Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

tneva82 wrote:

jube2763 wrote:
Has it been established that you need ravenous hordes book on top of the tomb kings arcane journal, to play a tomb kings army? Same for the bretonians as well?(with the other book).

Do you want special characters, spell lores, armies of infamy and magic items? Then you need arcane journal.

Just journal gets you very short. No core list, no core units...Good luck playing with just special characters

Have you ever considered learning to post like a human being, tneva, rather than an AI who learned how to post on 4chan?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 MalusCalibur wrote:
The rules follow 40k's model (multiple overpriced books rendered obsolete in short order).

What proof is there of this?

I could see an argument for "overpriced", but given the game isn't even out yet, "rendered obsolete in short order" is lacking the faintest shred of evidence.

Mind you, we are on Dakka, where even the smallest touch of FAQ or errata is apparently enough to indicate a book is now completely useless...

If my understanding of how the books work is right, honestly that's more off-putting than the model prices for me.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 MalusCalibur wrote:
It's as obvious a minimum effort nostalgia cash-grab as one can get. Don't fall for it.

And like most cash grabs, it's taken literal years of work to get it to print.

Wait...

Cash grab with not many resources apportioned to it?

That said, I wouldn't call it low effort, I also wouldn't call it high effort But we'll see how polished the books turn out.

Are they really gonna be 250+ USD for meme-quality plastic models? Jeez.

 Overread wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


But some factions look like nothing that would fit there - Ossiarch Bonereapers I can't ever have seen fitting ihe modern cities of sigmar range too much of a fantastical departure from the more gritty realism in the design stylings favored by human armies in the WHFB setting. Kruleboyz are a vast departure from old world orcs and goblins, lumineth are less grounded than whfb high elves are and would not have played well with existing HE collections, and Stormcast would only work as "good guy daemons"/aengels (TM) sent down from the heavens by Sigmar to protect his followers in times of need (ala fantasy magic space marines) which would have only ever really resulted in complaints from the grogs. I think we've seen enough feedback over the years from various fans to know that many of the designs for AoS would not have met with acceptance had they been released for WHFB. The feedback regarding a number of AoS ranges by WHFB purists (and even some AoS fans) has been pretty consistent that theres many things perceived as too over the top. There are some things which met with acceptance and adoption by WHFB fans (new chaos warriors, blood knights, etc.), but there are many things that did not as well (hell even Cities of Sigmar got a lot of hate from many who felt the design of the armor and weapons was too fantastical or whatever). You can also look at stuff like Kislev for TWW which had a lot of complaints that it was "AoS-ified" or "too over the top high fantasy for the gritty low fantasy WHFB setting" because it had too much ice magic and bears instead of sticking to normal dudes with normal weapons and armor and horses.

Old World did have this strange ability to be a low and high fantasy setting in the minds of fans at the very same time. Many of its depictions and gameplay models suggested really low fantasy - Game of Thrones early books style. With a few mages here and there but mostly grim dark peasants and monsters. At the same time the Lore had huge epic fantasy battles with vast powerful mages clashing; living siege engines; dragons; airships - and that's just the stuff Gotrek and Felix encountered.

AoS is very much firmly high/epic fantasy. But again GW could have done that with Old World after the "End Times" just shaking things up to a "New Times" or "After the Shattering" or something setting.
Again the whole move to AoS was a broken mess on multiple fronts. It's had some good results, but lets be honest that no sane company would have done what GW did at the time.

I think the whole 'low vs high' argument was always confused by what the TT game was portraying and what the RPG and other spin offs were protraying.

