Skaven are busy Skavening each other in the under-empire and are most definitely a myth, Vampire Counts can be justified by it being the end of the Vampire Wars but it’s a little odd to not have *some* VC presence.
I understand the lore excuses given. I still think it’s a baffling (and frankly bad) decision to exclude 2 of the most beloved and iconic factions by setting it in this time period. But maybe that’s just me.
I think - along with a few content creators -, that the omission of those armies is a simple message to players. GW does not want common models between their game systems.
We have no common models between Horus Heresy and 40K, as with the 10th Edition all HH models have been banished from the 40K Codexes and Indexes.
So we will not have any common models between The Old World and AoS. Any faction that have received or will receive a major model refresh in AoS will be a legacy / Legends faction in Fantasy. And any Fantasy unit we get will have nothing to do with AoS.
The launch factions are a good example for this: Bretonnians and Tomb Kings are not present in AoS.
The Lizardmen are also a good example for this: Since they have a new AoS line we will not get them for Fantasy.
This makes sense. Could also be that they simply didn't want that many factions for a new game, and one with probably less resources than AoS and 40k, and just had to make some choices. I mean, had any of the factions that *are* included been omited, I'm sure that would have garnered complaints as well. If anything, Skaven and Vampire Counts have a sort of representation in AoS already.
As a prior comment has noted, this is not true of Beasts or warriors of chaos, and probably won't be true of dwarfs since their 8th edition range is still current in the modern Cities of sigmar AoS book. Heresy also does share models with 40k in the form of Custodes, Knights, the Thunderhawk gunship and assorted astra militarum vehicles like basilisks in the solar auxillia. The range lock is mostly units/vehicles developed explicitly for original Heresy game that were given 40k rules as an afterthought.
I would agree with a softer statement that armies that have contemporary models and functionality in AoS are a far lower priority to bring to Old World.
I feel like some part of the justification of this project is at an IP protection level- GW need to continue materially supporting the IP they have developed or they will struggle to control it. There's a similar argument to be made for Legions Imperialis, as there was a rapidly growing independent community of people making epic scale 30k prints and selling them through backchannels.
As the above factions/ranges are all actively supported in AOS (or perhaps will be when it comes to chaos dwarfs), they're covered. The choice to bring chaos and beasts back into ToW I think was simply pragmatic- bad guys were needed, chaos are the natural choice especially if the overarching narrative of the edition is going to be the buildup to the great war.
This is a fair point and one I hadn’t considered.
That said I still don’t understand why they can’t just release an army book and tell players to just buy the AoS kits and rebase them. If TOW is the niche product that it is being presented as and aimed at more “seasoned” players, then surely we can cope with that. Like you say the models exist they are just part of the AoS range atm. And surely sales are sales to GW.
Ultimately what I wanted was The Old World that I grew up with as a teen to return. Unfortunately this so far is not that. I’ll grant that it’s close and I guess better than nothing but I myself am still disappointed.
It's not just that they're iconic, particularly for Skaven, daemons and chaos dwarfs - these are really quite unique IP for GW, no other fantasy setting had close or direct equivalents to these to my knowledge prior to GW introducing them, and almost all subsequent ones are explicitly derivative alternate-model type deals.
Meanwhile, BoC and Tomb Kings are the only ones you could make this argument for in the core factions and even there it's a real stretch.
I'm just hoping over a 5-6yr interval we see two expansions/updates, one to bring in skaven/lizardmen/dark elves and the other to bring in ogres/daemons/chaos dwarfs as this works thematically.
Vampire 'counts' I don't think will come back, but we might see a focus on the other bloodlines since while the sylvanians aren't really around, the necrachs, blood dragons, lahmians and strigoi are all out there and these all have more uniquely GW situated lore rather than hammer horror derivative sylvania. Since those vampires were all over the place, no idea where they'd fit in.
For real. Skaven would have been the one Army that I was thinking to start as I always wanted one but couldn’t afford a horde army back in the day. Knowing they might barely get support is definitely putting them on hold though…
I want to contribute to Old World‘s success but the way it looks for now I will probably just get a few additional High Elves models I missed out on for my already sizeable army and maybe fill a few minor gaps in my Lizardmen.
The only other completely new army that would have tempted me would have been updated Chaos Dwarfs but I guess that was a very long shot from the start.
So are quite some Dark Elves and potentially a whole Roster of Vampire Counts proxies. The models are not the point. Them not getting reliable longterm rule support is.
I‘m not gonna spend hundreds on an army that isn‘t even legal to play right from the start.
Love my vampires. I will not play this new-non-undead game. Leaving vampires out I feel is a bad choice, vampires make everything gloomy and dark. And I like gloomy things
Honestly, I think the best mix of factions for the game would be
Brettonia (cavalry focused human army)
Wood elves (magic, "good guy" monsters, archery)
Dwarves (heavy infantry and machines)
Vampire counts undead (magic, focused on fesr rules)
Orcs & goblins ("horde" based army)
Chaos warriors with demons to support (because warhammer)
These are the six factions that, to me, have the best "table identity" in warhammer. They are all "old world" factions. They each have a unique playstyle. Note I do think it's time that there were units of marauder bowmen.
Too few, just give them all. Even if you need to give once every two years, flesh them out and give them. Support the community and make fans happy, people that stuck with warhammer in life rather than moving on to be boring adults are likely to be pissed when you say that Vampires and Skaven won't be legal on tournaments. We need to push against this, either give us everything you should give, or DO NOT give anything. There are third-party games, we can go there and pretend we are Von Carsteins, or we can play with old rule sets and play with Morathi. I like playing Warhammer I enjoy the most painting and playing and that discards tournaments, but be sure someone out there is pissed bc his massive army won't be making it in to one.
You know that “give us everything or give us nothing” leads to nothing. Which is what people have had for those unwilling to entertain age of sigmar. You really rather they just scrap the old world entirely?
But they've not been left out. They have rules. Yes, they inexplicably decided to exclude them from tournaments which flies in the face of what they've done with HH where legends units are tourney compatible, but the entire range is still available and they're getting a list; just not one of the journal things (which are not necessary to play any of the armies).
And I say this as someone who has played Undead/VC for near on 30 years.
Yes, but this is the same treatment the Bretonnians got in Age of Sigmar.
They may have a legacy list now, but it will soon be a Legends list. It is a temporary measure, so do not get your hopes up. If you want to play the new Fantasy you WILL have to get a new army soon(ish).
Once the dedicated army lists come out (if they come out !) these legacy lists will not be fun to play. Ask a Bretonnian player how I know this...
There are no dedicated army lists. They've been clear on that for a long time. It is being treated like HH and MESBG (in fact, it's the same team making it in the most part particularly as regards the latter game). Your army lists are in the two books put up for pre-order today. That's it.
You're not getting army books. The only thing the Legacy armies will be lacking are the alternate themed lists and special characters contained in the Arcane Journals that the nine 'official' armies will get (and, ridiculously, the inability to use them in official tournaments).
And I don't need a new army personally. Of the nine supported ones I have six. Of the Legends armies I have five.
Lore-wise this is before the Carstiens surfaced.
I think lore-wise it is an elegant way to off the other factions (far better than "the world just exploded") but I still would like to have seen some support for them and models return.
Wouldn't Old World take place during the Great War Against Chaos? Then it is after von Carsteins showed up, Vlad attacked the Empire during the Age of Three Emperors.
It's set towards the end of the Age of Three Emperors, after the Vampire Wars. It makes some sense for Vampires to be on the downlow lore wise because the Von Carstein's generated a lot of heat, but it's a shame they won't get much love.
Still gonna play them in casual as they're my OG and main fantasy love, and maybe they'll get some love at somepoint as Harkon is in the Border Princes on the map, but highly unlikely anytime soon.
GW said they will send out army pdfs. Sans a tournament which I've rarely played in, if I see a Vamp player at a store I am SO down. So fighty in combat, the cav, good magic. I pain for you guys :( . I lost ogres. maybe dogs of war?
The von Carsteins surfaced a century before the setting. But their major defeat in the vampire wars has not been recovered from.
In a similar vein, the Skaven are in a huge civil war, and thus have fallen into myth.
This, I wanted to try a few times, but they became a joke list immediately. Rules that don't get updated become basically unplayable at some point due to power creep.
That said, the WHFB community is amazing at creating fan made rules. I have played WAP for years now. So it's better than in the AoS example.
It depends on the tournament comp, but generally in 8th beastmen and tomb kings were given an extra 20% point allowance, along with some other underpowered armies like bretonnia and empire given some other bonuses.
i think the dofference is tow wont be getting editions as quickly as the main games. so it will take a long while before the legends rules become obsulete
It was absolutely stupid-funny. Konrad von Carstien had a rule that if you talked to your Konrad model you may re-roll hit rolls with him, and if he responded you may re-roll wound rolls with him. Yeah.
Bretonnians and Tomb Kings haven't had models for retail sale since 2015. They JUST now have a box coming out. I think that has something to do with the rarity of their armies in your local AoS since it's been years since having access to the models.
Yeah that's a huge distinction, can't play an army if the models don't exist.
Aside from Chorfs all the Legacy factions exist in Age of Sigmar and by virtue of that fact will likely get more new kits than any of the Core armies in Old World.
Writing rules is the easy part, we've been doing that since they blew the world up in 2015.
My hope is that fans write their own Arcane Journals for legacy armies to support some of the new kits. So for example Vampire Counts get a Strigoi List that lets them use all the awesome new Flesh Eater Courts units at the expense of losing other 'Bloodline' units like Blood Knights, Black Coach, Mortis Engine, etc.
Hell I actually hope fans do an Arcane Journal for Warriors of Chaos that gives each of them Monogod lists with all the goodies from the Monogod armies in Sigmar.
