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 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

MaxT wrote:
GW releases 2 boxed armies, 5 books, new plastic releases, new forgeworld releases and its still vapourware? Stop embarrassing yourself

GW: In two years we’ll sell you all new Old World armies with exciting new units. Our eyecatching headliners are Cathay and Kislev. Don’t you want Cathay and Kislev??

GW years later: Here are old skeletons and Brets with some new centerpieces. That’s what we sold you on, right?

The way I remember it, was they started to sell it simply by saying "old world" and "square bases", then went on to make maps and pointing to Bretonnia, hinting at the heraldry of king Louen Orc-slayer to tease the time and setting.
And then they said they had officially fused the art-direction team of Total War to "the old world" project to enable the design for Kislev and Cathay to be part of their new game.
And at this point people were looking at the new design of giant bear cavalry and weird stuff saying "Jikes, ToW will get the AoS treatment, perhaps we better stick with 6th edition FB".

I have mixed feelings about all of this. At first I was very excited for Warhammer Fantasy Battles coming back, but as time has shown more I'm less excited.

So far we have seen the re-release of old models that were bad when they were released (Tomb King Skeletons).

And.

Faction books essential spread over several publications, to squeeze out more cash.

If anything I think ToW is looking to be GW testing the waters on just how far they can push things with their rabid fanbase.to see where the limit is on what they can get away with, because only a fool would think that GW will not charge a premium price for thise old Skeletons, and for the 2 books needed to get one army list. Maximum profit, for minimum effort.

I may just stick to 6th edition and use predominantly none GW models.

No One Important wrote:
Warriors of Chaos chads win again. One book. Heck yeah.

Only because they haven't released the WOC journal yet. It's coming, each core faction is getting one.

 vipoid wrote:
By the way, am I right in thinking that GW aren't bothering to write a Vampire Counts book for Old World?

Correct. They aren't a TOW faction, they are getting a "legends" style pdf army list and will probably never be looked at again.

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
By the way, am I right in thinking that GW aren't bothering to write a Vampire Counts book for Old World?

Correct, they’re one of the 9 factions with pdf rules only. Probably as they’re a major AoS faction, though lorewise there’s also that all the Von Carsteins are all dead in this time period.

Let's be real, the fluff is there to justify and rationalize what was primarily a business decision.

 Aesthete wrote:
My point of view is that I had hoped for a free Ravening Hordes type supplement, but that I'm okay paying for it - even if it's two books. What I don't like is that the book is so bloated with pictures and fiction. It'll be inconvenient to lug around.

The new army books... I suppose that's to be expected. I don't like them, because as others have said that's three books you'll have to consult. The main thing that drives me from GW games is the library growth - that's why I never got into Newcromunda. Way too many books to stay on top of.

My hope is that the core rules + compendium armies (including the PDFs) are enough to play satisfying games and I can find a group that's willing to stick to them.

This is going to be a game that follows the mold of horus heresy, necromunda and adeptus titanicus, etc. Every so often they are going to put out a narrative supplement that will add additional units, variant army lists, magic items, special characters, etc. Within ~3 years time you can reasobably expect the rules for most factions will be split across 5 or 6 separate books if you want to have a fully comprehensive all encompassing army. If you're OK just playing a "grand army" style list and sticking to the armies core units instead of mucking about with fringe units or weirdo narrative stuff, then you can get by with 1 book. Whether or not that 1 book will be enough to build a "competitive" army is unlikely - balance has never been GWs strong suit and there will no doubt be some power creep over time, but if you're OK with maybe a 50% win rate instead of a 50% win rate, then you should be able to play a 1 book army list without demanding your opponents do the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Fayric wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

MaxT wrote:
GW releases 2 boxed armies, 5 books, new plastic releases, new forgeworld releases and its still vapourware? Stop embarrassing yourself

GW: In two years we’ll sell you all new Old World armies with exciting new units. Our eyecatching headliners are Cathay and Kislev. Don’t you want Cathay and Kislev??

GW years later: Here are old skeletons and Brets with some new centerpieces. That’s what we sold you on, right?