The tabletop game showed the biggest and most famous battles where all the most prominent characters and rarest creatures appeared, as the most popular product it mistakenly gave new entrants into the IP a view of Warhammer as a high fantasy IP. The majority of the Warhammer timeline is better portrayed in the RPG and the vast amount of actual battles are boring peasants/low level nobles vs raiding parties of orcs or beastmen, day to day life in the Empire and Bretonnia isn't much different to Medieval/early Renaissance Europe with some fantasy characters mixed in and the odd low level magic, the Everchosen are rare events, the Elves keep themselves to themselves, the Skaven rarely emerge from the under-empire en masse, most people in the Old World will have never seen a Lizardman and rumours of them are like Medieval/Early Modern rumours in the real world, there are high level magic users but they confine themselves to the major cities and amongst ruling political and military classes and aren't flinging around magic willy-nilly due to the inherent danger baked into Warhammer's magic system. All of that is low fantasy, punctuated by brief outbreaks of significant political or military upheaval that may display high fantasy elements. It is complicated by the fact that once you leave the Old World and go into the New World (High and Dark Elves, Lizardmen) the setting does become more high fantasy and there's a tension between those factions and the Old World factions in their portrayal and what the IP is trying to portray itself as, which runs through the IP due to the massive variance in magic usage and tech levels between the factions.

Lord Zarkov wrote:
I’m hoping the cryptic comment on flagellants means they’re in but like rare or even rare and restricted (like the Bret trebuchet).

Flagellants were already 0-1 Rare units - I can't imagine them getting any MORE rare without being removed entirely, which they probably have been since they're still in the Cities of Sigmar.

Replicant253 wrote:
I may have misunderstood. So Ravening Hordes and the good army version are not just tie you over compendiums until you get a supplement? If so that has re-engaged my interest in picking up the books now. I had decided to wait and see how things develop.

MESBG is my 'main' game and the model works for me. Three core books, likely only needing two of those since Hobbit armies are not as numerous, and then additional supplements adding flavour to specific battles/stories etc.

We will find out soon enough, and I don’t know if GW announced how many pages that Ravening Hordes/Forces of Fantasy are, but looking at the image they look to be a good couple of hundred pages. That means 40+ pages per army list. They’re also hardback. To me that indicates full lists rather than “get you by”.

For reference, the 6th edition Ravening hordes were get you by lists and they ran to no more than 4 pages per list. So an order of magnitude difference.

Plus we know what’s in the Bret Journal, and there isn’t anything foundational to the list in there at all.

The format looks similar to the Space Marines had with the old Codex supplements.

* You get the main army list in the big book (plus several other armies that you may or may not be allowed to take allies from - so relevant)
* You get a couple of characters, some variant army lists, units and magic stuff in the Arcane Journal

Seems fine to be but I mostly interested in the lore.

Whilst Setra is and was a complete tyrant - so were living Emperors and Kings in the lore and there are relatively benevolant Tomb kings - like the current ruler of Numas who has living and undead together in his kingdom. Now as long as nuances like this are referenced I am fine but I really not keen on blanket "good" and Evil".

Someone on reddit said their buddy found these

 Mr Morden wrote:
The format looks similar to the Space Marines had with the old Codex supplements.

* You get the main army list in the big book (plus several other armies that you may or may not be allowed to take allies from - so relevant)
* You get a couple of characters, some variant army lists, units and magic stuff in the Arcane Journal

Seems fine to be but I mostly interested in the lore.

Whilst Setra is and was a complete tyrant - so were living Emperors and Kings in the lore and there are relatively benevolant Tomb kings - like the current ruler of Numas who has living and undead together in his kingdom. Now as long as nuances like this are referenced I am fine but I really not keen on blanket "good" and Evil".

I think it depends how blanket they are or if they are just books lumped together.

Don't forget "Order" in AoS is one grouping and yet within that you've got forces like the Cities of Sigmar who are basically humans; all the way to Daughters of Khaine who are almost more blood crazed than vampires; Sylvaneth who really don't care about anyone but themselves etc... So it could very well just be the "good vs bad" is purely a means to lump them together in a very generic fashion.

I'm sure we'll still have lore with High Elves who are so haughty that they could let a whole township die to ork invasion because the Elves really don't want the bother of leaving their tower; or as you say TK who are less bent on world domination and the spread of just their own race etc...



