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 lord_blackfang wrote:
The main TOW facebook group already has 2/3 of the member count of the main AoS group. I except it easily could bring in AoS money if you could actually buy it.

Or is that because the oldies still on Facebook are the ones old enough to still have their armies from before...?

Found an army builder, already has Legacy

https://old-world-builder.com/

 lord_blackfang wrote:
if you could actually buy it.

This is the real crux when it comes to TOW becoming a better supported main game. Much like LI it seems to have swept through stores on a wave of hype (a good thing) but with no support seemingly beyond day one in terms of stock. I've gone to totally ambivalent to TOW, due to joining the hobby after WHFB had already been cancelled, to really getting into the game thanks to the work of GW and their influencers (and I'm not normally one to get swept up in such). I'd love to dive into the game but as I couldn't get to my local store on release day they have now run out of all stock and have no estimation of a second run. Now will my interest hold out until new stock appears? If it's a couple of weeks and it fits in the same credit card bill then it likely will, beyond that however it's highly probable it will drop out of my hobby budget. It doesn't need to be much either if I could just buy a unit to start while I wait for the big box that would be enough. I've worked in retail, I know about shelf space, opportunity costs on stock, etc 40K and AoS rightly get the lions share of the store. However GW need to stop pushing out games if they can't allocate enough product for it to be visible in a store. Stock sitting around forever is bad but constantly being out of stock can in many cases be worse.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Unless WFB ends up so big it brings in AoS/40k money. Which would be nice.

Those are (probably) two quite different targets to go for...

You just have to present it right. It is said the Tactical Squad kit outsold all of Warhammer Fantasy near the end. I have a feeling that classic Tomb King skeletons will outsell the Tactical Squad before long. Take that as your metric and The Old World will soar.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The main TOW facebook group already has 2/3 of the member count of the main AoS group. I except it easily could bring in AoS money if you could actually buy it.

The main TOW group was previously a WHFB group IIRC, so it started with a pretty big following and hasn't actually grown much over the past couple years. Also I think the main TOW group is larger? 48k vs 29k for AoS?

Reddit might be a more useful comparison though - main AoS group - 213k members, main TOW/WHFB group - 89k members (and surprising hasn't really increased at all over the last few months). AoS is clearly much bigger than TOW is, and likely will remain that way.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Geifer wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Unless WFB ends up so big it brings in AoS/40k money. Which would be nice.

Those are (probably) two quite different targets to go for...

You just have to present it right. It is said the Tactical Squad kit outsold all of Warhammer Fantasy near the end. I have a feeling that classic Tomb King skeletons will outsell the Tactical Squad before long. Take that as your metric and The Old World will soar.

Thats classic hyperbole unsubstantiated by any available data. There is some relevant data associated with the filings for the chapterhouse lawsuit that shows that over a 4 year period from 2006-2009 GW had $1.266M in sales from BfSP vs $968k in sales from tactical squad sets. Its possible, but not plausible, that WHFB declined so drastically and SM sales spiked so hard that tac squads eventually outsold the entirety of the WHFB range, but... that seems unlikely.

Space Marines as a faction almost definitely did outsell WHFB as a whole, as various GW insiders have confirmed that the space marine model range made up about 30% of GWs annual revenue on their own, but thats different from just tac squads....

To be fair I'd expect TOW growth right now to be more established gamers and old fans coming back - so seeing FB or Reddit groups not expand is predictable. Those groups are already full of the fans to start with.

The real test is in a few years time, when the game has been out in the wild and we see if its gathering in new fresh players or if its remaining mostly with the "old guard".




A BIG thing here is not just how much GW releases for it; not just how much they update once its out; but also how much they just talk about and market it compared to how much they market AoS.
If one gets way more marketing it will likely always remain ahead of the other.

I expect TOW won't really start growing until they get to releasing new plastic kits for the game on a steady basis.

I think we'll see initial growth off the old kits; but yes big growth will happen when we start seeing big releases of fresh plastics. Perhaps not until Kislev and Cathay appear

chaos0xomega wrote:
I expect TOW won't really start growing until they get to releasing new plastic kits for the game on a steady basis.

I don't expect it to start growing as a result. It'll be largely gorgnards with existing armies they get to dust off and add to a little. The TK skellies put me off 10 years ago, they put me off now. The WHFB armies I was interested in largely got updated in Sigmar and look great, so why would I not just stick with that where the model counts (thus cost) are far lower and it gets more attention overall.