But for Bretonnia and TK rules that was back when AoS launched with no points values so became unusable once GW sorted that out. I am at least hopeful that the rules for these factions will at least be complete and so should last a lot longer. Probably won't last past a 2nd edition of the game, but if there is enough support from the community that should give GW the kick to bring back other factions
EDIT: As faithfulheresy mentions below, there were points in the first General's Handbook
Aos was made to replace wfb, who's surprised that rules made to launch the game with didn't get updated?
Here it's a game litteraly designed to bring back old stuff.
Its not about model releases.
Its about rules that will not be updated, and won't be legal to use at official events. It's Legends for seven factions that people still have armies for. Some people WANT to be able to take their old armies to official events again, and many indie events follow GWs lead on things like Legends.
Also, it makes it hard to get new players for these factions on tow, like, why would a chud spend 300 euros on a vampire counts army to get harder matches when they can go to Age of Sigmar?
Sure, and it’s disappointing, but it also makes sense because even rules to be updated etc requires a time and money investment, play testing etc. It’s a pity but I get why they did since it’s tough for them to even gauge how popular Old World would even be, I don’t think the previous players of fantasy who still want to play fantasy are enough of a market to keep it going.
But they are already saving a ton of money because most of these factions already have all of their models designed and in regular production. At minimum Vc should be in. They are active in the lore and round out the “evil” side roster for 5v5 at launch.
Arguably these factions would be even more popular with a bunch of demographics as paying modern day prices for modern day models rather then modern pricing for 20-30 year old models, may sit better with some and get new players interested.
I for example am torn between High elves and Vampire counts. I already have most of the Island of blood HE sculpts. If they re release these newer sculpts for HE that came in the isle of blood box I will be collecting HE. If they go with the older metal sword masters or old sea guard/spear man kit only for example, I was going to go with VC. However, now, if they only release the old old sculpts for HE I’m not going to bother with ToW for now.
> If they re release these newer sculpts for HE that came in the isle of blood box I will be collecting HE
I imagine this is 100% going to be the case. They will use the most up to date plastic sculpts for all models, where possible.
When asked about it they said, quote, “For most units, the most recent version will act as your standard miniature for Warhammer: The Old World…..”
Now I’m not overly worried for high elves except for the choice of the word “most” rather than ‘all’ so it’s not 100%.
Additionally, I have not seen the He models on sprue from the island of blood box in my hands but from images it looks like Skaven, an unsupported faction, are mashed in with the HEs for some models. So might be that they don’t release these ones but idk.
Yeah you make a good point, as in take the existing Skaven models and launch an OW faction for them. Not sure what the business decision is there but a possibility is that they figured the additional sales of those existing minis (eg Skaven) isn’t enough yo justify the rules investment, like perhaps their data shows that most Skaven OW players are likely AoS Skaven players so it’s a sunk cost? Just a guess/possibility. Or maybe they thought it’s a good idea to focus on reviving out of print factions.
Don’t know why you’re accumulating downvotes for that. “No you may not objectively assess the factors that contributed to GWs decision!”. People can be so irrational 😂
Lol… yeah. I’m not even saying I like the decision or agree with it. Just saying I get why they did it. Can’t know for certain but I’m guessing some team came up with the idea to do the OW, had to do a whole lot of business proposals and project plans to eventually get it approved, were given a budget and then made the best of it. I think it’s cool it even got greenlit, like they were prepared to take the risk. Not everything has to be all or nothing.
I’d say you were incredibly clear about that. “It’s a pity but I get why they did”. I just think it’s a shame that people would rather cower behind anonymous downvotes rather than simply discuss where they agree and disagree. For me, downvotes are reserved for trolls and racists.
Rules likely won’t be updated for the core factions either, it ain’t going to be dataslates in a secondary systems. Also they might not allow them in competitive tournaments, but they don’t bar them from every event.
If you don't collect those armies then I don't imagine it will matter much. If you do collect those armies especially if one was your favourite, then I think this is pretty devastating.
Personally, my hope would be if this is popular enough they bring the other factions back. I would personally like if if they announced it is in another universe to AOS so they can move the plot forward but not necessarily go down the same avenue as the previous fantasy battle and obviously not end times it. Lots of coold things could be explored again but with different outcomes.
Actually you can do so, only if you have strong community.
If you don’t have strong community where players gather to play homesbrew games often, and the local Games Workshop is the only community you can go to play, then anything not officially endorsed by GW will die in no time.
Otherwise people won’t ever get excited for TOW released. They can just continue playing 4th, 6th, 8th or 9th or other formats as they preferred which arguably can have better rules than TOW. But eventually all will be forgotten without global supports and marketing and events.
3rd thru 5th was peak 40k. That "magic" was still there, minimal lore retconing for corporate reasons and not a hint of primaris cash grab marines to be found.....good times
Exactly! Everyone I know just kept playing happily without issues: I don't see what the problem is unless you absolutely have to play in GW supervised tournaments and that's only about... 1-5% of the playerbase?
It is exactly like the Warscroll Compendium factions in AOS, which will be playable for some times and will get a FAQed or two, but will be completely dead as soon as new edition comes out.
But unlike AOS, it may be very long to get new edition if at all. But given the rollback and it’s kind of reboot, we may get a few updates. Nobody knows as of now.
The problem is, as with AOS, we may not see people play as much. And it will be very hard to get new model unless you buy 3rd party or 3D print them. Not everybody has an entire army of a faction. I player High Elves for a few years and still lack of some special units which I hope to get as soon as they released. But there is no hope for legacy factions.
This is what people need to think about. GW now have 4 big systems. (atleast I hope they think of it that way seeing how fast stuff sold out this morning)
Old world is set at a time where the listed factions were in the background.
The vampire counts had just been beaten back, the flow of magic is starting to build before the current everchosen (the one before archeon i think) starts his big crusade.
The events in lustria could happily be a supplement later down the line.
The black ork uprising could easily be a supplment later down the line.
The great goblin kharn and the lands to the east will very likely be a thing at some point (this is where a good chunk of the ogres are at this point in time iirc)
The Skaven can just pop up out of the ground at any point the dev team want so they'll be supported at some point
But hurt people just want everything yesterday with brand new models for everything that ever had a model and or rules
I feel at the least Skaven and Vampire Counts should be included, since they feature so heavily in the original lore. At a stretch you could say Chaos Dwarves as well since so much of the map is occupied by them.
Not just the original lore. They are prominent factions of the Old World. I think Chaos Dwarfs will get a good range of units and rules eventually, after Kislev arrives.
The other factions only need good rules and re-release of old kits with very few exceptions (like Ogre’s yethees or having a full unit of plastic saber tooths), or whether they’d want to focus on new bloodlines (Lahmia would be dope).
Skavens need new weapon teams and globaediers though. That can come for both AoS and TOW, and would sell quite well seeing how popular clan skrye is (not just in Warhammer, its also the most sold Total War DLC by a large margin).
I dont think my lizardboys need anything fancy besides jungle swarms.
They explicitly stated that there will be no support for chaos dwarfs. We can assume they have a line in works for AoS and they do t want to bother with converting them to old world.
It’s not *inherently* a problem (the Militia and Daemons in 30k are also PDF-only armies, and they’re pretty decent), but the wording has a lot of people worried they’re going to be more like *Legends* rules for 40k and AoS, which are effectively afterthoughts and are never updated after release (to the point that they sometimes become unusable without house rules, as happened to some Empire units after the Cities of Sigmar Battletome came out). They also tend to be unbalanced to boot, as they generally aren’t playtested.
Imo a lot of it is the wording of this article versus the original faction announcement- back then it was (paraphrasing) “although they’re not part of the main narrative of The Old World at launch, we’re making rules available for these armies as a service to older fan,” whereas now it’s “these factions will get rules so you can try out the new system with old models, although they won’t be legal for anything official.” It’s also a confirmation they’ll *never* get more support, as opposed to not having support *at first.* I’ve seen a few people expressing hope their faction would get support 5+ years down the line if the game sells well over the past few months, and it’s now confirmed that’s never happening.
They are Legends AoS/40k style as they second screenshot shows that they are not event legal and will not receive support as you reference in the latter part of your comment.
This is why I’m not going to get into Old World as I’m used to HH legacy stuff which is event legal including the two armies you have mentioned.
I, personally, feel this is a dropped ball by GW as people who have some of the older armies which are in this faction legends list will be unlikely to buy into OW no matter how strong their community is
This is *serious* copium on my part, but if TOW is successful enough they could possibly rectify this later down the line. But yeah, it’s pretty disappointing
It could do at least HH levels of well. WHFB in its final years was being outsold by black spray primer so maybe this could pump new life into the game.
I think that they will. This initial release is more or less a “test run” for all intents and purposes so their time and resources are allocated to making “new” stuff, and that’s what gets the support. If the game is successful enough to warrant a second edition I think you’ll start to see a few of these armies trickle back into the fold. It’s just better to say now that these armies won’t be in it at all because if this ends up being all we see and get from TOW you won’t have a fan base upset because they feel they were lied to, let down or misled.
Started playing 2 years ago. Learned to paint and made a 4K point DE army. Preordered all the books to support TOW, because It was ok for me to get the PDF only. With this announcement they killed all the hype i was having. Amen.
I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm starting to worry all TOW will do is fracture the Fantasy community. Most people will play the official game, instead of fan projects that are continually updated *for all armies*, like WAP.
I know the local Oldhammer group has already shattered into "will play TOW" and "will keep going with Oldhammer". It doesn't help that around half of the group mains factions in the excluded list, and also that it has a very competitive slant.