Often Good VS Evil is sometimes purely based on perspective.

 kodos wrote:
I would not be surprised if part of the High Elf lore is referencing how he is the true King and that the near future will proof this

Reading the article again, sleeping over it and now I just hope that the lore that is written in the books is better and not End Times level of writing to justify why certain things happen

and if the have not learned and reference the End Times ever so often in the new books as they do on the articles, this won't end up well

People don't like the EndTimes, not just because it blew up the world but also because of the bad writing that already started with 8th Edi army books, and a lot here were excited for TOW and the setting because they can ignore it.

I have the feeling the people there don't know why Warhammer Fantasy was liked in the first place and start building a world upon the stuff no one wants

You know what they say about GW and hope. I fully expect the writers to look at events through the lens of the setting's inevitable end and glorious rebirth into a bubbleverse.

Is the writing going to be any better than the end times books? Who knows. Is there a different writing group for Forge World or specialist games than the main games? How are the recent Horus Heresy/Titanicus campaign books in terms of writing?

Although I haven't read any, Forge World's old campaign books usually earned praise for the lore. So we might actually get some quality writing if none of the 40k/AoS writers were involved, at least in terms of style and narrative structure.

I don't think the tone will be the same as in the olden days, or that the writers can be trusted to respect established fluff. They seem to have made up their mind which kind of tone they want for Old World and I fully expect them to bend or break old characterizations to fit the new mold.

Tyel wrote:

 Perkustin wrote:
Also, again like some others, i don't really like that they take this opportunity to low-key prohibit the fielding of VC, Skaven, and other armies lore wise. Just like before couldn't they have just bigged up what they had and left hints that the other armies will be coming when they had something special ready for them? (even if they don't haha).

I don't agree with chaos0xomega's view of "this is TOW's setting, if in 2055 we are on the 10th edition of TOW, GW are still never bringing VC/ Skaven/DE into it". GW don't plan that far ahead.
But I think its more honest to say - at least for this wave (so, 3-5 years?) - there's no VC/Skaven/DE etc.

Mainly because I remember the Bret players going "maybe this year?" for around a decade. I don't think it was good.

Agreed. GW is very clear about the legends armies for once. That's a good thing. Much better than getting people's hopes up over something that's not going to happen.

It would be preferable if all armies were supported equally, but if GW absolutely has to leave some of them out, it's better for everyone to be clear and honest about it.

Ah, the past. When bearded dudes with flails were rarer than steam tanks and female knights.

Manfred von Drakken wrote:

Lord Zarkov wrote:
I’m hoping the cryptic comment on flagellants means they’re in but like rare or even rare and restricted (like the Bret trebuchet).

Flagellants were already 0-1 Rare units - I can't imagine them getting any MORE rare without being removed entirely, which they probably have been since they're still in the Cities of Sigmar.

Pretty sure 8th Ed remove all 0-1 restrictions, so we’ll probably just get that back.

Tbh I took the ‘well there are some flagellants about’ after the ‘no hordes of flagellants’ as ‘don’t worry, they’re still a unit’ but ymmv.

MaxT wrote:

Replicant253 wrote:
I may have misunderstood. So Ravening Hordes and the good army version are not just tie you over compendiums until you get a supplement? If so that has re-engaged my interest in picking up the books now. I had decided to wait and see how things develop.

MESBG is my 'main' game and the model works for me. Three core books, likely only needing two of those since Hobbit armies are not as numerous, and then additional supplements adding flavour to specific battles/stories etc.

We will find out soon enough, and I don’t know if GW announced how many pages that Ravening Hordes/Forces of Fantasy are, but looking at the image they look to be a good couple of hundred pages. That means 40+ pages per army list. They’re also hardback. To me that indicates full lists rather than “get you by”.

For reference, the 6th edition Ravening hordes were get you by lists and they ran to no more than 4 pages per list. So an order of magnitude difference.

Plus we know what’s in the Bret Journal, and there isn’t anything foundational to the list in there at all.

Mr Morden wrote:The format looks similar to the Space Marines had with the old Codex supplements.