The way I remember it, was they started to sell it simply by saying "old world" and "square bases", then went on to make maps and pointing to Bretonnia, hinting at the heraldry of king Louen Orc-slayer to tease the time and setting.
And then they said they had officially fused the art-direction team of Total War to "the old world" project to enable the design for Kislev and Cathay to be part of their new game.
And at this point people were looking at the new design of giant bear cavalry and weird stuff saying "Jikes, ToW will get the AoS treatment, perhaps we better stick with 6th edition FB".

This is pretty much exactly what happened. GW never indicated Kislev and Cathay would be available on launch, only that they were being developed into miniatures. In fact, they more or less explicitly stated that Cathay would not be available for some time after TOW released but that they would eventually be added, so anyone bitching and moaning about Cathay at this point has no legs to stand on.

I could see why some mightve thought Kislev would feature on launch, but that was always an unreasonable expectation vs starting off with old factions. Actually the original premise of what most expected was that the launch would be Empire vs Empire as the first content reveal was the map showing that the game was set in Age of Three Emperors. Basically, there was never really a point at which expecting GW to start with Kislev would have been reasonable, a lot of the complaints about it today strike me as people whinging for the sake of it or throwing sand in their own eyes and then crying about how GW kicked sand at them afterwards.

In one of the youtube videos elsewhere on the site, Andy Chambers reminisces about the transition from 2nd to 3rd ed. 40k and how it offered an opportunity to reset all the armies from zero and fix a lot of problems that crept in over the previous six years.

The then laughs knowingly. "Of course, the codexes would soon wreck all that..."

Because I am not Charlie Brown eternally trying to kick a football, I'm quite certain that if GW gets any kind of a favorable response, more supplements will be produced, and in three years, The Old World, 2nd Edition will be on the way because that's what they always do.

On that note, can someone get me an estimate of the minimum cost to play a game I've already bought three times?

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
In one of the youtube videos elsewhere on the site, Andy Chambers reminisces about the transition from 2nd to 3rd ed. 40k and how it offered an opportunity to reset all the armies from zero and fix a lot of problems that crept in over the previous six years.

The then laughs knowingly. "Of course, the codexes would soon wreck all that..."

Because I am not Charlie Brown eternally trying to kick a football, I'm quite certain that if GW gets any kind of a favorable response, more supplements will be produced, and in three years, The Old World, 2nd Edition will be on the way because that's what they always do.

On that note, can someone get me an estimate of the minimum cost to play a game I've already bought three times?

Rulebook plus the free legacy pdfs gives you what 7 armies worth of full rules. So £25 maybe for a rulebook off eBay in a few weeks. Or probably £35 brand new.

And of course you’re entirely able to continue to play your old editions for free!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

MaxT wrote:
GW releases 2 boxed armies, 5 books, new plastic releases, new forgeworld releases and its still vapourware? Stop embarrassing yourself

GW: In two years we’ll sell you all new Old World armies with exciting new units. Our eyecatching headliners are Cathay and Kislev. Don’t you want Cathay and Kislev??

GW years later: Here are old skeletons and Brets with some new centerpieces. That’s what we sold you on, right?

State your source where GW announced a 2 year timeframe or admit you’re just making things up. We’ll wait.

The Timeframe might have been invented or was GW's best guess at the time an article was posted. That said they did advertise Kislev and Cathay at the very start as new armies appearing in Old World. However now they aren't appearing even in the preview content.


Now we don't know why that is.

Perhaps they got shelved; perhaps Old World was taking too long and managers decided to speed it up based on feedback and demand. So instead of launching with 2 armies that won't be ready for another 2 years they are going with stuff they've already got.

Perhaps GW got a LOT of hate mail from fans of old existing armies and didn't get any for support of the new ones (or the margins were insanely skewed ot one side) so they decided to stall forces that were going to cost more and weren't getting as much reception; and focused on those that people were asking for

 Aesthete wrote:
My point of view is that I had hoped for a free Ravening Hordes type supplement, but that I'm okay paying for it - even if it's two books. What I don't like is that the book is so bloated with pictures and fiction. It'll be inconvenient to lug around.

Your idea of bloat is many other idea of part of why they buy the books. Artwork and background. Especially new background for a time period not previously written about.

Privateer Press once tried separating out rules and fiction for Warmachine and nearly killed their company doing it (among other failures).