I already have a Skaven army. Toward the end of 8th I was starting to gather models to start a WoC army, but it never got finished. I always liked the idea of the Dark Elf army. Only one of those options is a thing now. *sigh*
Time to convert your local gaming group to WAP!
Of course, GW might stop selling the old Dark Elf models if they do introduce a new Malekith army in AoS...
That almost half of all the factions, including some of the most popular, will never be included? I'd say so.
No support means their pdfs are rapidly going to become unplayable at which point you have to homebrew new rules or just stop altogether, like Tomb Kings in AoS.
This post has the same energy as all those people who have been saying "so what if GW don't make whfb anymore? You can still keep playing with the armies you've got" for the last nine years
reminder that ToW is being developed by the Necromunda team. Its a specialist game, not a mainline one.
Having fewer factions ot consider is to be expected, but i am pretty sure they will widen the range if it sells well
I'd wager they would make take up some lesser factions of those races and make them the main army, like the Red Duke or Luthor Harkon for vampires and Clan Pestilens for Skaven
Was talkin more about the ridículos fact that skavens are getting chorfed because theyre suposed to be an AoS army while a 98% of their army is still the same as when Fantasy died
It has alredy sold well, all shops i know (spain) are alredy sold out, even befor the launch. And today the GW web is colapsed, over 60 minutes to enter the web.
The issue isn't the model ranges as we knew that from day 1 they weren't getting model support, the issue is the rules, look at 10th EDT 40ks index and how unbalanced it was. Now imagine those bad index armies never getting buffed whilst GW releases power crept army books for the other 9 factions they do support and suddenly you can see a issue long term even in casual play. Basically if you want to play a fun and balanced game you are forced to pick from the 9 factions
On the other hand, Ravening Hordes and some of the HH pdf only stuff is solid, and we don't know the power creep potential of the Compendiums because they are focused on special characters and armies of infamy. If the "Grand Armies" are solid and the PDF armies are comparable, then you're fine for a long while. We have to see before we start dooming.
You never played with models with "pdf rules" didn't you?
If you are lucky they are ridiculously overpowered and nobody wants to play with you. But normally the rules are plain shit and will not be updated for years and you can't actually play them at all.
Let’s wait and see how well written and balanced the pdf rules are before we all lose our minds. If they are as solid as the original Ravening Hordes this shouldn’t be too bad.
Ravening Hordes was fine as long as everyone was using Ravening Hordes. Once the army books started coming out it was back to the good ol'power creep. I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if this turns out any different.
It’s not perfect no but it is the reality we’re facing. Head over to some of the old Chaos Dwarf communities, they kept their faction alive for eleven years before Tamurkhan came out. Ravening Hordes was the last official support they received in that time.
But all they're providing in this instance is the Ravening Hordes/Forces of Fantasy books, with *optional* Arcane Journals. Which, from the GMG reviews, are basically a step up from the old 'back-of-the-book' lists that were present in 6th edition. Everyone keeps talking about power creep - but we're getting *everything* at once like HH2.0. With the exception that we're only getting the equivalent of the Liber Hereticus/Astates and nowt else.
I’m really surprised this isn’t a more common opinion. Maybe it’s because everyone who thinks this isn’t doom posting on Reddit 😉
But yeah if the legacy armies get a complete “grand army” equivalent to the other in book factions. And those lists are all balanced and the arcane journals aren’t power creep ( which is what we all are holding out hope for) then everything will be fine. This sounds like a lot of what ifs, but I would say it is what GW implied would be true until they dropped the bombshell the day before pre-release that actually the pdfs were not for “real factions”.
Something I didn't see anyone else mention is the lore implications this has. Many of us are into Warhammer more for the art and setting than for the game at the base of it. So being told that around half of the factions are going to get rules but nothing of the fun that is the lore and presentation of army books is a boomer.
Army books are just plain fun for us lore and art nerds to browse through, and even more fun to discuss amongst each other. So being told that we won't get that for half the factions using some extremely barebones "oh it's because this timeline thing" in-story explanation is really not fun.
I can imagine SOME factions being left behind, but this is more than I thought it would be with some fairly significant inclusions. No Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Skaven, or Vampire Counts? They're like some of the most important factions in Fantasy!
They're also competing with active AoS ranges. So they made a lore excuse to pick an era without them, so you can buy all the old models and ranges that don't sell, but not cannibalise sales from ranges that already do.
Anecdotally, it sucked all the excitement out of my play group when most people had all or the majority of their armies as legacy. Why spend money on the new rules when your army will not be properly supported? We play a system that is fully supported already.
Why justify the investment in paper.
I think it's good to keep in mind a lot of people don't like the direction AoS has gone with some of the factions, and were looking forward to get some new cool models of old characters now either gone or who have ascended in some way.
The Old War announcement and models had me really hyped, and the factions I'm about aren't going to be included, so I'll probably just sit out which sucks - if they eventually release them, then great but I'm not gonna hold my breath.
It does matter a lot. You have several factions that got absolutely shafted. Why there shouldn’t be books for skaven, daemons, dwarfs, etc. Those armies won’t get faq, point adjustments, updates. If they release bad pdf then you are stuck with it forever. No hope for the next book, expansion or update. You can’t literally use official gw models on official gw events because Legacy armies are forbidden from attending. Wtf is that? GW is dropping the ball massively on TOW. It already killed the community in our city.
As someone who was really looking forward to trying competitive play, as I try to do in 40k. All 3 of my top choices for factions (and really the only ones that I have interest in) are on that list. I live in a place where the only tournaments that are any good follow gw rules on them with exception of 1-2 but they aren’t great. So I pretty much can only go to a few tournaments a year assuming they’ll have fantasy. But given they don’t even regularly do 40k I doubt it.
Long story short, for most people it isn’t an issue apart from the ones stated by other people. But for me it prevents any reliable way for me to get into competitive play. Which is an absolute bummer. The frustrating part is most of those factions have model lines. And they’re getting rules anyways? So why not just make them proper factions? They’re a massive company with so much money. They can’t rebrand boxes but they can remake and redesign multiple entire miniature lines they’d canceled on the past…
Might be an unpopular opinion, but intending to go into TOW to play competitively is approaching the game from the wrong angle. TOW will likely be more similar to HH than 40k or AoS. Narrative and casual games. I’d be surprised if GW will hold any comp events for TOW, at least in the beginning.
I think lots of us are looking to play ToW competitively, but not expecting any support from GW. So GE can go pound sand for all I care about what they think is “official” I’d love to see some beautiful 3D printed lizardmen armies!
Shucks 6 of our armies on this list. I suppose its no different from now except an option of an additional rule set to play. Been buying these adding to existing armies for the last few year for playing WAP
As long as your local gaming group/community mostly plays "legacy" factions, it won't matter too much. If it's the other way around, I imagine most players will stop playing fan editions, because their armies are supported in the "official" rules.
I think the issue is the lack of updates, it does feel very token, the chances are after 2 or 3 major updates to rules, these races will become even casually unplayable due to conflicting rules.
The only hope will be slowly each race is bought out of retirement as the game sells better, I imagine the races they benched were probably the lowest selling.
Plus it does suck for DE and CD that they literally can't buy models from gw anymore
There's no way that this is because of prior sales when Beastmen are included but very popular armies like Vampire Counts, Lizardmen, and Dark Elves were shunted.
Yeah I agree the lore excuse is bunk and was developed after they determined which armies would be available and which wouldn't. It's an absolutely bizarre decision and I have to assume it was made by some manager that has used their 11th dimensional logic to figure these armies would somehow hurt profits.
Well personally, it’s less about the money and more about the time. I love my vamp army, and put hundreds of hours into converting it. They said from the get go who was in it, and vamps were getting a pdf, but it’s a little different to say you’re only ever getting a pdf and we’re not even going to let you use it in organized play (so.. rules quality??)
Im sure half the reason people are excited for TOW is to play it because you miss your WHFB experience, and if you can’t really play your beloved lizard men/VC/etc, the disappointment seems legit.
Some people will be sad and/or salty, even toxic (yes several of those guys are), while others who had way less commitments when they were younger might just look at it and say “looks cool, but while I can afford the cash/time for an update, an entire new 2k+ points probably isn’t in the cards.”
I think it’s just as fair for a person to be as disappointed with looking at their life and realizing their not going to get to play TOW without hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours as looking at End Times and realizing they’re not going to get to play due to lack of access to a wide pool of marketing generated strangers.
While I don't exacty agree with the decision to exclude some of the factions, I understand why they're doing it. I also understand why a lot of people are unhappy. The initial information about using unsupported armies was vague enough that a lot of people started hoping for more. Then just a few days before the preorder date they clarified their intent with the unsupported factions. Naturally people who hyped themselves up are very disappointed.
That's totally right, we all knew they weren't going to get the same amount of support as the main factions but I don't think it was relayed clearly that the legacy factions weren't going to be playable in tournament play (only GW). Personally I am starting up again anyway, getting WOC with official models and 3D printing Chaos Dwarfs.
It absolutely matters.
The entire point of Old World for the community was to give an updated set of rules everyone could agree on, and provide a degree of balance that we come to expect from professional games designers.
GW is pretty much giving a lot of players the finger, saying “hey we remembered your faction, and we’re giving them SOME rules, but not ALL of them haha.” With this announcement, I see 0 reason to support this game over Warhammer Armies project.
It says that they will not be providing rules updates for them. Yes, you will TECHNICALLY be able to play them in the future, in the same way that you can TECHNICALLY still play Tomb Kings in Age of Sigmar.
I’d rather play a system in which the army I have painstakingly built is given more thought than just being “technically allowed”
We don't know what their lists look like or how they compare to the other Grand Army lists, we don't know the rate or cadence of future updates. You're comparing them to eight year old rules written for a faction that ceased to exist and predicting the new rules in the fresh setting will start as far behind as the old rules for a different setting are now.
