TOW THE OLD WORLD - Poll: Will TOW be a faithful successor to WFB 8th edition?

So we know that The Old World is on its way in 3-4 years. What we don't know is what kind of game it will be. The purpose of this poll and thread is to have a little bit of fun speculating.

How confident are you that TOW will be true to WFB? In terms of model aesthetics? Lore? Armies? Rules? Complexity?

Do you feel it will be something different entirely? And if so, what might it be?


Vote and discuss!

 

As long as GW don’t bugger it up by relegating it to Forge World, I personally am pretty confident, so I said ‘Probably’.

The fact that they’re bringing back square bases is itself pretty much a guarantee that at least the basics of the game will be the same - it will still be a rank-and-flank game that focuses upon strategy and cold steel rather than teleporting and objective-grabbing. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure the runaway success of Warhammer: Total War was the thing that tipped the balance into GW making this move in the first place, so they can’t afford to mess around with it too much, otherwise the main customer base they want to attract (the Warhammer: Total War players) will shy away from it, and all their investment will be for nothing. Therefore, I’m pretty sure they won’t change too much of it.

The only concerns I personally have are which profile system GW will choose, whether they will treat all armies with the same respect or produce an even worse meta than the one we have in 8th (certainly a meta is rising in AoS Second Edition and 40K 8th Edition has reached the same point Fantasy reached in its 8th Edition only it is in 400 times more of a mess) and, as mentioned above, if they decide to release everything in plastic or (shudder) Forge World Resin...

 

I really don't know, i think this is the big unknown right now, so I voted 50/50. I am also not currently actively wargaming, so I don't know what GW's current design philosophy is.

 

By even "worse meta", do you mean balance?

 

Yes that's what I mean.

 

I thought the balance for 8th was regarded as being pretty good. It was certainly far more balanced than 7th edition. There were a few match ups that were tough, but even the big boys (HE, DE, WoC) could be taken down reliably by lower tier armies.




As for the poll question, I voted "4". I'm a little more pessimistic than I am optimistic on whether or not GW will pull this one off. I worry about elements of AoS seeping into TOW.

 

Exactly, my concern is that GW might balance Warhammer: the Old World less well so that there are a lot fewer middle tier armies and more upper and lower tier armies, and that the upper tier ones are more difficult to beat with the lower tier ones. You’ve noticed yourself from the Age of Sigmar Tier List thread that AoS isn’t completely balanced out and has powercreep issues like 8th Edition and previous, despite the General’s Handbook, so GW haven’t cleared their name of allowing powercreep to take over.

 

Okay, I understand what you're saying, that makes sense. I certainly hope that GW will at least attempt to recreate the balance level of 8th (more balance would be better, but I'd be happy with the balance level of 8th).

As for powercreep, it doesn't always occur from one book to another, but it would appear that the general trend holds true. I'm doubtful that GW will ever fully get rid of it.

 

So after 14 votes cast, the average vote works out to exactly 5!

At the moment, it would appear as though the general sentiment is that TOW has a 50/50 shot of being a true continuation of Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th Edition.

 

That's pretty much how I voted. Honestly, it could go either way, depending on the team assigned to work on it. I want to believe it will come out great, but there's three years to wait before we see a finished product and I've been burned before.

 

Do you feel like the odds of TOW being a proper successor to 8th edition WFB increase, decrease or stay the same if the game is produced by ForgeWorld instead of Games Workshop itself?

 

I think the odds themselves would stay the same, but the horrendous prices of the miniatures would be a real kick in the nether-regions to pretty much everyone - the vast pool of potential new players because they would have to spend a lot more than they originally envisioned if they wanted to play, and the existing players because they would have to spend more than they originally envisioned if they wanted to add anything to their existing armies or start a new one. I would certainly say that quite a lot of potential players would be put off by this move.

This and the fact that Warhammer Fantasy has a much bigger fan base than Middle Earth and possibly the Horus Heresy (meaning GW could afford to sell TOW miniatures cheaper as there would be a lot more prospective buyers) are the two reasons that I’m hoping will reach out to GW’s business sense and prompt them to release most of the miniatures in plastic rather than thrice-accursed Forge World resin.

 

Do you hate Forge World resin simply because it is extremely expensive or is the material also sub-par in your experience (like FineCast)?

 

Fact?

Where has this notion been stipulated as fact?

 

I have some miniature Warship models from Spartan Games. Sadly Spartan is no more.

But the models were beautiful castings. So much so that some people complained when they released the occasional model in pewter!

Resin can be very high quality. Resin cast by a UK based company can be very high quality.

 

The former. Never built any Forge World models (partly because of the horrendous prices). I imagine that that’s also the reason why maybe you also haven’t built any Forge World models (given that you’re asking about my experiences with it)?

I think this is pretty obvious given the following two definite facts:

1. Even when it was on its last legs, Fantasy still got regular new releases from GW, whereas Middle Earth only generally got something once a year at that time, and the quality of those few releases deteriorated with each passing year (hinting pretty clearly at Fantasy’s greater popularity)
2. Warhammer: Total War has been a huge success, becoming probably one of the most successful games the Creative Assembly ever made, gathering a very large playerbase and being the deciding factor in the resurrection of its parent game.

True, but I would still say that that wouldn’t justify a unit of 12 Forge World Iron Hills Dwarves being priced at double the cost of the same number of similar Dwarves in plastic (which are pretty much as good in quality if you ask me), or a chariot for said Iron Hills Dwarves, which looks good but is quite a low-lying model, costing almost as much as 3 Trygons (which are on the same size base but much larger, more dangerous and more impressive-looking).

 

I had to look up what those were. Luckily (?) neither is part of WFB. (Also, a chariot pulled by nine Rams was not to be found in Middle Earth ...but that’s a topic for some other thread.)

I will concede numbered point [2]. Do you reallly think all those video gamers will want to try out the tabletop version? In a video game, for $69 (?), they got all the armies, but four times that much money would barely obtain one army of plastic models.

 

I’m not inferring either of them were part of Warhammer Fantasy, I was just using them as examples of Forge World’s crazy pricing.

You’re conceding point 2 yet you’re challenging it at the same time?

 

The only Forge World model I have is the Games Day Limited Edition Slann model. The sculpt is very nice and the resin looks great to me. I was just curious if you had a different experience.

I agree with you that it is extremely costly!

I agree with this sentiment. There was a time when Forge World sculpts were overall better than GW. I think that for the most part, that gap has closed. The greater Daemons are a fine example of this. When the current Forge World greater daemons were released way back when, the concurrent GW pewter offerings were vastly inferior. However, today, the new plastic GW greater daemons are every bit as good as their Forge World counterparts.

Not all of them will come over. But if only a quarter of them were to do so, it would be a huge influx of new players. As for Total War: Warhammer, $69 will not get you all the armies. With the base game you only get 4 armies and even then there are DLC extras available to fully fill out those rosters. So it is a pretty expensive experience (and that is before you even consider the gaming computer you need to run it).

 

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn............................................................................................................... I don't know. But in my experience, while I like Forge World's stuff, they tend to leave things a little... incomplete...