 Overread wrote:
The Timeframe might have been invented or was GW's best guess at the time an article was posted. That said they did advertise Kislev and Cathay at the very start as new armies appearing in Old World. However now they aren't appearing even in the preview content.


Now we don't know why that is.

Perhaps they got shelved; perhaps Old World was taking too long and managers decided to speed it up based on feedback and demand. So instead of launching with 2 armies that won't be ready for another 2 years they are going with stuff they've already got.

Perhaps GW got a LOT of hate mail from fans of old existing armies and didn't get any for support of the new ones (or the margins were insanely skewed ot one side) so they decided to stall forces that were going to cost more and weren't getting as much reception; and focused on those that people were asking for

Not sure how true this is, but I do recall someone somewhere saying how the design team changed during the development of ToW. So what we are getting is different from what was originally penciled in for ToW. Think they even mentioned how a lot of the 'old guard' were brought in to work on the ToW we are getting now.

I think the big change is due to some shake up somewhere within GW's development process. I personally wouldn't be surprised if we hear nothing lore of Cathay or Kislev as full factions, we may get a character/unit here as mercenaries I'd wager.

 Overread wrote:
The Timeframe might have been invented or was GW's best guess at the time an article was posted. That said they did advertise Kislev and Cathay at the very start as new armies appearing in Old World. However now they aren't appearing even in the preview content.


Now we don't know why that is.

Perhaps they got shelved; perhaps Old World was taking too long and managers decided to speed it up based on feedback and demand. So instead of launching with 2 armies that won't be ready for another 2 years they are going with stuff they've already got.

Perhaps GW got a LOT of hate mail from fans of old existing armies and didn't get any for support of the new ones (or the margins were insanely skewed ot one side) so they decided to stall forces that were going to cost more and weren't getting as much reception; and focused on those that people were asking for

I should think a logical reason would be sculpt quality. Somebody probably had the brainwave that if you launched with two brand new ranges, sculpted up to modern standards, the disparity would be huge. Far worse than it already is with the new and old sculpts for tomb kings and bretts. Could you imagine if they started with all new kislev and then brought out tomb kings with those skeletons? They would have had to redo everything from scratch to keep the standard up.

Going with Kislev and Cathay at the beginning would have been a mistake IMO.

TOW isn't HH where stuff is guaranteed to sell because its Space Marines.
Nostalgia also sells well and is a safer bet than brand new factions that people hadn't really seen before.

 RustyNumber wrote:
What a load of delicious retro style Internet Forum Drama to accompany our retro wargame!

I'm gonna go log into World of Warcraft and see if they are doing Chuck Norris jokes in Barrens chat to complete the nostalgia trip.

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
By the way, am I right in thinking that GW aren't bothering to write a Vampire Counts book for Old World?

Correct, they’re one of the 9 factions with pdf rules only. Probably as they’re a major AoS faction, though lorewise there’s also that all the Von Carsteins are all dead in this time period.

Ugh.

"Sorry but the faction you play exists in our arse replacement to WHFB, with rules that we pulled out of our biggest, sweatiest arse. Thus, even though we're rehashing WHFB, we can't be bothered writing them back into it."


Aside, even if you buy that bullcrap, what exactly is the excuse when it comes to not doing a proper Old World Dark Elves book? At least with VC you can make the claim that they exist as Soulblight (even if the rules bare almost no resemblance to the VCs of old). However, Dark Elves don't have any sort of single coherent army in AoS. You've got Daughters of Khaine (a minor Dark Elf sub-faction that was stretched into a standalone army), and then some stuff in Cities, though the rules for them read as an afterthought. Plus all the units that flat out don't exist anymore (remember when Dark Elf Lords could ride things other than dragons? Or, heaven forbid, be on foot?).

chaos0xomega wrote:

Correct. They aren't a TOW faction, they are getting a "legends" style pdf army list and will probably never be looked at again.

Yeah, this is exactly my concern.

Oh well, since GW have no interest in writing rules for either the army I played or the army I was interested in starting, I'll just assume that they don't want my money.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
In one of the youtube videos elsewhere on the site, Andy Chambers reminisces about the transition from 2nd to 3rd ed. 40k and how it offered an opportunity to reset all the armies from zero and fix a lot of problems that crept in over the previous six years.