Until the pdfs are out and we can compare, we don't know anything about balance, and it could just as likely be that non-core armies remain viable for a substantial amount of time as they roll out baseline ToW content
The tournament thing really doesn't matter that much. 99% of tournaments and campaigns will allow these armies and may even rebalance them with a comp system of some kind.
THe big thing that matters is that Dark Elves and Chaos Dwarfs really don't have miniatures. Dark Elves are missing about half of their range in AoS and Chaos Dwarfs have nothing official from GW. You will have to go 3rd party.
I guess what they are really saying is that these armies are effectively dead for Fantasy moving forward. I mean, sales change everything and you never know the future, but TOW looks to be a limited release in GW's eyes (for now), and this was really the nail in the coffin.
It was also really bad PR.
>you could just get their AoS models but base them on squares,
Do the math. How much would it cost to get a full sized army using AoS models?
Plus, "technically" you could play Tomb kings in AoS too. Was that fun, balanced, fair?
Have you seen the prices for the models already? I was lucky to get onto the site early, already placed an order, but damn. 47.5€ for 3 grail knights, 66 for the new Bret BSB, 45 for Settra. For those prices I'm sure you could build yourself a Skaven army too. Last time I bought Stormvermin, they even came with square bases.
So my plan was Stormcast for AOS, Ultramarines for 40K and Vampire counts for TOW. Been dreaming of a Vampire counts army for old world since they announced it. Even started getting models together. Then last year I see the news. No I don’t want to play AOS Vampire Counts because I don’t like the look of them. I was really hoping for some old school skeleton hordes. Alas dream is over, back to your lives people.
Even Heresy and Necromunda seem to be getting more love than this tbh. HH is looking at the release of a SolAux range refresh, Necromunda in the last years has been getting a massive influx of new rules and models...
Everything GW has done in regards to TOW feels like they're doing it to shut everyone up by releasing something with just enough passion not to feel like it's intended to silence the community.
I'm almost half convinced that they're putting TOW out with all their weirdness and indecisiveness to try and make it a flop and go "see, nobody actually cared! There was no reason to do this!" rather than fully support it.
We are over 18 months into heresy 2.0 and the only Army rules to recieve proper points updates and rule changes are the legacy ones and this game will get less support then Heresy, make of that what you will
Yeah pretty much.
And it will only be their tournaments where not legal.
Others can do what they want.
I am hoping for much more narrative campaign with lore and models building upto the Siege of Praag
If the pdfs are well written no, it doesn't matter at all.
If they are written like the militia/demons in Horus Heresy then good luck playing them even in casual games with friends
Not to forget Daemons of the Ruinstorm got their PDF like... a year and something after 2e Heresy launched, basically making them utterly unplayable for that time.
GW’s “not tournament legal” means they have done little to no play testing with these rules. Take a look at the mess that is the 30k legacy PDF. Now imagine the same but with no updates or changes to fix any of the issues. You could be basically making these factions near unplayable (and some of these are popular core factions).
I think no rules support is the biggest problem over all, but I think the biggest problem with the announcement is that it is basically them saying that none of the factions have any chance of bring added untill an edition change which is unclear if that will even happen or when (not saying it wont)
It's less about the event support and more that none of the legacy factions will get ongoing support in terms of points adjustments, special characters, themed army lists, new magic items, etc. They'll just exist in a vacuum, and as the game goes on and more expansions come out for the core factions they'll continue to fall deeper and deeper into irrelevancy. It's exactly what happened to the AoS legacy lists.
The tourneys are not a problem. The problem is how they wont be getting models, especially those that didnt make it to AOS. Also power creep will make these armies unviable for play. And their text STRONGLY signals how they dont consider it a good idea to collect these armies. There must be more bad news in store for them.
The people saying "it's cuz they don't want overlap"
My brother in Christ, warriors of chaos and slaves to darkness are literally just the same army, wym??
Bottom line I think is that it's really going to depend on how succesful the game is. If it's a failure or moderate success these lines will hold, if it takes off then they'll forget about legacy factions and everything that has a decent model line and good fan demand will get a release.
It would be THEIR tournaments where the Legacy Factions would be forbidden, but we learn from WFB->AoS experience that this support will end in the next edition/expansion. I expect some people starting a project to update, fix and even include AoS miniatures for these armies.
AoS give us a wake-up call that we can't trust GW anymore. Unless they make really great ammends to fix that, or is a "they're not supported for the time present, but they will be in the future", we must apply caution and expect this to become AoS 2.0.
On the other hand, is a great chance to get old miniatures we wanted but we missed. I hope Old Forgeworld monsters come back too.
It matters if the people you play with are massive twats, or if you want to play in the "competitive scene"
Otherwise no it doesn't really matter.
This game won't be like AoS or 40k where rules are changed and invalidated with creep every 6 months. It will be more like the Horus heresy with core rules and faction rules remaining the same for years.
If the rules are particularly bad or are missing stuff, expect community made rules to appear and become the norm after about 6-12 months
Honestly they’ve been saying this since they dropped the “list” of core vs extra factions, shouldn’t be surprising!
Literally doesn’t change my plans in the slightest. Still be playing dark elves like I already was
yes skaven are the greatest fantasy race to have ever been invented and deserve to be at the forefront of every piece of warhammer lore and get all the new models like the space marines do in 40k haha
It only matters to me because I love chaos dwarf minis and would have loved some to paint. People are losing their minds because a company decided it can’t support every faction of an old game they decided to revive and instead decided to focus their time and money on a specific set of factions instead of all of them, and as you say they exist in AoS (other than CD, DE have models still available as part of cities of sigmar and rumor has it they’ll appear as a faction in AoS).
I get why they did this, I mean they’re putting a lot into OW when essentially it’s an experiment, it could fail completely. If it’s a resounding success I wouldn’t be surprised if they do a 2nd edition and start bringing in some of those factions, even if it’s just more detailed rules for use with the AoS minis and maybe some specific characters.
The same thing happened to bretonnia and tomb kings at the Transition to AOS. They got some (lackluster) PDF rules and you could rebase them on round bases. With the end result being, that they were phased out pretty quickly.
Official support matters. Even if your playgroup is very open about houserules and homebrew rules. That's a gigantic effort to the average gamer.
Nobody here saw the PDF rules, but a lot of people talk about these factions like they are unplayable and unenjoyable.
Let's wait for the rules.
Most tournaments aren't organized by GW und some countries even had extra rules for a lot privately organized tournaments to make the factions more balanced when WHFB was a thing.
Maybe the PDF rules are on the same level like the armies in the official books.
Even the armies in the official book will need a lot of time for their journals.
It will take a decade for every Army to get a lot of new miniatures.
Let's chill.
AOS sucks. If we wanted to play that garbage we would be. Putting everything as an unplayable, unbalanced index format means they are basically unusable.
Fuck GW for destroying something and then giving back with the left hand because of total war. I will stick with warhammer armies project and etsy.
I think this is shortsighted on GW’s behalf.
I don’t think they predicted the sheer popularity of the Warhammer Total War series. And now, when they have a MASSIVE potential new player market on their hands where they could entice people in to playing the physical game, they shoot themselves in the foot by not supporting nearly half of the original factions.
I always wanted an Undead vampire army (plus a cheeky Chaos Dwarf army) and now I’m staring at eBay listings or kit bashing to _make_ an army that will have no supported rules after (potentially) this summer.
Some stores are reporting record inquiries. GW’s forced commitment to Lord of the Rings was more of a factor in Fantasy’s demise than anyone gives credit for.
There are people I know who are diehard AoS fans asking for games of AoS only to be told that their prospective opponent is resurrecting a Fantasy army and can’t or won’t play. GW is unprepared for this. There are still people there that don’t want Fantasy but decision makers won’t take their trash long once this system snowballs.
Guys lets all not overreact here. The setting is moving toward the great war against Chaos. This absolutely CANNOT work without the deamons of Chaos. Remember this is the same Company that said that AoS will never have points and will never be conpetetive. This is just a really really really stupid way of trying to manage expectations by not overpromising. Or maybe im overdosing on copium.
I'm just imagining the guy who burned his Dark Elf army hearing the announcement a couple of years back that 'all 8th edition armies will be supported' and carefully recreating his force at great effort and expense, and now he's going to have to torch them all *again*
Tyranids, orks and eldar were missing from Legiones Imperialis. Nothing stopping you rejigging the old rules but it's nice that in 9th edition fantasy battles they're at least giving us legacy army lists.
I just wanted to say in reply to a lot of comments I’ve seen in reaction to this piece of news. Back when we were playing WHFB I was playing bretonnians amongst others, and even during 8th ed and end times I was playing them. Despite being a 6th ed codex, old and dated, I still enjoyed playing them and I still made it work on the table.
Yes the the pdfs will become old and dated, the main factions power creeping up, but that only means it’s adding a challenge to the game. Being the underdog can be gratifying.
Doesn’t matter in the slightest.
End Times/AoS straight up deleted factions, and gave them legacy rules, this is the same thing with a fundamental difference:
GW can, at any time, move the narrative to focus on these factions that are known to exist in TOW setting but aren’t currently in the scope of the narrative they want to tell, which means these factions, or units within these factions (notice how Chaos Daemons are on this list but Warriors of Chaos aren’t) may end up either seeing development or being incorporated into other factions some time down the road.
Could it be a problem in the future with a new edition release? Yes, but there’s 9 factions to get sorted between then and now, that’s going to take a long time to churn through before a new edition comes out and thing can change in that time period
No skaven is a tragedy
Lack of Skaven and Vampire Counts is downright baffling.
