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 herjan1987 wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
I can confirm that the image, with the black tassles, is from the 8th ed army book - not a new image.

Okay, why keep a ten year old image around?

Also I said, that hastings was rumoring that they painted up some Orc boar boys recently and old Tomb Kings and Bretonnian plastics went back to production to recieve fancy paintjobs.

Source:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M-oyypDZe6s

Look at 1:34

Why not? Couple bits so expense is about 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001£. (and that probably is several magnitudes more expensive than it actually is)

They keep old art as well...

If you think they would keep old sprues around for OOP items when keeping them around costs more cash why have hard time believing they would keep images that have far less expenses?

 herjan1987 wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
I can confirm that the image, with the black tassles, is from the 8th ed army book - not a new image.

Okay, why keep a ten year old image around?

Umm, why would they delete it? GW clearly keeps the digital assets going back a long way, they're releasing White Dwarfs from 17 years ago on Warhammer+, it's not like they're recreating those White Dwarfs from scratch, they have all those digital assets on hand.

Also I said, that hastings was rumoring that they painted up some Orc boar boys recently and old Tomb Kings and Bretonnian plastics went back to production to recieve fancy paintjobs.

Source:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M-oyypDZe6s

Look at 1:34

I know it's a rumour, but also I reckon the more likely thing is they already had those models around. GW has a bunch of studio painted models beyond what we see.... and in this case they were ones we had seen before people just didn't recognise them at first

At the end of the day, we don't really know what GW are planning and what their motivations are. It's oft stated that Bretonnians were terrible because they were too generic and not popular, but a lot of TOW stuff they've teased is around Bretonnia for whatever reason. A lot of concept art I'm sure is generated during the conception and development of a new project, why GW have chosen to do what they've done, I think people are reading into it too much at this point.

Bretonnians were a self-fulfilling prophecy. They lacked popularity because they had a 13 year old book. Dark Eldar were in a similar state before 2010.

Same story for Sisters of Battle as well



It's a repeat pattern with wargamers. If GW ignores an army model and/or rules wise for long enough the sales and interest drop enough that it falls into a deadzone where it needs significant investment to bring it back up.
Marketing also plays a big part in it; if GW just don't mention or market an army for a long while it drops in popularity.

Another part of the equation is that until recently they relied on faction champions to drive enthusiasm and engagement within the studio itself, except that they were self-selected informal volunteer roles so if there was no-one in the studio that really wanted “Arthurian knights, but comedy French” as a faction, no-one had any scheduled time to work on them, further contributing to the vicious cycle of inattention and neglect.

I am not going to worry about some of you negative Nancy's. I am still super excited.

Moving on to another rumour, the release date. Their is a great deal of talk saying the release date would likely be Q3 or Q4 of this year to work along with the 40th anniversary of Warhammer. But according to some of the distributers i have spoken to seem to under the impression that the release date would likely be in Q1 of 2024.

While i would prefer the earlier date, i am fine with early next year. what are your thoughts?

 Paymaster Games wrote:
I am not going to worry about some of you negative Nancy's. I am still super excited.

Moving on to another rumour, the release date. Their is a great deal of talk saying the release date would likely be Q3 or Q4 of this year to work along with the 40th anniversary of Warhammer. But according to some of the distributers i have spoken to seem to under the impression that the release date would likely be in Q1 of 2024.

While i would prefer the earlier date, i am fine with early next year. what are your thoughts?

I can imagine they do a starter box for the anniversary, it would be awesome. And gives some build up time for it.
Just a this is where it begins, and then starting off the next year with a look at the full game release.

 Paymaster Games wrote:
I am not going to worry about some of you negative Nancy's. I am still super excited.

Moving on to another rumour, the release date. Their is a great deal of talk saying the release date would likely be Q3 or Q4 of this year to work along with the 40th anniversary of Warhammer. But according to some of the distributers i have spoken to seem to under the impression that the release date would likely be in Q1 of 2024.

While i would prefer the earlier date, i am fine with early next year. what are your thoughts?

I would LOVE to be excited, but I was excited to see what would happen after End Times, and got burned something ferocious.

Once burned, twice shy.

If the full story we have now was available to us back then it would not have been received NEARLY as bad. Major communication failure on behalf of 'we don't do market research' era GW.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If the full story we have now was available to us back then it would not have been received NEARLY as bad. Major communication failure on behalf of 'we don't do market research' era GW.

That’s because the story we have now didn’t exist then. The dude running the company at the time literally thought no-one would care if the rules were terrible and the background nonexistent if the minis were good enough. Which was a shame because he greenlit the og Stormcast too.

 Overread wrote:

It's a repeat pattern with wargamers. If GW ignores an army model and/or rules wise for long enough the sales and interest drop enough that it falls into a deadzone where it needs significant investment to bring it back up.
Marketing also plays a big part in it; if GW just don't mention or market an army for a long while it drops in popularity.

I don't think its so much significant investment, you just need a wave of models.