The then laughs knowingly. "Of course, the codexes would soon wreck all that..."

Because I am not Charlie Brown eternally trying to kick a football, I'm quite certain that if GW gets any kind of a favorable response, more supplements will be produced, and in three years, The Old World, 2nd Edition will be on the way because that's what they always do.

On that note, can someone get me an estimate of the minimum cost to play a game I've already bought three times?

Well for one thing TOW isn't a core game like AoS or 40k, so expecting a 2nd edition on a 3 year schedule is going to set you up for disappointment. It took HH around what, 10 years for second edition to come along? Necromunda is still technically/officially on its first edition after 6 years going on 7. Adeptus Titanicus is coming up on 5 years later this year with no indication of a second edition coming (though with some of the rebranding and stuff with LI thats not out of the question). Blood Bowl went 4 years before a new edition. Aeronatuica Imperialis... RIP.... MESBG just past 5 years since its last edition (and went ~6 years before that without a new edition, unless you count The Hobbit wave in 2014 as an edition update, I dunno the ME brand has been a bit harder to track and figure out what constitutes an edition or not).

 Overread wrote:
The Timeframe might have been invented or was GW's best guess at the time an article was posted. That said they did advertise Kislev and Cathay at the very start as new armies appearing in Old World. However now they aren't appearing even in the preview content.


Now we don't know why that is.

Perhaps they got shelved; perhaps Old World was taking too long and managers decided to speed it up based on feedback and demand. So instead of launching with 2 armies that won't be ready for another 2 years they are going with stuff they've already got.

Perhaps GW got a LOT of hate mail from fans of old existing armies and didn't get any for support of the new ones (or the margins were insanely skewed ot one side) so they decided to stall forces that were going to cost more and weren't getting as much reception; and focused on those that people were asking for

My bet is some combination of all of the above. COVID screwed up their timing of everything for them and probably dragged things out longer than consumer patience and financial planning could allow. This was likely a major capital program for them that required financial analysis for the time horizon for return on investment and to achieve profitability, etc. Management has to hit those numbers, because bad things happen when you don't. My guess is that it was always intended that the legacy factions would feature around launch time, but they probably intended to launch with all new minis or at least a more significant wave of new minis rather than reissuing old kits en masse. Kislev I think was probably intended to feature prominently with the launch (though maybe not to be a "launch faction" per se), but with their timeline in shambles they likely had to retool their release plan and go out with launching legacy factions with whatever handfuls of new kits for them they could ready in time in order to begin generating cash flows and revenues against their investment while Kislev and whatever else they are working on lags behind. My expectation at this point is that we see Kislev out end of November/early December next year as an internal target for GW, with early 2025 probably being more likely. I think the fact that they said the first wave of TOW is set in the border princes, which they produced a map of which specifically added a kislev-based faction to that never existed in the lore before, is a pretty good indicator that they intend to support Kislev much sooner than anyone thinks (i.e. not 2+ years post release), even if its not a fully fleshed out army for some years afterwards. To me a "wave" is not an edition, it is something less than that and each edition encompasses several (or even many) waves of releases within it. I think we will see an early launch of Kislev in relatively short order as part of that first wave, which might only be a couple units of infantry, a winged lancer cavalry unit, a generic hero or two and maybe a special character, with more units, monsters, artillery, bear cavalry and the like to follow over subsequent years as more waves follow.

Incidentally, CA published a list of most played factions in TWW by region on instagram today - Kislev was #1 in Europe, Africa, North America, and South America. Cathay in Asia, and Empire in Oceania. That probably indicates that Kislev is the #1 most popular faction amongst the global playerbase, but the sheer size of chinas population might skew that in a different direction. That Kislev (and Cathay) was massively popular with the TWW community isn't new information and goes back some years and was probably something that GW and CA expected when they announced them (prior to their introducition in TWW3) based on market research. Thats the likely reason why both factions were announced as coming to TOW at all, because $$$. I am reasonably certain that Kislev not being ready to go on launch isn't for a lack of desire or effort on GWs part, as Kislev is apparently a clear money maker for the brand on a global scale, possibly moreso than Bretonnia and Khemri are, and probably something that GW management is expecting will carry the TOW brand and make it the financial success they want it to be.

 stonehorse wrote:

 Overread wrote:
The Timeframe might have been invented or was GW's best guess at the time an article was posted. That said they did advertise Kislev and Cathay at the very start as new armies appearing in Old World. However now they aren't appearing even in the preview content.