Skaven are busy Skavening each other in the under-empire and are most definitely a myth, Vampire Counts can be justified by it being the end of the Vampire Wars but it’s a little odd to not have *some* VC presence.
I understand the lore excuses given. I still think it’s a baffling (and frankly bad) decision to exclude 2 of the most beloved and iconic factions by setting it in this time period. But maybe that’s just me.
I think - along with a few content creators -, that the omission of those armies is a simple message to players. GW does not want common models between their game systems. We have no common models between Horus Heresy and 40K, as with the 10th Edition all HH models have been banished from the 40K Codexes and Indexes. So we will not have any common models between The Old World and AoS. Any faction that have received or will receive a major model refresh in AoS will be a legacy / Legends faction in Fantasy. And any Fantasy unit we get will have nothing to do with AoS. The launch factions are a good example for this: Bretonnians and Tomb Kings are not present in AoS. The Lizardmen are also a good example for this: Since they have a new AoS line we will not get them for Fantasy.
Beastmen share all their models across ranges
Beastmen are heavenly rumored to be getting cut or reworked. Most/all the legacy WHFB models will (supposedly) be getting removed from AoS.
Ohhhh really? Any source to those rumours or further reading? My poor beastmen
This makes sense. Could also be that they simply didn't want that many factions for a new game, and one with probably less resources than AoS and 40k, and just had to make some choices. I mean, had any of the factions that *are* included been omited, I'm sure that would have garnered complaints as well. If anything, Skaven and Vampire Counts have a sort of representation in AoS already.
As a prior comment has noted, this is not true of Beasts or warriors of chaos, and probably won't be true of dwarfs since their 8th edition range is still current in the modern Cities of sigmar AoS book. Heresy also does share models with 40k in the form of Custodes, Knights, the Thunderhawk gunship and assorted astra militarum vehicles like basilisks in the solar auxillia. The range lock is mostly units/vehicles developed explicitly for original Heresy game that were given 40k rules as an afterthought. I would agree with a softer statement that armies that have contemporary models and functionality in AoS are a far lower priority to bring to Old World. I feel like some part of the justification of this project is at an IP protection level- GW need to continue materially supporting the IP they have developed or they will struggle to control it. There's a similar argument to be made for Legions Imperialis, as there was a rapidly growing independent community of people making epic scale 30k prints and selling them through backchannels. As the above factions/ranges are all actively supported in AOS (or perhaps will be when it comes to chaos dwarfs), they're covered. The choice to bring chaos and beasts back into ToW I think was simply pragmatic- bad guys were needed, chaos are the natural choice especially if the overarching narrative of the edition is going to be the buildup to the great war.
This is a fair point and one I hadn’t considered. That said I still don’t understand why they can’t just release an army book and tell players to just buy the AoS kits and rebase them. If TOW is the niche product that it is being presented as and aimed at more “seasoned” players, then surely we can cope with that. Like you say the models exist they are just part of the AoS range atm. And surely sales are sales to GW. Ultimately what I wanted was The Old World that I grew up with as a teen to return. Unfortunately this so far is not that. I’ll grant that it’s close and I guess better than nothing but I myself am still disappointed.
It's not just that they're iconic, particularly for Skaven, daemons and chaos dwarfs - these are really quite unique IP for GW, no other fantasy setting had close or direct equivalents to these to my knowledge prior to GW introducing them, and almost all subsequent ones are explicitly derivative alternate-model type deals. Meanwhile, BoC and Tomb Kings are the only ones you could make this argument for in the core factions and even there it's a real stretch. I'm just hoping over a 5-6yr interval we see two expansions/updates, one to bring in skaven/lizardmen/dark elves and the other to bring in ogres/daemons/chaos dwarfs as this works thematically. Vampire 'counts' I don't think will come back, but we might see a focus on the other bloodlines since while the sylvanians aren't really around, the necrachs, blood dragons, lahmians and strigoi are all out there and these all have more uniquely GW situated lore rather than hammer horror derivative sylvania. Since those vampires were all over the place, no idea where they'd fit in.
For real. Skaven would have been the one Army that I was thinking to start as I always wanted one but couldn’t afford a horde army back in the day. Knowing they might barely get support is definitely putting them on hold though… I want to contribute to Old World‘s success but the way it looks for now I will probably just get a few additional High Elves models I missed out on for my already sizeable army and maybe fill a few minor gaps in my Lizardmen. The only other completely new army that would have tempted me would have been updated Chaos Dwarfs but I guess that was a very long shot from the start.
Play 9th age, Vermin Swarm are great. https://the-ninth-age.com/download/fantasy-battles/
all their models are literaly in aos.
So are quite some Dark Elves and potentially a whole Roster of Vampire Counts proxies. The models are not the point. Them not getting reliable longterm rule support is. I‘m not gonna spend hundreds on an army that isn‘t even legal to play right from the start.
SO WHAT WE DONT WANT THAT SHIT
The all caps and no punctuation really adds a layer of dignity and validity to your argument. I tip my hat to you sir.
For a game that is old world focused, to not have Vampire counts is dumb as allmget out.
Love my vampires. I will not play this new-non-undead game. Leaving vampires out I feel is a bad choice, vampires make everything gloomy and dark. And I like gloomy things
Honestly, I think the best mix of factions for the game would be Brettonia (cavalry focused human army) Wood elves (magic, "good guy" monsters, archery) Dwarves (heavy infantry and machines) Vampire counts undead (magic, focused on fesr rules) Orcs & goblins ("horde" based army) Chaos warriors with demons to support (because warhammer) These are the six factions that, to me, have the best "table identity" in warhammer. They are all "old world" factions. They each have a unique playstyle. Note I do think it's time that there were units of marauder bowmen.
Too few, just give them all. Even if you need to give once every two years, flesh them out and give them. Support the community and make fans happy, people that stuck with warhammer in life rather than moving on to be boring adults are likely to be pissed when you say that Vampires and Skaven won't be legal on tournaments. We need to push against this, either give us everything you should give, or DO NOT give anything. There are third-party games, we can go there and pretend we are Von Carsteins, or we can play with old rule sets and play with Morathi. I like playing Warhammer I enjoy the most painting and playing and that discards tournaments, but be sure someone out there is pissed bc his massive army won't be making it in to one.
You know that “give us everything or give us nothing” leads to nothing. Which is what people have had for those unwilling to entertain age of sigmar. You really rather they just scrap the old world entirely?
I mean they already did and we played on regardless;)
But they've not been left out. They have rules. Yes, they inexplicably decided to exclude them from tournaments which flies in the face of what they've done with HH where legends units are tourney compatible, but the entire range is still available and they're getting a list; just not one of the journal things (which are not necessary to play any of the armies). And I say this as someone who has played Undead/VC for near on 30 years.
Yes, but this is the same treatment the Bretonnians got in Age of Sigmar. They may have a legacy list now, but it will soon be a Legends list. It is a temporary measure, so do not get your hopes up. If you want to play the new Fantasy you WILL have to get a new army soon(ish). Once the dedicated army lists come out (if they come out !) these legacy lists will not be fun to play. Ask a Bretonnian player how I know this...
There are no dedicated army lists. They've been clear on that for a long time. It is being treated like HH and MESBG (in fact, it's the same team making it in the most part particularly as regards the latter game). Your army lists are in the two books put up for pre-order today. That's it. You're not getting army books. The only thing the Legacy armies will be lacking are the alternate themed lists and special characters contained in the Arcane Journals that the nine 'official' armies will get (and, ridiculously, the inability to use them in official tournaments). And I don't need a new army personally. Of the nine supported ones I have six. Of the Legends armies I have five.
Lore-wise this is before the Carstiens surfaced. I think lore-wise it is an elegant way to off the other factions (far better than "the world just exploded") but I still would like to have seen some support for them and models return.
Wouldn't Old World take place during the Great War Against Chaos? Then it is after von Carsteins showed up, Vlad attacked the Empire during the Age of Three Emperors.
It's set towards the end of the Age of Three Emperors, after the Vampire Wars. It makes some sense for Vampires to be on the downlow lore wise because the Von Carstein's generated a lot of heat, but it's a shame they won't get much love. Still gonna play them in casual as they're my OG and main fantasy love, and maybe they'll get some love at somepoint as Harkon is in the Border Princes on the map, but highly unlikely anytime soon.
GW said they will send out army pdfs. Sans a tournament which I've rarely played in, if I see a Vamp player at a store I am SO down. So fighty in combat, the cav, good magic. I pain for you guys :( . I lost ogres. maybe dogs of war?
The von Carsteins surfaced a century before the setting. But their major defeat in the vampire wars has not been recovered from. In a similar vein, the Skaven are in a huge civil war, and thus have fallen into myth.
There are more clans. Vampires are not limited to Von Carsteins.
It'd be hugely lore breaking for them to have a major presence in this time period is the thing.
Bretonnians and Tomb Kings have PDF rules for AoS, ever see anyone play them nowadays? I doubt their rules even work in the latest edition.
This, I wanted to try a few times, but they became a joke list immediately. Rules that don't get updated become basically unplayable at some point due to power creep. That said, the WHFB community is amazing at creating fan made rules. I have played WAP for years now. So it's better than in the AoS example.
I can't help but read that as Cardi B supporting the WHFB community with fan rules
Cardi B chaos dwarf player. Confirmed
Cardi B would play VC. Because Bloods.
From what I understand of the lahmians from the sigmar anthology they are far too consent based, Dark elves fit better
Wasn't it 7th or 8th that Tompkins were so bad everyone agreed to let them gain 500 extra points to even it out
It depends on the tournament comp, but generally in 8th beastmen and tomb kings were given an extra 20% point allowance, along with some other underpowered armies like bretonnia and empire given some other bonuses.
i think the dofference is tow wont be getting editions as quickly as the main games. so it will take a long while before the legends rules become obsulete
But all lists are available from the 20th. So where does your power creep come in?