* You get the main army list in the big book (plus several other armies that you may or may not be allowed to take allies from - so relevant)
* You get a couple of characters, some variant army lists, units and magic stuff in the Arcane Journal

Seems fine to be but I mostly interested in the lore.

Whilst Setra is and was a complete tyrant - so were living Emperors and Kings in the lore and there are relatively benevolant Tomb kings - like the current ruler of Numas who has living and undead together in his kingdom. Now as long as nuances like this are referenced I am fine but I really not keen on blanket "good" and Evil".

Tbh with a 5/4 split deal I’m not too concerned they’re in the Evil book. They weren’t in Order before and the 5 ‘Good’ races were and are far more likely to ally with each other.

Frankly the main difference between both main ‘neutral’ races in 8th and the Disorder races was that you could buy them off whereas the disorder ones would kill you for the sake of it.

The better TK are nicer than the worst humans yes, but the Order faction leaders are verging on benevolent, whereas Settra would be the big bad in most other settings.

 Geifer wrote:

Is the writing going to be any better than the end times books? Who knows. Is there a different writing group for Forge World or specialist games than the main games? How are the recent Horus Heresy/Titanicus campaign books in terms of writing?

It's a different team. YMMV if that is good or bad.

They're leaning heavily on the past being like the Great Crusade era of 40k, with reason winning over superstition and technology being on the rise. It just doesn't feel applicable, like they really wanted TOW to be Warhammer's Horus Heresy equivalent without caring about what was previously established.

SU-152 wrote:
it seems top quality: well thought rules with the best from each edition (something that they should have done with Legions Imperialis but they didn't).

Random charges and combat resolution not contributing towards actually breaking a unit are hardly what I'd call 'the best from each edition'. And this is GW we're talking about; 'well thought-out rules' is antithesis to them.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
What proof is there of this?

Precedent? Even if it's similar to HH instead, it's too many books, especially at GW prices. And their quality control for written materials is shocking. How many 'premium' books have we seen with basic spelling/grammatical/formatting errors or outright rules contradictions that mean they're outdated on release? I'm certain you yourself have pointed this out before!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And like most cash grabs, it's taken literal years of work to get it to print.

Wait...

The fact that it has taken four-odd years to get to this point and this release is what they have to show for it demonstrates how little actual work has gone into the project - if anything it makes it all the more likely that it was announced in direct response to KoW's third edition (funny how close together those two things were) and then left to rot in development hell until they realised they had to throw *something* together. Charging modern GW prices for ancient plastic kits (and the frankly insulting prices for the metals) that a lot of people don't like is the corporate icing on the disappointment cake.

GW do not care about WHFB and it shows, from constantly reminding us about the literary abomination that was End Times to random pointless retconning ("only 12 Steam Tanks? Pffff, myth and legend! Have as many as you want!"). There is no reason beyond greed to have seperate books for army lists and then *more* books for extra faction rules, there's absolutely no guarantee of continued support for the game (just look at Aeronautica), and there is no indication that there will be much (if anything) new model-wise beyond token character models or more unneccesary 'centrepiece' kits like the TK crocodile-dragon - look at how long even the vaunted HH had to wait for a basic Assault Marine kit.

They already threw WHFB out once, and trying to monetize nostalgia doesn't fix the burned bridge.

Go far enough back and the Dwarves and Elves were way more advanced than they are during the End Times. Both races destroyed themselves and much dwarven technology was lost or is now hidden and left unused. One of the main characters in Gotrek and Felix is even rebelling against this and the technology on display there is very advanced - easily equal to that of the Khadorans from AoS

Malakai’s airship is impressive but I feel like KO technology is much more advanced. KO have entire sky cities, more reliable firearms, individual duardin can have their own mobile hot air balloons, etc.

Though they don’t have axe hewers

Tyel wrote:

 Perkustin wrote:
Also, again like some others, i don't really like that they take this opportunity to low-key prohibit the fielding of VC, Skaven, and other armies lore wise. Just like before couldn't they have just bigged up what they had and left hints that the other armies will be coming when they had something special ready for them? (even if they don't haha).

