GW News: BIG N' SMALL WAAAGH! COMIN'

It's trivial, but oddly effective given how meaningless it is.

What else can I say but:

 

If it had been effective, GW wouldn't be releasing TOW. TOW is their attempt to recapture that lost market.

Most people that ported over from WHFB did so because AoS was the currently supported GW fantasy game. If GW were to stop supporting AoS in favour of something new, many players would jump ship onto the new thing for the same reason, they don't want to play an unsupported game. Those that genuinely love AoS would not likely be swayed if the new game used AoS character names.

Not much. I thought you would have learnt your lesson the last time boy!

 

What's your point? That their strategy wasn't a 100% effective?
It doesn't change the fact that the only reason several characters/factions/things exist in AoS is purely to nostalgia bait people into it.

 

The reason why they had WHFB names in AoS at launch (2015) was because they had an incomplete game. Hell, they didn't even have points in the game. They poached as much as they could from WHFB: models, factions, themes and yes... names. If you had removed WHFB content from launch AoS, you'd be pretty much left the Stormcast (and even they carry the Sigmar name/iconography). Obviously, the inclusion of those things were also driven with the intention of facilitating the transfer players at launch, but as it stands today, anyone willing to make the WHFB to AoS switch would have already done so. Nostalgic names have little use today for the purposes of player recruitment. "People like @NIGHTBRINGER ", as you put it, will not be swayed.

 

AOS has left a bitter aftertaste to the name Sigmar. TOW would do well to abolish him from their history/fluff

 

I share your sentiments, but ultimately I think they are pretty much stuck with him. It would require a pretty big retcon on GW's part.

 

Agreed. It's easier (and more cost effective) to recycle something old than to design/create something new.

 

I share the sentiment but ultimately the most bitter potion of all is the RetCon.

Just put Sigmar in his place.
Big hero / Minor deity.. among many others.

 

I wonder how much (if any) retconning we will see in TOW. Surely they won't eliminate a central figure such as Sigmar, but what else might change?


It's really a shame that GW decided to discard (i.e. free pdf rules only) most of the best armies in WHFB and simplify the magic phase. The game had definite potential and we were shown a fair bit of good stuff. Perhaps a shiny new Chaos Dwarfs army book might have been able to tempt me away from my beloved 8th edition? Perhaps?

I suspect the TOW launch is just around the corner. I'm also guessing that its release will spell the death of 8th edition discussion on this forum (well... the TOW launch and the fact that our pal @Lizards of Renown has left us).

 

Taken from the new release info on Warhammer Community:
"Don’t worry if you’re more of a follower of Hashut or interpreter of the Great Plan – Legacy army list PDFs for the other seven factions from Warhammer Fantasy Battles will be available shortly after launch."

 

We've known those were coming for quite some time now. That's why I said...

The free pdf rules are worthless. We've seen them implemented in AoS and where that eventually led to. The free pdf armies gradually fell behind the fully supported ones until they were essentially unviable. In the case of AoS, some of those armies were all together scraped down the line.

Just like with AoS, the "all your armies are playable" strategy is nothing but an empty ploy to pull players in. If it turns out otherwise, I'll be pleasantly surprised and will admit as much. But until then, I consider the game to be DOA. Others of course are perfectly free to feel otherwise.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com...-old-world-the-tomb-kings-of-khemri-revealed/

 

That's nothing new, it was mentioned a good while back that this would be the case, and it's a good thing that everyone is getting rules to start with - as-is, ignoring any future updates, what we'll be getting in the two Order and Destruction books plus these PDFs does give us a workable 9th Edition with all factions playable.

But surely this is being done in order to provide longevity for the game, through giving these factions temporary PDFs to start with and then reintroducing them one by one through the release of campaign books? After all, we know that though the Vampires and the Skaven have hidden themselves at the time TOW begins, they will both make a return, which can be marked with campaign books. Similarly Chaos Dwarf and Ogre migrations into the Old World, Dark Elf raids and Old Worlder explorations into Lustria can also be showcased in supplement volumes. This strategy would certainly help to keep the game going over the next few years (especially with there being few new factions that could potentially be successful new releases after that), plus starting with a smaller number of factions will make it easier to get the initial balance sorted out.

By contrast it makes no sense to just sideline half the armies in Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer Total War, from both a moral and a business perspective - given that where in AoS' case they were developing a new game in a new setting, here they're meant to be recreating an old game to catch the eye of old customers. I'm hoping sense and patience will prevail here and we'll gradually see these excluded factions trickling back into the game.

 

When I first heard of TOW I was hopeful. After this latest news, the cost of entry and rule changes we have been shown just make me want to keep playing 8th edition.

 

It's good to hear that more people will be available to keep 8th edition alive!

 

An optimistic view. You clearly have a much greater opinion of GW than I have!

 

I am also of the opinion/suspicion/hope that this is the route that GW is taking. Given the setting of TOW, 25 or so years before the Great War Against Chaos, it makes sense for them to add factions as part of a gradual build up to a release akin to Storm of Chaos/End Times based on that event as well as contemporaneous events like Malekith's invasion of Ulthuan and the second major civil war of the Skaven.

 

Someone has to keep some optimism for the game alive to balance out the pessimism. It's that eternal battle between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force again, methinks

Not so much that, more that I'm simply hopeful TOW will work out differently to what happened in AoS, simply because it makes more logical sense for it to not follow that path. Of course, we all know GW have not always been good at understanding what's logical, but there's no harm in living in hope.

As I've mentioned previously, it doesn't matter if the main 9 factions are powercreeped in the future, one simply can make it a house rule to ignore all newer content and keep playing with these starting threshold lists for all factions, and if your gaming group are in any way decent they will understand the reasoning behind it and follow suit (indeed it's in the best interests of those who play one or more of the PDF factions to subscribe to this method). If they don't and want to chase the new releases and damage game balance, time to look for a new gaming group that is less of a slave to GW and want a ninth edition with all factions in the same boat (which they are if the starting army lists are used, it'd be like playing 6th Edition with the Ravening Hordes book - a perfectly viable way of doing so). If there's one thing we Fantasy stalwarts have proven good at over the past few years it's avoiding chasing GW's continual releases for stuff.

Good to see Nekaph finally get his own model, plus upgrades for the Tomb Herald and Tomb Swarms (though of course they'll be in Forge World Resin, as GW are determined to use it as a replacement for Finecast now despite the fact they're capable of making all of this in superior plastic). Additionally GW mentioned that more would appear in the future, so hopefully updated plastic Skeleton units will be on the cards too, in time.

Not to mention it's great that the main rulebook will be available on its own upon launch this time, as opposed to the Horus Heresy where it didn't arrive on its own until later on. Plus, individual army books will be present as well as two big army list volumes for Order and Destruction, allowing players to just collect those for the armies they play if they wish.

Love the blue borders and the army-oriented cover art pieces too. Certainly aesthetics-wise this is already my personal favourite Edition.