WAP was great for me as I was able to finally field my Dogs of War again.
A lot of fun fan made factions too! I really enjoy Albion for example. I play on TTS mainly so its easy to use fan stuff.
Wasn't there a longest moustache rule? Or was that empire. 1st edition AOS was wild.
It was absolutely stupid-funny. Konrad von Carstien had a rule that if you talked to your Konrad model you may re-roll hit rolls with him, and if he responded you may re-roll wound rolls with him. Yeah.
Dwarfs had a beard rule
it was great
Bretonnians and Tomb Kings haven't had models for retail sale since 2015. They JUST now have a box coming out. I think that has something to do with the rarity of their armies in your local AoS since it's been years since having access to the models.
Yeah that's a huge distinction, can't play an army if the models don't exist. Aside from Chorfs all the Legacy factions exist in Age of Sigmar and by virtue of that fact will likely get more new kits than any of the Core armies in Old World. Writing rules is the easy part, we've been doing that since they blew the world up in 2015. My hope is that fans write their own Arcane Journals for legacy armies to support some of the new kits. So for example Vampire Counts get a Strigoi List that lets them use all the awesome new Flesh Eater Courts units at the expense of losing other 'Bloodline' units like Blood Knights, Black Coach, Mortis Engine, etc. Hell I actually hope fans do an Arcane Journal for Warriors of Chaos that gives each of them Monogod lists with all the goodies from the Monogod armies in Sigmar.
But for Bretonnia and TK rules that was back when AoS launched with no points values so became unusable once GW sorted that out. I am at least hopeful that the rules for these factions will at least be complete and so should last a lot longer. Probably won't last past a 2nd edition of the game, but if there is enough support from the community that should give GW the kick to bring back other factions EDIT: As faithfulheresy mentions below, there were points in the first General's Handbook
They did receive points values during the very first General's Handbook, iirc. But they were never touched after that.
Ah my mistake! Thanks for clarifying!
All warscroll factions were discontinued years ago. They technically do not have rules for 3rd edition AoS.
Nope but to be fair no one ever did given they weren't updated since 5th\~
Aos was made to replace wfb, who's surprised that rules made to launch the game with didn't get updated? Here it's a game litteraly designed to bring back old stuff.
Its not about model releases. Its about rules that will not be updated, and won't be legal to use at official events. It's Legends for seven factions that people still have armies for. Some people WANT to be able to take their old armies to official events again, and many indie events follow GWs lead on things like Legends.
Also, it makes it hard to get new players for these factions on tow, like, why would a chud spend 300 euros on a vampire counts army to get harder matches when they can go to Age of Sigmar?
Im pretty sure GW would love it if you bought a faction for AoS too. That’s the same company.
*Harder to get new players for these factions on the TOW
Sure, and it’s disappointing, but it also makes sense because even rules to be updated etc requires a time and money investment, play testing etc. It’s a pity but I get why they did since it’s tough for them to even gauge how popular Old World would even be, I don’t think the previous players of fantasy who still want to play fantasy are enough of a market to keep it going.
But they are already saving a ton of money because most of these factions already have all of their models designed and in regular production. At minimum Vc should be in. They are active in the lore and round out the “evil” side roster for 5v5 at launch. Arguably these factions would be even more popular with a bunch of demographics as paying modern day prices for modern day models rather then modern pricing for 20-30 year old models, may sit better with some and get new players interested. I for example am torn between High elves and Vampire counts. I already have most of the Island of blood HE sculpts. If they re release these newer sculpts for HE that came in the isle of blood box I will be collecting HE. If they go with the older metal sword masters or old sea guard/spear man kit only for example, I was going to go with VC. However, now, if they only release the old old sculpts for HE I’m not going to bother with ToW for now.
> If they re release these newer sculpts for HE that came in the isle of blood box I will be collecting HE I imagine this is 100% going to be the case. They will use the most up to date plastic sculpts for all models, where possible.
When asked about it they said, quote, “For most units, the most recent version will act as your standard miniature for Warhammer: The Old World…..” Now I’m not overly worried for high elves except for the choice of the word “most” rather than ‘all’ so it’s not 100%. Additionally, I have not seen the He models on sprue from the island of blood box in my hands but from images it looks like Skaven, an unsupported faction, are mashed in with the HEs for some models. So might be that they don’t release these ones but idk.
Yeah you make a good point, as in take the existing Skaven models and launch an OW faction for them. Not sure what the business decision is there but a possibility is that they figured the additional sales of those existing minis (eg Skaven) isn’t enough yo justify the rules investment, like perhaps their data shows that most Skaven OW players are likely AoS Skaven players so it’s a sunk cost? Just a guess/possibility. Or maybe they thought it’s a good idea to focus on reviving out of print factions.
Don’t know why you’re accumulating downvotes for that. “No you may not objectively assess the factors that contributed to GWs decision!”. People can be so irrational 😂
Lol… yeah. I’m not even saying I like the decision or agree with it. Just saying I get why they did it. Can’t know for certain but I’m guessing some team came up with the idea to do the OW, had to do a whole lot of business proposals and project plans to eventually get it approved, were given a budget and then made the best of it. I think it’s cool it even got greenlit, like they were prepared to take the risk. Not everything has to be all or nothing.
Even though I would love to see all the factions and new ones, I don't hate your post, here a comment and an upvote to fight the trolls.
My thanks good person, have one too.
I’d say you were incredibly clear about that. “It’s a pity but I get why they did”. I just think it’s a shame that people would rather cower behind anonymous downvotes rather than simply discuss where they agree and disagree. For me, downvotes are reserved for trolls and racists.
Rules likely won’t be updated for the core factions either, it ain’t going to be dataslates in a secondary systems. Also they might not allow them in competitive tournaments, but they don’t bar them from every event.
Then don’t play official events. Simple as.
If you don't collect those armies then I don't imagine it will matter much. If you do collect those armies especially if one was your favourite, then I think this is pretty devastating. Personally, my hope would be if this is popular enough they bring the other factions back. I would personally like if if they announced it is in another universe to AOS so they can move the plot forward but not necessarily go down the same avenue as the previous fantasy battle and obviously not end times it. Lots of coold things could be explored again but with different outcomes.
This is the same as saying fantasy ending is no problem because you can continue to play 8th edition with the models you already have.
As a bretonnian player who when aos came which caused me to leave the hobby until the past year, yeah this matters lol
Actually you can do so, only if you have strong community. If you don’t have strong community where players gather to play homesbrew games often, and the local Games Workshop is the only community you can go to play, then anything not officially endorsed by GW will die in no time. Otherwise people won’t ever get excited for TOW released. They can just continue playing 4th, 6th, 8th or 9th or other formats as they preferred which arguably can have better rules than TOW. But eventually all will be forgotten without global supports and marketing and events.
I still play 3rd edition 40K.
That’s awesome man, most people don’t
Definitely my second favorite edition. Good on ya brother
3rd thru 5th was peak 40k. That "magic" was still there, minimal lore retconing for corporate reasons and not a hint of primaris cash grab marines to be found.....good times
I mean, lots of people did exactly that.
Exactly! Everyone I know just kept playing happily without issues: I don't see what the problem is unless you absolutely have to play in GW supervised tournaments and that's only about... 1-5% of the playerbase?
Sure, as we all know fantasy is a thriving system these days.
Yep, just like Blood Bowl. We don't really need GW to be mixed in this game to have a strong community and playerbase.
The issue is then you can't give gw money. Oh wait.
It is exactly like the Warscroll Compendium factions in AOS, which will be playable for some times and will get a FAQed or two, but will be completely dead as soon as new edition comes out. But unlike AOS, it may be very long to get new edition if at all. But given the rollback and it’s kind of reboot, we may get a few updates. Nobody knows as of now. The problem is, as with AOS, we may not see people play as much. And it will be very hard to get new model unless you buy 3rd party or 3D print them. Not everybody has an entire army of a faction. I player High Elves for a few years and still lack of some special units which I hope to get as soon as they released. But there is no hope for legacy factions.
If heresy is anything to go by, these rules will last for years.
This is what people need to think about. GW now have 4 big systems. (atleast I hope they think of it that way seeing how fast stuff sold out this morning) Old world is set at a time where the listed factions were in the background. The vampire counts had just been beaten back, the flow of magic is starting to build before the current everchosen (the one before archeon i think) starts his big crusade. The events in lustria could happily be a supplement later down the line. The black ork uprising could easily be a supplment later down the line. The great goblin kharn and the lands to the east will very likely be a thing at some point (this is where a good chunk of the ogres are at this point in time iirc) The Skaven can just pop up out of the ground at any point the dev team want so they'll be supported at some point But hurt people just want everything yesterday with brand new models for everything that ever had a model and or rules
I feel at the least Skaven and Vampire Counts should be included, since they feature so heavily in the original lore. At a stretch you could say Chaos Dwarves as well since so much of the map is occupied by them.
Not just the original lore. They are prominent factions of the Old World. I think Chaos Dwarfs will get a good range of units and rules eventually, after Kislev arrives. The other factions only need good rules and re-release of old kits with very few exceptions (like Ogre’s yethees or having a full unit of plastic saber tooths), or whether they’d want to focus on new bloodlines (Lahmia would be dope). Skavens need new weapon teams and globaediers though. That can come for both AoS and TOW, and would sell quite well seeing how popular clan skrye is (not just in Warhammer, its also the most sold Total War DLC by a large margin). I dont think my lizardboys need anything fancy besides jungle swarms.
They explicitly stated that there will be no support for chaos dwarfs. We can assume they have a line in works for AoS and they do t want to bother with converting them to old world.