Now we don't know why that is.

Perhaps they got shelved; perhaps Old World was taking too long and managers decided to speed it up based on feedback and demand. So instead of launching with 2 armies that won't be ready for another 2 years they are going with stuff they've already got.

Perhaps GW got a LOT of hate mail from fans of old existing armies and didn't get any for support of the new ones (or the margins were insanely skewed ot one side) so they decided to stall forces that were going to cost more and weren't getting as much reception; and focused on those that people were asking for

Not sure how true this is, but I do recall someone somewhere saying how the design team changed during the development of ToW. So what we are getting is different from what was originally penciled in for ToW. Think they even mentioned how a lot of the 'old guard' were brought in to work on the ToW we are getting now.

I think the big change is due to some shake up somewhere within GW's development process. I personally wouldn't be surprised if we hear nothing lore of Cathay or Kislev as full factions, we may get a character/unit here as mercenaries I'd wager.

Its not really true. There was some turnover in terms of some of the sculptors and artists but all the biggest names that were associated with TOW at the start are still very much at GW still working in the same studio that handles all the forgeworld/specialist games, particularly the higher ups like Andy Hoare who is the project lead and head of the studio and a couple other bigger names.

MaxT wrote:

 Aesthete wrote:
My point of view is that I had hoped for a free Ravening Hordes type supplement, but that I'm okay paying for it - even if it's two books. What I don't like is that the book is so bloated with pictures and fiction. It'll be inconvenient to lug around.

Your idea of bloat is many other idea of part of why they buy the books. Artwork and background. Especially new background for a time period not previously written about.

Yeah for sure. And even if I think the tomes are too big and unwieldy, there's a 99% chance that I'll buy them even if I grumble about (what I see as) bloat.

Any idea when Wave 2 of these releases will arrive? Hopefully not weeks or months.

The Warhammer Preview back in Oct showed things like Bretonnian Foot Knights and characters and trebuchet etc.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/10/14/warhammer-day-preview-the-kingdom-of-bretonnia-revealed/

"Previously revealed this year are the Battle Standard Bearer on Foot, Questing Knight Paladin with Great Weapon, and the positively radiant Lady Élisse Duchaard. They will all be available at launch, or shortly after, in resin"

"Alongside these new and returning kits which form the bulk (or entirety) of your force, there will also be a selection of returning metal heroes and specialist units that will be available to order direct from games-workshop.com."

chaos0xomega wrote:


Its not really true. There was some turnover in terms of some of the sculptors and artists but all the biggest names that were associated with TOW at the start are still very much at GW still working in the same studio that handles all the forgeworld/specialist games, particularly the higher ups like Andy Hoare who is the project lead and head of the studio and a couple other bigger names.

I could even see it that the original design team/sculptors for Cathay/Kislev are no longer working on the project as they've moved onto other things/are no longer hired by GW. Since GW does some work-by-hire for sculpting it might be those armies are "done" at certain points in development already. Thus when other armies rose to the fore, GW shifted staff around. Perhaps just to put staff that knew/wanted/were better at the lines going out now. So it could just be the creative team shuffling around.

chaos0xomega wrote:

No One Important wrote:
Warriors of Chaos chads win again. One book. Heck yeah.

This is pretty much exactly what happened. GW never indicated Kislev and Cathay would be available on launch, only that they were being developed into miniatures. In fact, they more or less explicitly stated that Cathay would not be available for some time after TOW released but that they would eventually be added, so anyone bitching and moaning about Cathay at this point has no legs to stand on.

I could see why some mightve thought Kislev would feature on launch, but that was always an unreasonable expectation vs starting off with old factions. Actually the original premise of what most expected was that the launch would be Empire vs Empire as the first content reveal was the map showing that the game was set in Age of Three Emperors. Basically, there was never really a point at which expecting GW to start with Kislev would have been reasonable, a lot of the complaints about it today strike me as people whinging for the sake of it or throwing sand in their own eyes and then crying about how GW kicked sand at them afterwards.