I disagree - I'm with Overread. I think Kislev and Cathay will bring a big influx of players in, as will whatever else they come up with later on down the line (I'm still hoping for zombie pirates).

Dudeface wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I expect TOW won't really start growing until they get to releasing new plastic kits for the game on a steady basis.

I don't expect it to start growing as a result. It'll be largely gorgnards with existing armies they get to dust off and add to a little. The TK skellies put me off 10 years ago, they put me off now. The WHFB armies I was interested in largely got updated in Sigmar and look great, so why would I not just stick with that where the model counts (thus cost) are far lower and it gets more attention overall.

And thta's the second part of my post. Once the old armies are out of the gate and GW moves onto Kislev, Cathay and having more options to add new/updated models to existing armies - then we will see the shift in gaining new people. When GW updates pegasus riders to the standard of the newly added one and so forth.

Of course its going to take a few years just to get out of the gate with the release. So right now I'm expecting a 2-3 year wait at least before we are past the old armies going out and things settling down some.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I disagree - I'm with Overread. I think Kislev and Cathay will bring a big influx of players in, as will whatever else they come up with later on down the line (I'm still hoping for zombie pirates).

Yup, probably how all the new stuff for AoS helped it grow - I don’t think it was doing too well straight out of the gate, but new factions definitely boosted the success.
Just by looking at W:TW we can get quite a few potential projects, that will be new for everyone/the vast majority:
Kislev, Cathay, Vampirates, like mentioned above + Norsca, Clan Moulder, Wood elves minus elves, the new baba yaga army(can’t remember their proper name), chaos dwarfs (kinda, if they get Solar A treatment)

Plus they should really really try hard and make/rerelease minis for all the leader characters in W:TW.
I’m sure people would love them just for painting/collecting dust on a shelf sake.

 Overread wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I expect TOW won't really start growing until they get to releasing new plastic kits for the game on a steady basis.

I don't expect it to start growing as a result. It'll be largely gorgnards with existing armies they get to dust off and add to a little. The TK skellies put me off 10 years ago, they put me off now. The WHFB armies I was interested in largely got updated in Sigmar and look great, so why would I not just stick with that where the model counts (thus cost) are far lower and it gets more attention overall.

And thta's the second part of my post. Once the old armies are out of the gate and GW moves onto Kislev, Cathay and having more options to add new/updated models to existing armies - then we will see the shift in gaining new people. When GW updates pegasus riders to the standard of the newly added one and so forth.

Of course its going to take a few years just to get out of the gate with the release. So right now I'm expecting a 2-3 year wait at least before we are past the old armies going out and things settling down some.

I just suspect that those 2-3 years will be painful in honestly, much akin to how HH had a good launch followed by "but where's the new stuff/infantry" for 2 years to the point it feels it's dropped off most peoples radar. But that has the stigma of almost needing a 3d printer somewhere in your group to be properly viable since the rest of the options either don't exist or are locked in expensive FW resin. ToW has that AND 20+ year old kits to contend with for 2-3 years.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SnotlingPimpWagon wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I disagree - I'm with Overread. I think Kislev and Cathay will bring a big influx of players in, as will whatever else they come up with later on down the line (I'm still hoping for zombie pirates).

Yup, probably how all the new stuff for AoS helped it grow - I don’t think it was doing too well straight out of the gate, but new factions definitely boosted the success.

AoS Launched with 2 new armies. It had sylvaneth, fyreslayers, ironjawz, disciples, kharadron and Idoneth all in the first 3 years with mini releases alongside all the drip fed sigmarines and blades of khorne.

Given TOW is getting 0-1 kit and a couple of FW characters per army over 18 months-ish, I'm not sure it's comparable.

Adding to some of the imcomplete datasets above.

Polls off of the warhammer fantasy subreddit have around 20% of respondents being new to the setting. Hopefully it grows are more sets come out.

Given how popular the Empire is in the total war setting I suspect it will be a decent bump by itself.