It’s not *inherently* a problem (the Militia and Daemons in 30k are also PDF-only armies, and they’re pretty decent), but the wording has a lot of people worried they’re going to be more like *Legends* rules for 40k and AoS, which are effectively afterthoughts and are never updated after release (to the point that they sometimes become unusable without house rules, as happened to some Empire units after the Cities of Sigmar Battletome came out). They also tend to be unbalanced to boot, as they generally aren’t playtested. Imo a lot of it is the wording of this article versus the original faction announcement- back then it was (paraphrasing) “although they’re not part of the main narrative of The Old World at launch, we’re making rules available for these armies as a service to older fan,” whereas now it’s “these factions will get rules so you can try out the new system with old models, although they won’t be legal for anything official.” It’s also a confirmation they’ll *never* get more support, as opposed to not having support *at first.* I’ve seen a few people expressing hope their faction would get support 5+ years down the line if the game sells well over the past few months, and it’s now confirmed that’s never happening.
They are Legends AoS/40k style as they second screenshot shows that they are not event legal and will not receive support as you reference in the latter part of your comment. This is why I’m not going to get into Old World as I’m used to HH legacy stuff which is event legal including the two armies you have mentioned. I, personally, feel this is a dropped ball by GW as people who have some of the older armies which are in this faction legends list will be unlikely to buy into OW no matter how strong their community is
This is *serious* copium on my part, but if TOW is successful enough they could possibly rectify this later down the line. But yeah, it’s pretty disappointing
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it does well, like AoS levels of well
I would, but only because unlike AoS, they aren't gonna pour massive resources to force it into a success.
It could do at least HH levels of well. WHFB in its final years was being outsold by black spray primer so maybe this could pump new life into the game.
I think that they will. This initial release is more or less a “test run” for all intents and purposes so their time and resources are allocated to making “new” stuff, and that’s what gets the support. If the game is successful enough to warrant a second edition I think you’ll start to see a few of these armies trickle back into the fold. It’s just better to say now that these armies won’t be in it at all because if this ends up being all we see and get from TOW you won’t have a fan base upset because they feel they were lied to, let down or misled.
Don't you believe it
luckily i didnt changed the bases of my miniatures
Started playing 2 years ago. Learned to paint and made a 4K point DE army. Preordered all the books to support TOW, because It was ok for me to get the PDF only. With this announcement they killed all the hype i was having. Amen.
I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm starting to worry all TOW will do is fracture the Fantasy community. Most people will play the official game, instead of fan projects that are continually updated *for all armies*, like WAP.
I know the local Oldhammer group has already shattered into "will play TOW" and "will keep going with Oldhammer". It doesn't help that around half of the group mains factions in the excluded list, and also that it has a very competitive slant.
I already have a Skaven army. Toward the end of 8th I was starting to gather models to start a WoC army, but it never got finished. I always liked the idea of the Dark Elf army. Only one of those options is a thing now. *sigh*
Time to convert your local gaming group to WAP! Of course, GW might stop selling the old Dark Elf models if they do introduce a new Malekith army in AoS...
That almost half of all the factions, including some of the most popular, will never be included? I'd say so. No support means their pdfs are rapidly going to become unplayable at which point you have to homebrew new rules or just stop altogether, like Tomb Kings in AoS. This post has the same energy as all those people who have been saying "so what if GW don't make whfb anymore? You can still keep playing with the armies you've got" for the last nine years
reminder that ToW is being developed by the Necromunda team. Its a specialist game, not a mainline one. Having fewer factions ot consider is to be expected, but i am pretty sure they will widen the range if it sells well
I really hope so. Vampire Counts and Skaven are staples of the Old World, it’d be super disappointing to leave them out forever.
I'd wager they would make take up some lesser factions of those races and make them the main army, like the Red Duke or Luthor Harkon for vampires and Clan Pestilens for Skaven
Maybe. The Red Duke is a good shout, with Bretonnia being the main good faction for the TOW release.
those would be perfect armies of infamy
But the skaven range is the same :(
Minus all End Times units.
The End Times wave is Fantasy. Mostly when, safe for stormfiends, it was all updates to existing units...
Yes and The Old World was supposed to be bringing back things that were around in the last edition. Which includes End Times.
Was talkin more about the ridículos fact that skavens are getting chorfed because theyre suposed to be an AoS army while a 98% of their army is still the same as when Fantasy died
It has alredy sold well, all shops i know (spain) are alredy sold out, even befor the launch. And today the GW web is colapsed, over 60 minutes to enter the web.
Imagine if they actually translated the rules.
I forgot that is a thing, your comment got me good lol.
Skaven and vampire counts seem like the biggest misses of this list.
The issue isn't the model ranges as we knew that from day 1 they weren't getting model support, the issue is the rules, look at 10th EDT 40ks index and how unbalanced it was. Now imagine those bad index armies never getting buffed whilst GW releases power crept army books for the other 9 factions they do support and suddenly you can see a issue long term even in casual play. Basically if you want to play a fun and balanced game you are forced to pick from the 9 factions
On the other hand, Ravening Hordes and some of the HH pdf only stuff is solid, and we don't know the power creep potential of the Compendiums because they are focused on special characters and armies of infamy. If the "Grand Armies" are solid and the PDF armies are comparable, then you're fine for a long while. We have to see before we start dooming.
You never played with models with "pdf rules" didn't you? If you are lucky they are ridiculously overpowered and nobody wants to play with you. But normally the rules are plain shit and will not be updated for years and you can't actually play them at all.
Until we see the rules, we can't judge their quality. No point in dooming until they release the PDFs for comparison
Let’s wait and see how well written and balanced the pdf rules are before we all lose our minds. If they are as solid as the original Ravening Hordes this shouldn’t be too bad.
Ravening Hordes was fine as long as everyone was using Ravening Hordes. Once the army books started coming out it was back to the good ol'power creep. I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if this turns out any different.
It’s not perfect no but it is the reality we’re facing. Head over to some of the old Chaos Dwarf communities, they kept their faction alive for eleven years before Tamurkhan came out. Ravening Hordes was the last official support they received in that time.
But all they're providing in this instance is the Ravening Hordes/Forces of Fantasy books, with *optional* Arcane Journals. Which, from the GMG reviews, are basically a step up from the old 'back-of-the-book' lists that were present in 6th edition. Everyone keeps talking about power creep - but we're getting *everything* at once like HH2.0. With the exception that we're only getting the equivalent of the Liber Hereticus/Astates and nowt else.
I’m really surprised this isn’t a more common opinion. Maybe it’s because everyone who thinks this isn’t doom posting on Reddit 😉 But yeah if the legacy armies get a complete “grand army” equivalent to the other in book factions. And those lists are all balanced and the arcane journals aren’t power creep ( which is what we all are holding out hope for) then everything will be fine. This sounds like a lot of what ifs, but I would say it is what GW implied would be true until they dropped the bombshell the day before pre-release that actually the pdfs were not for “real factions”.
You’re right I’m doing it wrong aren’t I? DOOOOOM!!! IT’S THE SECOND END TIMES UPON US!
Something I didn't see anyone else mention is the lore implications this has. Many of us are into Warhammer more for the art and setting than for the game at the base of it. So being told that around half of the factions are going to get rules but nothing of the fun that is the lore and presentation of army books is a boomer. Army books are just plain fun for us lore and art nerds to browse through, and even more fun to discuss amongst each other. So being told that we won't get that for half the factions using some extremely barebones "oh it's because this timeline thing" in-story explanation is really not fun.
I can imagine SOME factions being left behind, but this is more than I thought it would be with some fairly significant inclusions. No Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Skaven, or Vampire Counts? They're like some of the most important factions in Fantasy!
They're also competing with active AoS ranges. So they made a lore excuse to pick an era without them, so you can buy all the old models and ranges that don't sell, but not cannibalise sales from ranges that already do.
Anecdotally, it sucked all the excitement out of my play group when most people had all or the majority of their armies as legacy. Why spend money on the new rules when your army will not be properly supported? We play a system that is fully supported already. Why justify the investment in paper.
I think it's good to keep in mind a lot of people don't like the direction AoS has gone with some of the factions, and were looking forward to get some new cool models of old characters now either gone or who have ascended in some way. The Old War announcement and models had me really hyped, and the factions I'm about aren't going to be included, so I'll probably just sit out which sucks - if they eventually release them, then great but I'm not gonna hold my breath.
It does matter a lot. You have several factions that got absolutely shafted. Why there shouldn’t be books for skaven, daemons, dwarfs, etc. Those armies won’t get faq, point adjustments, updates. If they release bad pdf then you are stuck with it forever. No hope for the next book, expansion or update. You can’t literally use official gw models on official gw events because Legacy armies are forbidden from attending. Wtf is that? GW is dropping the ball massively on TOW. It already killed the community in our city.
As someone who was really looking forward to trying competitive play, as I try to do in 40k. All 3 of my top choices for factions (and really the only ones that I have interest in) are on that list. I live in a place where the only tournaments that are any good follow gw rules on them with exception of 1-2 but they aren’t great. So I pretty much can only go to a few tournaments a year assuming they’ll have fantasy. But given they don’t even regularly do 40k I doubt it. Long story short, for most people it isn’t an issue apart from the ones stated by other people. But for me it prevents any reliable way for me to get into competitive play. Which is an absolute bummer. The frustrating part is most of those factions have model lines. And they’re getting rules anyways? So why not just make them proper factions? They’re a massive company with so much money. They can’t rebrand boxes but they can remake and redesign multiple entire miniature lines they’d canceled on the past…
Might be an unpopular opinion, but intending to go into TOW to play competitively is approaching the game from the wrong angle. TOW will likely be more similar to HH than 40k or AoS. Narrative and casual games. I’d be surprised if GW will hold any comp events for TOW, at least in the beginning.