You keep saying things like this, but as of yet GW has not removed all the articles from Spring 2020 discussing Kislev and Cathay (you can even see the article where they say that more articles about Cathay are coming, before they took a three year and counting hiatus), to include maps focusing on how important Kislev was in the new setting....

You may refuse to see what is in front of your face but probably shouldn't also try to get others to close their eyes.

People who just want to simp for GW are going to be the reason this game flops. And you can say what you want, but selling 'new' boxes of primarily 30-year-old models and then expecting people to go buy two other books on top of that is not a strong strategy.

 vipoid wrote:


Aside, even if you buy that bullcrap, what exactly is the excuse when it comes to not doing a proper Old World Dark Elves book? At least with VC you can make the claim that they exist as Soulblight (even if the rules bare almost no resemblance to the VCs of old). However, Dark Elves don't have any sort of single coherent army in AoS. You've got Daughters of Khaine (a minor Dark Elf sub-faction that was stretched into a standalone army), and then some stuff in Cities, though the rules for them read as an afterthought. Plus all the units that flat out don't exist anymore (remember when Dark Elf Lords could ride things other than dragons? Or, heaven forbid, be on foot?).

Its not really bullcrap. These have become some of the most popular factions in AoS, and theres something to be said about having strong, distinct, self contained brands with minimal crossover between them in order to ensure strength of sales and brand identity, etc. Its clear that GW doesn't want that crossover to exist as it will weaken AoS without necessarily strengthening TOW in the process (turns out, free riders taking their existing armies from one game to play in another game puts less money in GWs pocket vs making people buy a whole new separate army). Otherwise it would have been really really easy for them to slap all these brand new modern plastic kits into turquoise colored TOW boxes and have them ready to go on release day as almost fully realized armies that don't require any real investment into resculpts or production of new resin/metal kits to fill gaps, etc.

As for Dark Elves specifically? Daughters of Khaine were for a while one of the hottest armies in AoS. Even with their recent reluctance to feature brand crossover in their product ranges, I doubt that alone was probably enough to seal the fate of the dark elves in TOW as I think that covers only about 3 or 4 actual DE kits and they probably couldve found ways to work around that. If the last update to Cities of Sigmar is any indication, the remaining dark elf stuff in that battletome (along with the remaining Empire and Dwarf stuff) is probably a placeholder until either the long-rumored Umbraneth get released (presumably in 4th edition? I think most of us AoS fans are surprised they haven't come already as there were heavy hints about them going into 3rd edition and then... nothing...) or GW expands the Cities of Sigmar non-human range further. Whether or not they re-use any of the old Dark Elf kits for these purposes is anyones guess (I would guess probably no), but one would assume that they intend to keep closer to the flavor of the WHFB Dark Elves with whatever the Umbraneth/Malerions elves come out to be (similar to how the Vampire Counts flavor was kept with Soulblight Gravelords, and Lizardmen with Seraphon, and Skaven with Skaven, and Ogre Kingdoms with Ogor Mawtribes, etc.) and thats why they opted not to put DE into TOW, whereas with Wood Elves they basically just took the trees and built Sylvaneth around that theme and threw off the actual elf component of the army (or interbred them with horses to get kurnothi centaurs, I guess), and Lumineth only kinda look like High Elves if you squint and ignore all the kangaroos, foxes, and cows and the heavy asiatic influences in their design (whereas high elves are more western/european/celtic/brythonic in their design and generally more heavily armored and taking more design cues from birds and dragons than bovines and ungulates).

My guess though, personally, is that while there won't be a proper "Dark Elf" army in TOW, there will eventually be a new army of "Black Ark Raiders" that feature a limited subset of units from the old DE army + a bunch of new stuff focused on creating a different and distinct flavor for the faction based on piracy and the like.

Personally, I don't think selling older models is a flop. The Bretonians have great models and still hold up quite well today. I'm going to end up with a bunch of new Bretonians because when I first got the box when I was 14 I traded them for more lizardmen because I was too scared to paint them. Now, I want them for pure nostalgia purposes. Right before COVID hit, I traded all of my Tomb Kings to a buddy who ended up passing away early during COVID. So I could enjoy doing TKs just as much. I've still got the Lizardmen army as well from that box too, complete with tons of old metal models.

