though.

I used Adobe as I have it for work. There are dozens of free programs avalible which you can use to convert. Just google epub to pdf converter. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

54 minutes ago, Sception said:

A word on the epubs, for anyone else who got those.  GW uses some pretty wonky formatting on the already wonky epub3 file type and a lot of readers don't handle it well.

Apple users shouldn't have any issues, as the default books app works fine.

On windows PC, GW recommends Azardi, and that's the only reader that's been able to work for GW epubs for me on windows since the old redium extension for chrome went chrome-os exclusive.  Azardi itself is a bit of a pain to find these days as most of the default distributions for it seem to be defunct.  I was able to get it here: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/E-Book/Azardi-eReader.shtml

For Android Users, Google Play Books works, except it has a file size maximum of 100mb, which isn't enough for the big rulebook, and most other android ereaders can't handle GW's epubs at all.  The one I know that does work is Colibrio Reader, so use that.

I'd recommend converting the epub files into PDFs. So much easier. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

3 minutes ago, Bosskelot said:

It's often not about nostalgia at all, but just simply; they're far more simple to build, and far easier to paint down to less details and more static poses leading to less of the model being "exposed" to a persons vision

I remember when I returned to purchasing 40k after several years and bought myself new sisters. I made the massive mistake of approaching the build as I had done with Warhammer minis in the distant past. Clipping all the bits off the sprue (Heads, torsos, weapons in different tubs) Only to come to the realisation that building newer models was a completely different experience. They were difficult to build and actually required following the instructions pretty carefully. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

48 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Like it means anything is silly, especially when GW is struggling to make anything right now

Which is demonstrably not the case. You don't generate a quarter of a billion pounds in revenue over 6 months by not making anything. 

 

48 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

I'd be surprised by too many human armies, they long ago discovered humans don't sell anywhere near as well as everyone else

 

No they didn't. Empire was always one of the biggest selling factions in Fantasy, The Imperium of man (and it's multiple human-based subfactions) are 40k biggest selling "faction" and Marines are literally the biggest selling product liine and they are... super humans. Every bit of information we have and any metric we have access to shows that human-based factions were, are and will continue to be the main profit drivers for all of GW games. Because they sell more than everyone else. 

 

48 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

I'd expect a similar low effort drop feed for their releases in a couple of years

You're definition of "low" effort seems to be pretty far removed from realities definition of it. There has been plenty showing the care, work and attention put into the system and the faction releases. The O+G release has over 20 kits returning. Which is more than some other companies aspire to release in an entire year for their entire games. 

 

48 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

paying over the odds

 

In relation to what? The odds are what the market can bare. Basic economics. The fact the line has sold out means that the odds... are very much in GW favour. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

33 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

Estalia and Tilea

For sure... Would love to see them explored. There's so much interesting potential in ToW. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

2 minutes ago, Jator said:

I'm kinda bummed out by the fact that all the obvious possible new armies are just regular pseudohistorical humans.

The Old World is literally a fantasy pseudohistorical take on the real world though. 😅 It's what the setting is. I think there is a pretty significant cross-over between Warhammer fantasy rank n flank and historical wargamers. Combined with the data sets from Creative Assmebly and the Total War franchise, I think the popularity of Kislev and Grand Cathay cannot be denied. 

Hopefully ToW continues to do well and over the coming years we get to not only explore Kislev, Cathay, Moot and Araby, but stuff like the Zamesi Tribes, Hobgobla-khans, The Kingon of Ind, The Hinterlands of Khuresh and the various Pirate Coasts. That would be cool. 

[Warhammer - The Old World]

16 minutes ago, Souleater said:

How do the ‘get them before they’re gone’ Underworld Warbands fit into the idea that plastics aren’t viable for small runs?  Do we really see them being reused in combat boxes or something like Hachette’s Partworks? 
 

Not trying to be snarky. I’m genuinely puzzled by this. 

 

Take everything I'm about to say with a huge pinch of salt, because at the end of the day, I do not know the facts. This is my take. 

Underworlds as a system and product is designed primarily for 2 reasons. 

1 - To act as a small "competitive" tournament style game, allowing for GamesWorkshop to have a dog within that market. It is about disrupting an existing market and exposing individuals to the GW eco-system. The entire system might not even turn a profit, but can act as a loss-leader to generate revenue from individuals who are exposed to the GW eco-system. You like this warband? We have an entire range of similar models that you can buy. Like those models? There is an entire eco-system of other games you can enjoy. It's about market penetration and revenue generated by exposure and customer aquisition. 

2- To act as a "feeder-system" to the GW eco system (AoS primarily) and market saturation. Similar to the first point, it's about exposure, it is also a direct answer to the many different game systems that have popped up over the last decade or so. GW wants to be in every single wargame sphere. It also allows for a small testing system for sculpts and ideas that can (and do) lead to greater development within AoS. If a warband sells out, is reprinted and sells out again, you can bet your bottom dollar that creative avenue will be explored in greater depth within AoS. 

Games Workshop is all about complete and utter market domination. Underworlds is just a part of that.