I don't agree with chaos0xomega's view of "this is TOW's setting, if in 2055 we are on the 10th edition of TOW, GW are still never bringing VC/ Skaven/DE into it". GW don't plan that far ahead.
But I think its more honest to say - at least for this wave (so, 3-5 years?) - there's no VC/Skaven/DE etc.

Mainly because I remember the Bret players going "maybe this year?" for around a decade. I don't think it was good.

In 2055 I would guess we will be on ~3rd or 4th edition TOW. By that point, I could see one or more of those other factions possibly being brought in, but 25+ years for now dakka might not be around, half the people who bought into the game on release will no longer be playing, quite a few of us will be dead, etc. Its easier to just say its not going to happen and nip all the hopium in the bud and convince folks to let it go than it is to put up with 10-20+ years of "why hasn't GW released my favorite faction yet?" posts and comments. If GW is anything like other companies I've worked for undertaking major projects like this, they probably have planned about 10 years out into the future, I would not expect to see Skaven/VC/DE, etc. at any point within that time horizon at a minimum, barring a huge changeover in corporate leadership and management that takes a different view on their IP and branding from the current regime. IIRC in the Alan Bligh era he once stated that they built their plan for the development of the game 10 years out, and that 10 year mark was around the time that we got 2nd edition, so it seems GW follows fairly standard practices in terms of project development roadmaps and planning horizons.

Expansion into those other factions seems to be (reading between the lines) currently gated by the Siege of Praag and the Great War Against Chaos, until we settle through those events I don't think we ever see any of those legacy factions get brought in. We know that won't happen anytime soon, nor is their plan to actually work up to and lead into that, but to rather meander around this 100 year chunk of history they defined for themselves. I would guess that the Siege of Praag is not within that 10 year plan. The comparisons to the Siege of Terra in HH is also quite telling, we're 10+ years into HH and GW still hasn't touched that part of the setting. While technically speaking at least part of the Siege of Cthonia takes place *after* the Siege of Terra, they haven't really done anything involving the solar war or siege of terra itself. Assuming the want/need to get sculpts for all the daemon primarchs out before they touch Terra or the solar system, I wouldn't expect to see anything of the sort for maybe another ~2-3 years at least based on their current pace of releases.

Also of note - TOW is a 100 year long period, they may not touch every single year fo the setting, but theres probably enough interesting events to cover a substantial portion of that window with narrative events of interest. By contrast, HH is like a 12-14 year long affair - they've spent a decade real time exploring it and still haven't hit the major milestone there, its fair to assume that they have a lot more runway in the 100 year period of TOW before they run out of stuff to cover and need to hit the Siege of Praag to segue into "the next chapter" as it were.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Santtu wrote:
They're leaning heavily on the past being like the Great Crusade era of 40k, with reason winning over superstition and technology being on the rise. It just doesn't feel applicable, like they really wanted TOW to be Warhammer's Horus Heresy equivalent without caring about what was previously established.

I mean, they literally said very early on that TOW was the Horus Heresy of the Age of Sigmar franchise, so yes - thats exactly what they did.

Skaven actually has it decent in this. They get rules, models are on sale. All they miss is models under TOW brand but will be getting models in AOS.

So you have models and you get rules for free. Skaven is cheap way to start TOW.

 MalusCalibur wrote:
The fact that it has taken four-odd years to get to this point and this release is what they have to show for it demonstrates how little actual work has gone into the project...

[Citation Needed]

 MalusCalibur wrote:
GW do not care about WHFB and it shows...

Their actions - that being redoing an entire new edition of WFB, everything from rules, to artwork, to layout, to new fluff, and new miniatures, to publishing and shipping massive expensive new books across the entire world - tends to say the absolute. Literal. Opposite of that.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/03/returning-to-the-old-world-with-warhammer/

New article and it is confirmed. There is no "Step up" rule. RIP all non elite units. You will never do damage. RIP units like Greatswords, dwarfs with great weapons, black orcs. You will never get to swing with your great weapon. We are back to 7th meta of who can kill the front rank first.

chaos0xomega wrote:
...they probably have planned about 10 years out into the future, I would not expect to see Skaven/VC/DE, etc. at any point within that time horizon at a minimum

10 years?? Haha, what are you basing that on? At most they might have a vague outline, but that will change significantly based on many factors, including sales performance.