Dudeface wrote:

I just suspect that those 2-3 years will be painful in honestly, much akin to how HH had a good launch followed by "but where's the new stuff/infantry" for 2 years to the point it feels it's dropped off most peoples radar. But that has the stigma of almost needing a 3d printer somewhere in your group to be properly viable since the rest of the options either don't exist or are locked in expensive FW resin. ToW has that AND 20+ year old kits to contend with for 2-3 years.

I suspect you're right, but with the benefit that much, much more people already have old Fantasy armies they can use than people had FW HH armies, so it's going to have a significantly easier time surviving the doldrums.

chaos0xomega wrote:


Thats classic hyperbole unsubstantiated by any available data. There is some relevant data associated with the filings for the chapterhouse lawsuit that shows that over a 4 year period from 2006-2009 GW had $1.266M in sales from BfSP vs $968k in sales from tactical squad sets. Its possible, but not plausible, that WHFB declined so drastically and SM sales spiked so hard that tac squads eventually outsold the entirety of the WHFB range, but... that seems unlikely.

Space Marines as a faction almost definitely did outsell WHFB as a whole, as various GW insiders have confirmed that the space marine model range made up about 30% of GWs annual revenue on their own, but thats different from just tac squads....

So in the early 2000's, when GW had a factory in the US that strictly made things like the rhino, tac squads, and starters, and before BfSP it was widely known, in the US at least, that Tactical Squads and Rhinos combined outsold the entire Fantasy range. This was back when all the US trade guys worked in a just a few locations, it was an incredibly small team, that spent regular time with us Store Managers and we talked a lot. Their numbers, again at least in the US, were pretty accurate given that they saw all the stock going to independents and to our physical stores back then. Most of us could walk into the back where they worked and SEE their numbers whenever we stopped by that store (most of these were in the "Bunker" locations back in the day in Los Angeles, Chicago, and if I remember right they had a Nashville one just because they had the factory there).

It may have been, and probably was, different at the global level but I doubt it was very far off. Maybe add a third marine kit to get the same results.

Regardless, I find it interesting that Fantasy may be on of GW cheapest large scale games to get into for a variety of factions compared to AoS, 40k, HH, and LI. You can reasonable build a 2k for less than $400 BEFORE discounts. Try doing that in the other games. I think that also bodes well for the life of the game.

 Hulksmash wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


Thats classic hyperbole unsubstantiated by any available data. There is some relevant data associated with the filings for the chapterhouse lawsuit that shows that over a 4 year period from 2006-2009 GW had $1.266M in sales from BfSP vs $968k in sales from tactical squad sets. Its possible, but not plausible, that WHFB declined so drastically and SM sales spiked so hard that tac squads eventually outsold the entirety of the WHFB range, but... that seems unlikely.

Space Marines as a faction almost definitely did outsell WHFB as a whole, as various GW insiders have confirmed that the space marine model range made up about 30% of GWs annual revenue on their own, but thats different from just tac squads....

So in the early 2000's, when GW had a factory in the US that strictly made things like the rhino, tac squads, and starters, and before BfSP it was widely known, in the US at least, that Tactical Squads and Rhinos combined outsold the entire Fantasy range. This was back when all the US trade guys worked in a just a few locations, it was an incredibly small team, that spent regular time with us Store Managers and we talked a lot. Their numbers, again at least in the US, were pretty accurate given that they saw all the stock going to independents and to our physical stores back then. Most of us could walk into the back where they worked and SEE their numbers whenever we stopped by that store (most of these were in the "Bunker" locations back in the day in Los Angeles, Chicago, and if I remember right they had a Nashville one just because they had the factory there).

It may have been, and probably was, different at the global level but I doubt it was very far off. Maybe add a third marine kit to get the same results.

Regardless, I find it interesting that Fantasy may be on of GW cheapest large scale games to get into for a variety of factions compared to AoS, 40k, HH, and LI. You can reasonable build a 2k for less than $400 BEFORE discounts. Try doing that in the other games. I think that also bodes well for the life of the game.

Until they replace/update the kits and if you're happy with the old sculpts ofc.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I disagree - I'm with Overread. I think Kislev and Cathay will bring a big influx of players in, as will whatever else they come up with later on down the line (I'm still hoping for zombie pirates).

I'd have thought any re-imagining of the Vampire Coast/Zom-pirates would be on the AoS side of things. Pirates feel much more of a skirmish style force than a full rank and file army.