Well, using old models may not be your cup of tea, but I feel that the old models hit the nostalgia button and allows you to have access to an entirely new army right away. Sure we may need to wait longer for Cathay and Kislev but I'm ok as they would need to build an army from the ground up.

I'm fine with older models. But I am NOT fine with them at modern prices.

lost_lilliputian wrote:
Any idea when Wave 2 of these releases will arrive? Hopefully not weeks or months.

The Warhammer Preview back in Oct showed things like Bretonnian Foot Knights and characters and trebuchet etc.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/10/14/warhammer-day-preview-the-kingdom-of-bretonnia-revealed/

"Previously revealed this year are the Battle Standard Bearer on Foot, Questing Knight Paladin with Great Weapon, and the positively radiant Lady Élisse Duchaard. They will all be available at launch, or shortly after, in resin"

"Alongside these new and returning kits which form the bulk (or entirety) of your force, there will also be a selection of returning metal heroes and specialist units that will be available to order direct from games-workshop.com."

They haven't really said. If LI is any indication, I would expect there will be a selection of individual kits available on launch day at a minimum. Whether or not that includes the specific kits you're asking about is anyones guess at this point, but rumors indicate we should know more in the not to distant future.

 caladancid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

No One Important wrote:
Warriors of Chaos chads win again. One book. Heck yeah.

This is pretty much exactly what happened. GW never indicated Kislev and Cathay would be available on launch, only that they were being developed into miniatures. In fact, they more or less explicitly stated that Cathay would not be available for some time after TOW released but that they would eventually be added, so anyone bitching and moaning about Cathay at this point has no legs to stand on.

I could see why some mightve thought Kislev would feature on launch, but that was always an unreasonable expectation vs starting off with old factions. Actually the original premise of what most expected was that the launch would be Empire vs Empire as the first content reveal was the map showing that the game was set in Age of Three Emperors. Basically, there was never really a point at which expecting GW to start with Kislev would have been reasonable, a lot of the complaints about it today strike me as people whinging for the sake of it or throwing sand in their own eyes and then crying about how GW kicked sand at them afterwards.

You keep saying things like this, but as of yet GW has not removed all the articles from Spring 2020 discussing Kislev and Cathay (you can even see the article where they say that more articles about Cathay are coming, before they took a three year and counting hiatus), to include maps focusing on how important Kislev was in the new setting....

You may refuse to see what is in front of your face but probably shouldn't also try to get others to close their eyes.

People who just want to simp for GW are going to be the reason this game flops. And you can say what you want, but selling 'new' boxes of primarily 30-year-old models and then expecting people to go buy two other books on top of that is not a strong strategy.

I don't see what one has to do with another. Nothing I am saying would have anything at all to do with anything that would prompt GW to remove those articles. The only reason they would remove those articles at all is if they had decided to quietly cancel the release of Kislev and Cathay, which is pretty much the opposite of "the things I've been saying".

I refer back to those articles all the time. I even quote them or paraphrase them regularly when I am posting. There is *NOTHING* in them that indicates that they would have been available on launch. NOTHING. There is no promise made in those articles to be available on launch. There is zero indication they would be, there is absolutely nothing indicating that we should have had any expectation of them arriving in the game at any specific point in time.

Even before Kislev was featured in WarCom, they featured the first map for the game showing 4 empire factions and literally nothing else - Kislev was blank. Bretonnia was blank. The Border Princes were blank. If your argument was that you expected a new Empire model range to be available on launch you'd maybe have some ground to stand on, but its not and so you really have any basis to complain, nor to have expected Kislev on launch given that they were technically the fifth faction shown after the 4 empires. Anyway, after two articles about Kislev they went right into talking about Bretonnia - and Kislev didn't have its faction map filled in until after Bretonnias was. Not saying that theres a relationship between maps and release orders, but given that the maps are directly tied into the faction politics of the setting and seemingly by extension relate in some aspect to future army lists, that was probably a sort of clue as to what their priorities and focuses were and where things were in terms of their stages of development.

Insisting that because GW isn't giving you your toys on day 1 they must not exist is not a good look for you, nor is your implied insults of anyone wise enough to point out that just because they haven't shown you what they are working on mean it doesn't exist.

 vipoid wrote:

Lord Zarkov wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
By the way, am I right in thinking that GW aren't bothering to write a Vampire Counts book for Old World?