The problem is the Brets lacked obvious avenues for expansion.
I mean... you could release new kits for young knights, average knights, better knights, best knights, knights on flying horses, not-quite knights but still riding horses and then the various peasants. But its not obviously sending the faction in an interesting new direction.

There's probably some sort of scope for monstrous cav maybe - but it would kind of go against the fluff. See also doing something with warmachines, or magic.

Without any insight, I'd be surprised if this came out this year if you assume a new edition of 40k is meant to dominate the summer.

Most factions don't need a "new direction" and to say that an army based on Medieval concepts of the Knights of the Round Table and real french armies has no avenue to expand is possibly just overlooking that its a huge theme you can expand upon.


And when it comes to GW a model is concept art, sculpting, mould design, mould production, master copies, painting, photos, cardstock, shipping - its a big investment and that's not even counting writing words, editing and ordering new books and shipping them as well.



And many times just updating models to a newer sculpt design with modern materials/concepts can be a big interest spark. Just look at how many forces in AoS are really behind - heck the Skaven are still running around with 1st generation plastics and metal and Skaven are a really popular army in general. Old World was neglected for a long time; it didn't get the marketing, nor the updates it required to keep current and its sales fell. Once interest and sales fell local interest got harder. It didn't help that GW also made the games larger and larger so the model count to get started went up.

So you had fewer local players; less marketing and company interest and a bigger model count to get started (accepting that with the rank and file rules most armies didn't work until at least 1K points and ideally 1.5K).





But if you were expanding Brets you can do loads of updates
3 or 4 ground cavalry kits; 2 or 3 pegasus kits for infantry
Several named heroes in both forms.
A big centre stage lady of the lake on unicorn style model.

A court of famous knights (round table) group of named heroes.

Various kinds of rank and file infantry and peasant infantry.

Siege weapons - light support weapons and all. Yes even Brets would need such weapons in war.


We've not even touched on things like ranged weapon options; fancy fantasy units plucked from King Arthur's legends or French mythology around those times; nor even what real militaries could bring to the mix.
Heck they could have spliced a load of ranger Robbin Hoods in and mounted versions for light ranged cavalry.

Brets actually had a whole bunch of warmachines in 3rd ed that could have been brought back. Also, units of foot knights. There's plenty they could have done that would have also expanded them beyond their 3 meme lists of All The Horses, All The Pegasi, and Agincourt Peasantry.

I mean... you could release new kits for young knights, average knights, better knights, best knights, knights on flying horses, not-quite knights but still riding horses and then the various peasants. But its not obviously sending the faction in an interesting new direction.

There's probably some sort of scope for monstrous cav maybe - but it would kind of go against the fluff. See also doing something with warmachines, or magic.

I think people forget what a weird retcon those 'fluff' restrictions were. Earlier Bret armies happily fielded equivalent cannons and crossbows. The main difference was Empire had better foot knights and handguns, while Bret had war altars and +4 Shock elite cav (2 attacks) which the Empire list couldn't match.

Without any insight, I'd be surprised if this came out this year if you assume a new edition of 40k is meant to dominate the summer.

The very first preview (November 2019- the 'we have a logo and that's all' preview) put it at 3+ years off, minimum. And that was before everything world-wide and GW's own struggle to sort out their production and warehouse issues.

They might have eyed summer 2023 originally in a pure thought experiment draft release schedule, but even then I doubt it. With all the everything that's happened, I wouldn't be shocked by 2025.

Plus lets not forget a good half of AoS armies are basically running around with utterly tiny unit rosters right now

Why are the Brets such a point of negativity here? The brets have a good army

Knights -
RotR and Knights Errent have the same role
Grail Knights - General or BSB bodyguard/ Hammer unit
Questing Knights - Different Role then all above knights, can act as a anvil unit and can effectively fight, heavies, big guys, and monsters
Pegasus Knights - Flyer unit and big guy unit

Commoners -
Squires - light cav
Grail Pilgrams - Heavy foot
Men-at -arms - light foot
Bowmen - Archer
Trebuchet - a pretty good artillery piece

Do you need to expand this army? Not really this army is pretty much figured out, but lets say we had too here are some ideas supported by fluff.
Sailors (the Brets do have the best sailors in the old world according to Man-O-War, it is possible that they would come ashore)
Brigands (Robin Hood) Scouts
Woodsmen - Modeled after Frankish Ax Throwers
Wood Elf Impersonators/ fans - Modeled after Celt Fanatics

 Paymaster Games wrote:
Why are the Brets such a point of negativity here? The brets have a good army

I collected Brets back in the day, I didn't bring them up in terms of negativity against them, I was just pointing out that it was commonly stated that Brets weren't popular and GW didn't like Brets because they were too generic to be copyrightable... and yet Brets have featured heavily in GW's teasers for TOW so far.

The whole "too generic to be copyrightable" is something the community made up to try and justify just what madness was happening during End Times.