Dudeface wrote:

Spoiler:

 Hulksmash wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


Thats classic hyperbole unsubstantiated by any available data. There is some relevant data associated with the filings for the chapterhouse lawsuit that shows that over a 4 year period from 2006-2009 GW had $1.266M in sales from BfSP vs $968k in sales from tactical squad sets. Its possible, but not plausible, that WHFB declined so drastically and SM sales spiked so hard that tac squads eventually outsold the entirety of the WHFB range, but... that seems unlikely.

Space Marines as a faction almost definitely did outsell WHFB as a whole, as various GW insiders have confirmed that the space marine model range made up about 30% of GWs annual revenue on their own, but thats different from just tac squads....

So in the early 2000's, when GW had a factory in the US that strictly made things like the rhino, tac squads, and starters, and before BfSP it was widely known, in the US at least, that Tactical Squads and Rhinos combined outsold the entire Fantasy range. This was back when all the US trade guys worked in a just a few locations, it was an incredibly small team, that spent regular time with us Store Managers and we talked a lot. Their numbers, again at least in the US, were pretty accurate given that they saw all the stock going to independents and to our physical stores back then. Most of us could walk into the back where they worked and SEE their numbers whenever we stopped by that store (most of these were in the "Bunker" locations back in the day in Los Angeles, Chicago, and if I remember right they had a Nashville one just because they had the factory there).

It may have been, and probably was, different at the global level but I doubt it was very far off. Maybe add a third marine kit to get the same results.

Regardless, I find it interesting that Fantasy may be on of GW cheapest large scale games to get into for a variety of factions compared to AoS, 40k, HH, and LI. You can reasonable build a 2k for less than $400 BEFORE discounts. Try doing that in the other games. I think that also bodes well for the life of the game.

Until they replace/update the kits and if you're happy with the old sculpts ofc.

I mean, for Beastmen you can build an army for under $400 with good models that I doubt are being replaced anytime soon. The Bretonia models (maybe outside of the pegasus knights but I don't hate them like most people seem to) still look good even today. The orc and goblin stuff that's coming and that you can still get are pretty decent with a few outliers (like the boars on the chariots) but that won't be a cheap army simply because Orcs & Goblins. Yes, the TK skellies are old and derpy so sure, on that one you may be right. Warriors of Chaos has some pretty great models that can be used in WFB to build a relatively cheap force.

I'm just saying out of the armies available and based on the armies released currently WFB is oddly GW's cheapest mass battle system.

Dudeface wrote:
The WHFB armies I was interested in largely got updated in Sigmar and look great, so why would I not just stick with that where the model counts (thus cost) are far lower and it gets more attention overall.

There is a large group of people who have zero interest in playing AoS but are interested in the classic Warhammer fantasy lore and setting. How big that group is will go a long way to determine the long term success of the Old World.

I recall one of the explanations for blowing up WF was although there were many fans of the setting, most didn’t actually play the game or buy models. I’d like to think modern new plastic sculpts would help attract both old and new fans.

bobthe4th wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
The WHFB armies I was interested in largely got updated in Sigmar and look great, so why would I not just stick with that where the model counts (thus cost) are far lower and it gets more attention overall.

There is a large group of people who have zero interest in playing AoS but are interested in the classic Warhammer fantasy lore and setting. How big that group is will go a long way to determine the long term success of the Old World.

I recall one of the explanations for blowing up WF was although there were many fans of the setting, most didn’t actually play the game or buy models. I’d like to think modern new plastic sculpts would help attract both old and new fans.

There is also the fact that TOW is a different style of game to AoS. Despite loving the minis I've been reluctant to get into AoS as it's a similar style of game to 40K. I've already invested a lot into two 40K armies so to pull me away a game needs to be something different. TOW fulfils that brief it's not just fantasy but also Rank and Flank so a very different proposition. AoS may have more modern (and indeed fantastic looking) models but TOW scratches a different game itch.

What Tallon said above, having games that play so differently is great since once you get tired of one, you can just flip to the other.

AoS and 40K are too similar in play style imo, one is just set in the mortal realms and the other in the 41st millennium. But game play wise they are very similar from what I remember.

The 40k and AoS are too similar argument has never made much sense to me, aside from rolling to hit/wound and opponent rolling an armor save (which is also true of TOW/WHFB), the two games play very differently.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The 40k and AoS are too similar argument has never made much sense to me, aside from rolling to hit/wound and opponent rolling an armor save (which is also true of TOW/WHFB), the two games play very differently.