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/03/returning-to-the-old-world-with-warhammer/

New article and it is confirmed. There is no "Step up" rule. RIP all non elite units. You will never do damage. RIP units like Greatswords, dwarfs with great weapons, black orcs. You will never get to swing with your great weapon. We are back to 7th meta of who can kill the front rank first.

Where does it say that??

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/03/returning-to-the-old-world-with-warhammer/

New article and it is confirmed. There is no "Step up" rule. RIP all non elite units. You will never do damage. RIP units like Greatswords, dwarfs with great weapons, black orcs. You will never get to swing with your great weapon. We are back to 7th meta of who can kill the front rank first.

Where did it say that?
All I saw was that cav killed a lot of TK before they got to strike back. The way I have seen battle reports from GW stupid things happen that shouldn't happen in a more normal game (they redo stuff to make them more interesting etc) so was it 2 big cav units that got to charge a TK unit in the front and flank and then rolled hot so most of the unit was wiped and step up wouldn't have mattered?

Perhaps full step up isn't very good either since that would make initiative a pretty pointless stat compared to more cheap models that can just step up and strike back but having no way to strike back at all isn't good either.

chaos0xomega wrote:

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/03/returning-to-the-old-world-with-warhammer/

New article and it is confirmed. There is no "Step up" rule. RIP all non elite units. You will never do damage. RIP units like Greatswords, dwarfs with great weapons, black orcs. You will never get to swing with your great weapon. We are back to 7th meta of who can kill the front rank first.

Where does it say that??

Doesn't say anything in the article that I saw but during the battle report there were a few moments where it seemed like there was no step up.

Ie, some knights charged a unit of skeletons and a prince in the flank, and dealt ~4 damage. Only the prince was mentioned as making any attacks at all (the flank was the prince + 3 skeleton models).

It was also implied/stated that regenerated models
1) count for combat res. Ie, if you take damage, but pass the Regeneration roll, it still counts as +1 against you even if the model "technically survived".
2) do not get to fight in that combat if they die before their initiative step, even if they Regenerate.

No step up was confirmed before and always worked out well in 6th imho.
You can still use bait units to lure cavalery and such and then counter charge.

 GaroRobe wrote:
Malakai’s airship is impressive but I feel like KO technology is much more advanced. KO have entire sky cities, more reliable firearms, individual duardin can have their own mobile hot air balloons, etc.

Though they don’t have axe hewers

My impression is that if Malakai were allowed to do all he wanted and if the Dwarven Engineer's Guild were not holding back their technology, then the Dwarves could likely advance as far as the Khadorans very quickly. Ergo they've got a lot of the core technologies already; they are simply not using them in the End Times. I think the best visual representation is if you look at their Man O War ships which give a much better sense of their level of technology. They are much closer to Dystopian Wars level of tech.

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/03/returning-to-the-old-world-with-warhammer/

New article and it is confirmed. There is no "Step up" rule. RIP all non elite units. You will never do damage. RIP units like Greatswords, dwarfs with great weapons, black orcs. You will never get to swing with your great weapon. We are back to 7th meta of who can kill the front rank first.

Hyperbole much?

Yeah, great weapon dwarves are actually going to be BETTER than 6th/7th versions because they won't have to be close enough to the anvil unit to be multi-charged like they used to (6" charge was death")

I'm fine with no step-up. Although I think it'd be a fine rule for rabble units that have the horde ability. Even then if only one rank is fighting and it's 6 attacks that hit on 3s and wound on 3s (generally your BESTEST infantry) that's still only like 3 dead skelly or goblin equivalents. That leaves some stuff to attack back. It's gonna be a slog like back in the day!

is it not step up, or is it not step up if attacked in the flank or rear though?