Correct, they’re one of the 9 factions with pdf rules only. Probably as they’re a major AoS faction, though lorewise there’s also that all the Von Carsteins are all dead in this time period.

Ugh.

"Sorry but the faction you play exists in our arse replacement to WHFB, with rules that we pulled out of our biggest, sweatiest arse. Thus, even though we're rehashing WHFB, we can't be bothered writing them back into it."


Aside, even if you buy that bullcrap, what exactly is the excuse when it comes to not doing a proper Old World Dark Elves book? At least with VC you can make the claim that they exist as Soulblight (even if the rules bare almost no resemblance to the VCs of old). However, Dark Elves don't have any sort of single coherent army in AoS. You've got Daughters of Khaine (a minor Dark Elf sub-faction that was stretched into a standalone army), and then some stuff in Cities, though the rules for them read as an afterthought. Plus all the units that flat out don't exist anymore (remember when Dark Elf Lords could ride things other than dragons? Or, heaven forbid, be on foot?).

chaos0xomega wrote:

Correct. They aren't a TOW faction, they are getting a "legends" style pdf army list and will probably never be looked at again.

Yeah, this is exactly my concern.

Oh well, since GW have no interest in writing rules for either the army I played or the army I was interested in starting, I'll just assume that they don't want my money.

The Lore argument is that the DE are building up for the imminent invasion of Ulthuan, before which they were pretending they were a non-entity to lull the HE and therefore not too involved over on the Old World.

The business argument will be as chaos0xomega says, that the individual components of DE have a strong presence in AoS still. Notably all the HE just got purged from Cities of Sigmar (ready for their transition to TOW) whereas all the DE remained to be the main Aelven (*spits*) presence in that range.

For whatever reason GW seem to be drawing a sharp distinction between the TOW ranged and the AoS range, hence the recent CoS purge (though oddly the dwarfs survived it, maybe they’ll get cut when they release for TOW).

I'd also argue that GW don't know what they are doing with the DE stuff in AoS. It doesn't feature in the new cities of sigmar really (if its in the book its not in any of the marketing at all); they "soft" did a reboot of the army with a recent expansion book with Daughters of Khaine invading and taking over a dark elf city.

But I just feel like DE fans are sitting there unsure if GW is going to keep or squat them in AoS and GW is sitting there also being really slow to come to a choice too

I'm confident they will migrate dark elves over to ToW for second edition or whenever the second wave of "core factions" is introduced.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
I don't think most people were expecting expensive hardback+expensive hardback+plus probably expensive softback to give an army everything that should have either been in the hordes book already or just gone the army book route.

No, we weren't.

But looking back, I'm not sure WHY we weren't. This is perfectly in character for GW.

I dont disagree with that. The Dwarves and DE in the Cities battletome (they are there) are clear second class citizens. They are mechanically segregated from interaction with eachother or the mainline human part of the army, and as a result limited in what you can achieve in terms of tabletop success by including them as "souping" the different parts of the army is much less effective than just running human pure. To some extent I interpret it as GW including those units so as to not alienate existing players, but in a way that disincentive their use so that players are less likely to invest into them and players that already have them are less likely to use them, with the goal of peacefully phasing them out without fan blowback. As much ad I want to collect the DE components of CoS, I won't because I know better than to piss my time and money away on them, personally.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BertBert wrote:
I'm confident they will migrate dark elves over to ToW for second edition or whenever the second wave of "core factions" is introduced.

Yep, right after they introduce Eldar and Orks into Horus Heresy.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Yep, right after they introduce Eldar and Orks into Horus Heresy.

I hope you don't exepect me to explain why those are not analogous.

I was being flippant. I'm confident that they won't migrate dark elves over, nor any of the other factions. The reason they were excluded to begin with was for business reasons rather than for lore reasons, those business reasons aren't going change, but they are actually not entirely dissimilar from the reasons why there's no xenos in HH.

It's a possibility, especially when it comes to drawing a clear line between ToW and AoS. Some of it might also depend on the success of the initial release wave. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

I expected ToW to be like HH in that there is a hardcover rule book and hardcover faction books, though I didn't expect softcover faction addendums.