Agreed, they play significantly differently now. They are both fairly large squad based combat offerings; from there the differences begin.

Thankfully some of our AOS players, myself included, are picking up Old World too.

 Shrapnelsmile wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The 40k and AoS are too similar argument has never made much sense to me, aside from rolling to hit/wound and opponent rolling an armor save (which is also true of TOW/WHFB), the two games play very differently.

Agreed, they play significantly differently now. They are both fairly large squad based combat offerings; from there the differences begin.

That's the key similarity though, they're both large squad based 32mm scale skirmish games.

I played 40k because it was a large squad based skirmish game, and I played WHFB because it was a rank and flank game. I didn't (and still don't) want another large squad based 32mm scale game. I never particularly liked moving squads of loose formations around the battlefield, I endured it in 40k because it was a popular game with armies I liked.

I do wonder how well AoS actually does compared to 40k, around these parts it still seems pretty small, or maybe I just don't go down on the nights the AoS crowd come in to play, and the Dominion boxed set sat around stores for absolutely ages, to the point some stores bumped their discount up on it to finally get rid of it and the FLGS opened their boxes and sold the sprues separately. There's some nice looking models though, and if nothing else GW fans will buy nice looking models.

SnotlingPimpWagon wrote:

Plus they should really really try hard and make/rerelease minis for all the leader characters in W:TW.
I’m sure people would love them just for painting/collecting dust on a shelf sake.

I doubt that's going to be part of the plan considering a fair majority of those characters aren't alive (or even un-alive) at the point The Old World is set.

JimmyWolf87 wrote:

SnotlingPimpWagon wrote:

Plus they should really really try hard and make/rerelease minis for all the leader characters in W:TW.
I’m sure people would love them just for painting/collecting dust on a shelf sake.

I doubt that's going to be part of the plan considering a fair majority of those characters aren't alive (or even un-alive) at the point The Old World is set.

Eh in fairness they can just give them new names or even have them as generic characters. Many Old World leaders were not stand-out different to regular ones. Even Karl Franze doesn't stand out as they had a regular version of "guy on big griffin". They just add rules for "two headed generic griffin rare" and boom you've got yourself a generic hero. Ok that might be a bad choice since his name is plastered all over the armour on the model; but by and large they could get away with a good many Old World heroes that way.

Since the only thing for which The Old World seems to have a normal budget is resin characters, I would think GW's strategy should be to release resin models for era appropriate new characters (as they also hinted at) rather than awkwardly justifying old named characters that they can just as easily keep selling as generic characters for the most part.

True, however it all depends on the budget and speed. I could certainly see them release some named character old models as generic ones. Either as main models or in the made-to-order waves that they are doing.

Heck Skaven have several old named heroes in AoS that are now just generic characters or which can easily count as generic warriors now.


I fully agree that in the fullness of time Old World will see them release brand new named characters. They might come later since GW might be focusing the budget they have on new core army models, so we might see named heroes as part of a second wave of updates/solo releases after they get past the main bulk of armies.

I think that's when things will get really exciting - when the bulk of the proposed main armies are out and in the wild. Even with old models they will still be in the wild and selling and that means a big chance for GW to then focus fully on made to order re-runs and new stuff

 triplegrim wrote:

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
Hmm, so kind of off topic. But if GW is bringing back the Old World for The Old World, is there any chance of them bringing back say Mordheim?

Zero.

The (main?) designer of Mordheim, was a finnish fan dude who made loads of fan edits to warhammer. Got a job offer when GW saw his work and worked in Nottingham for some years.

He's still active and around the Mordheim fb pages. He's said theres not any Mordheim coming whatsoever, and that he'd know if it did.

Also the fanbase of Mordheim is one of those rare fan communities (bc its based on 3d printing terrain I suppose) that wouldnt really care for a rerelease. Maaaaaybe if it was the old set with cardboard building and everything, but nah.

That's if he would be allowed to share the info.

If he's not willing to withold that info until announcement ready he wouldn't be told in the first place.

He's not some random fan but actual professional game designer so not really likely to leak info in the first place.

And of course there's always future. Anybody claiming to know what GW decides to do in 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15, 20 years from now on is just lying.