It has no foundation in reality. Nothing in AoS is any more copyrightable than anything in Old World was. Heck most of the AoS models are just Old World sculpts with a new name.



The madness around Old World to Age of Sigmar wasn't born of copyright, it was born of a management team viewing the game purely through the eyes of watching sales metrics and zero customer feedback.

Don't forget Age of Sigmar at launch wasn't a wargame. It was a boutique line of models that had some fluffy fun silly rules to go with it if you wanted to play; but as most customers weren't gamers it didn't really matter. People just wanted cool models and if the models weren't selling then it was a creative problem not a rules, updates, or anything else problem.


Of course this wasn't the actual fact and its why AoS stalled; its why GW had to do a massive change in direction and its why their management had to have a huge shakeup as well.

Oh and not to mention that GW did all that with zero marketing before pulling Old World one morning and then releasing AoS

We are not doing the history of WHFB and its death and rebirth into AoS here, again. Take it to its own thread.

Voss wrote:
I think people forget what a weird retcon those 'fluff' restrictions were. Earlier Bret armies happily fielded equivalent cannons and crossbows. The main difference was Empire had better foot knights and handguns, while Bret had war altars and +4 Shock elite cav (2 attacks) which the Empire list couldn't match.

I'm going to plead less "forget" and more "had not been born". (Or in my case, had just been born but unsurprisingly wasn't playing warhammer.)

I can't really claim to know what things were like in 3rd edition - and suspect that goes for the majority of people given the subsequent expansion of the hobby/franchise. I don't think Bret's got an army book in 4th edition and I'm not sure if any of the older models were still available to buy in stores at that time (circa 1994 I think was when I started, so I can remember 5th edition coming out).

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/25/40-years-of-warhammer-the-classic-skeleton-horde-rises-from-the-grave/

Warhammer community runs a 40th year anniversary series on older models. Certainly relevant enough for this thread I hope.

At first I thought these were made to order, but seems they are just running an article series about classic miniatures.

 triplegrim wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/25/40-years-of-warhammer-the-classic-skeleton-horde-rises-from-the-grave/

Warhammer community runs a 40th year anniversary series on older models. Certainly relevant enough for this thread I hope.

At first I thought these were made to order, but seems they are just running an article series about classic miniatures.

We should be so lucky.

Bit of a weird article I felt, it doesn't give much background on them.

I don't even recognise those models. I have some of the plastics that were available in the late 90's, and also some of the metal skeletons, don't recognise these guys though, what year did they come out?

My guess is that he's one of these plastics, from around 1992/3.

Yes I have some - came before the skeleton army set which added bowmen, horses and chariots. Great box set, I bashed on some spares from recent skeleton sets to fill out my units and they look great.

 Dysartes wrote:
My guess is that he's one of these plastics, from around 1992/3.

I think they were in those monopose 'regiment' box sets that had 8-12 models in one or two poses in them and came before the multipart plastic regiment boxes in the late 90s and early 00s.

These ones: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/citadel-warhammer-skeleton-warriors-460183884

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
My guess is that he's one of these plastics, from around 1992/3.

I think they were in those monopose 'regiment' box sets that had 8-12 models in one or two poses in them and came before the multipart plastic regiment boxes in the late 90s and early 00s.

These ones: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/citadel-warhammer-skeleton-warriors-460183884

Those are the same thing and yes it is from those kits, they were mulitpart and multipose also used the same sprue in the chariot and cavalry.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Bit of a weird article I felt, it doesn't give much background on them.

I don't even recognise those models. I have some of the plastics that were available in the late 90's, and also some of the metal skeletons, don't recognise these guys though, what year did they come out?

I agree it is a weird article. Especially since the title is '40 Years of Warhammer – The Classic Skeleton Horde Rises From the Grave'.

Sounds like a reprint.

My guess is they are simply trying to memorialize the 40k, but perhaps also climatize the fan base for whatever the Old World models will look like.

The first 2 models in the first article were Slambo and The imperial space marine.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/01/18/celebrate-40-years-of-warhammer-with-a-year-long-showcase-of-seminal-miniatures/

Weird they used the art of the box for the next generation of warriors rather than the original Skeleton Army:

Voss wrote:

I mean... you could release new kits for young knights, average knights, better knights, best knights, knights on flying horses, not-quite knights but still riding horses and then the various peasants. But its not obviously sending the faction in an interesting new direction.

There's probably some sort of scope for monstrous cav maybe - but it would kind of go against the fluff. See also doing something with warmachines, or magic.

I think people forget what a weird retcon those 'fluff' restrictions were. Earlier Bret armies happily fielded equivalent cannons and crossbows. The main difference was Empire had better foot knights and handguns, while Bret had war altars and +4 Shock elite cav (2 attacks) which the Empire list couldn't match.

The funny thing is you could bring back crossbows easily enough.. Call a faction of "Rogue Knights" who have decided Honor is bunk and that they will win at all costs for the homeland whether or not the Homeland agrees with them.