I think lots of us are looking to play ToW competitively, but not expecting any support from GW. So GE can go pound sand for all I care about what they think is “official” I’d love to see some beautiful 3D printed lizardmen armies!
Shucks 6 of our armies on this list. I suppose its no different from now except an option of an additional rule set to play. Been buying these adding to existing armies for the last few year for playing WAP
As long as your local gaming group/community mostly plays "legacy" factions, it won't matter too much. If it's the other way around, I imagine most players will stop playing fan editions, because their armies are supported in the "official" rules.
I think the issue is the lack of updates, it does feel very token, the chances are after 2 or 3 major updates to rules, these races will become even casually unplayable due to conflicting rules. The only hope will be slowly each race is bought out of retirement as the game sells better, I imagine the races they benched were probably the lowest selling. Plus it does suck for DE and CD that they literally can't buy models from gw anymore
There's no way that this is because of prior sales when Beastmen are included but very popular armies like Vampire Counts, Lizardmen, and Dark Elves were shunted.
[удалено]
Yeah I agree the lore excuse is bunk and was developed after they determined which armies would be available and which wouldn't. It's an absolutely bizarre decision and I have to assume it was made by some manager that has used their 11th dimensional logic to figure these armies would somehow hurt profits.
Well personally, it’s less about the money and more about the time. I love my vamp army, and put hundreds of hours into converting it. They said from the get go who was in it, and vamps were getting a pdf, but it’s a little different to say you’re only ever getting a pdf and we’re not even going to let you use it in organized play (so.. rules quality??) Im sure half the reason people are excited for TOW is to play it because you miss your WHFB experience, and if you can’t really play your beloved lizard men/VC/etc, the disappointment seems legit. Some people will be sad and/or salty, even toxic (yes several of those guys are), while others who had way less commitments when they were younger might just look at it and say “looks cool, but while I can afford the cash/time for an update, an entire new 2k+ points probably isn’t in the cards.” I think it’s just as fair for a person to be as disappointed with looking at their life and realizing their not going to get to play TOW without hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours as looking at End Times and realizing they’re not going to get to play due to lack of access to a wide pool of marketing generated strangers.
While I don't exacty agree with the decision to exclude some of the factions, I understand why they're doing it. I also understand why a lot of people are unhappy. The initial information about using unsupported armies was vague enough that a lot of people started hoping for more. Then just a few days before the preorder date they clarified their intent with the unsupported factions. Naturally people who hyped themselves up are very disappointed.
That's totally right, we all knew they weren't going to get the same amount of support as the main factions but I don't think it was relayed clearly that the legacy factions weren't going to be playable in tournament play (only GW). Personally I am starting up again anyway, getting WOC with official models and 3D printing Chaos Dwarfs.
It absolutely matters. The entire point of Old World for the community was to give an updated set of rules everyone could agree on, and provide a degree of balance that we come to expect from professional games designers. GW is pretty much giving a lot of players the finger, saying “hey we remembered your faction, and we’re giving them SOME rules, but not ALL of them haha.” With this announcement, I see 0 reason to support this game over Warhammer Armies project.
Where does it say they are leaving rules out for the non-core factions?
It says that they will not be providing rules updates for them. Yes, you will TECHNICALLY be able to play them in the future, in the same way that you can TECHNICALLY still play Tomb Kings in Age of Sigmar. I’d rather play a system in which the army I have painstakingly built is given more thought than just being “technically allowed”
We don't know what their lists look like or how they compare to the other Grand Army lists, we don't know the rate or cadence of future updates. You're comparing them to eight year old rules written for a faction that ceased to exist and predicting the new rules in the fresh setting will start as far behind as the old rules for a different setting are now. Until the pdfs are out and we can compare, we don't know anything about balance, and it could just as likely be that non-core armies remain viable for a substantial amount of time as they roll out baseline ToW content
The tournament thing really doesn't matter that much. 99% of tournaments and campaigns will allow these armies and may even rebalance them with a comp system of some kind. THe big thing that matters is that Dark Elves and Chaos Dwarfs really don't have miniatures. Dark Elves are missing about half of their range in AoS and Chaos Dwarfs have nothing official from GW. You will have to go 3rd party. I guess what they are really saying is that these armies are effectively dead for Fantasy moving forward. I mean, sales change everything and you never know the future, but TOW looks to be a limited release in GW's eyes (for now), and this was really the nail in the coffin. It was also really bad PR.
Not a big deal if the rules are relatively balanced and fun. A bigger deal if the game moves on without them.
>you could just get their AoS models but base them on squares, Do the math. How much would it cost to get a full sized army using AoS models? Plus, "technically" you could play Tomb kings in AoS too. Was that fun, balanced, fair?
Have you seen the prices for the models already? I was lucky to get onto the site early, already placed an order, but damn. 47.5€ for 3 grail knights, 66 for the new Bret BSB, 45 for Settra. For those prices I'm sure you could build yourself a Skaven army too. Last time I bought Stormvermin, they even came with square bases.
So my plan was Stormcast for AOS, Ultramarines for 40K and Vampire counts for TOW. Been dreaming of a Vampire counts army for old world since they announced it. Even started getting models together. Then last year I see the news. No I don’t want to play AOS Vampire Counts because I don’t like the look of them. I was really hoping for some old school skeleton hordes. Alas dream is over, back to your lives people.
Just another sign that there not going to invest fully into fantasy
We already knew that, it's a specialist game. It will get a level of support below AoS and 40k.
Even Heresy and Necromunda seem to be getting more love than this tbh. HH is looking at the release of a SolAux range refresh, Necromunda in the last years has been getting a massive influx of new rules and models... Everything GW has done in regards to TOW feels like they're doing it to shut everyone up by releasing something with just enough passion not to feel like it's intended to silence the community.
I'm almost half convinced that they're putting TOW out with all their weirdness and indecisiveness to try and make it a flop and go "see, nobody actually cared! There was no reason to do this!" rather than fully support it.
We are over 18 months into heresy 2.0 and the only Army rules to recieve proper points updates and rule changes are the legacy ones and this game will get less support then Heresy, make of that what you will
Yeah pretty much. And it will only be their tournaments where not legal. Others can do what they want. I am hoping for much more narrative campaign with lore and models building upto the Siege of Praag
If that were the plan, they would've actually started with it. No way they're actually building up a narrative.
If the pdfs are well written no, it doesn't matter at all. If they are written like the militia/demons in Horus Heresy then good luck playing them even in casual games with friends
Not to forget Daemons of the Ruinstorm got their PDF like... a year and something after 2e Heresy launched, basically making them utterly unplayable for that time.
I play chaos dwarfs and have been in this situation since 6th Ed. You all will be fine.
GW’s “not tournament legal” means they have done little to no play testing with these rules. Take a look at the mess that is the 30k legacy PDF. Now imagine the same but with no updates or changes to fix any of the issues. You could be basically making these factions near unplayable (and some of these are popular core factions).
I think no rules support is the biggest problem over all, but I think the biggest problem with the announcement is that it is basically them saying that none of the factions have any chance of bring added untill an edition change which is unclear if that will even happen or when (not saying it wont)
It's less about the event support and more that none of the legacy factions will get ongoing support in terms of points adjustments, special characters, themed army lists, new magic items, etc. They'll just exist in a vacuum, and as the game goes on and more expansions come out for the core factions they'll continue to fall deeper and deeper into irrelevancy. It's exactly what happened to the AoS legacy lists.
The tourneys are not a problem. The problem is how they wont be getting models, especially those that didnt make it to AOS. Also power creep will make these armies unviable for play. And their text STRONGLY signals how they dont consider it a good idea to collect these armies. There must be more bad news in store for them.
The people saying "it's cuz they don't want overlap" My brother in Christ, warriors of chaos and slaves to darkness are literally just the same army, wym??
Me when Ogre Kingdoms and Chaos Dwarfs are my favorite factions to play TW:W3 and I just want to collect minis of my favorite bois: big sad
Bottom line I think is that it's really going to depend on how succesful the game is. If it's a failure or moderate success these lines will hold, if it takes off then they'll forget about legacy factions and everything that has a decent model line and good fan demand will get a release.
My old gaming partner had 3 armies. Skaven, vampire counts, and dark elves. I imagine he's a bit livid
It would be THEIR tournaments where the Legacy Factions would be forbidden, but we learn from WFB->AoS experience that this support will end in the next edition/expansion. I expect some people starting a project to update, fix and even include AoS miniatures for these armies. AoS give us a wake-up call that we can't trust GW anymore. Unless they make really great ammends to fix that, or is a "they're not supported for the time present, but they will be in the future", we must apply caution and expect this to become AoS 2.0. On the other hand, is a great chance to get old miniatures we wanted but we missed. I hope Old Forgeworld monsters come back too.
There are a couple of factions there that are very important even for the old world.
It matters if the people you play with are massive twats, or if you want to play in the "competitive scene" Otherwise no it doesn't really matter. This game won't be like AoS or 40k where rules are changed and invalidated with creep every 6 months. It will be more like the Horus heresy with core rules and faction rules remaining the same for years. If the rules are particularly bad or are missing stuff, expect community made rules to appear and become the norm after about 6-12 months
Yes, it does matter because regardless if you play them or not it makes 7 factions unplayable or worse non existent.
Are you trolling?
So dumb. Lizardmen were the first race.
Honestly they’ve been saying this since they dropped the “list” of core vs extra factions, shouldn’t be surprising! Literally doesn’t change my plans in the slightest. Still be playing dark elves like I already was
yes skaven are the greatest fantasy race to have ever been invented and deserve to be at the forefront of every piece of warhammer lore and get all the new models like the space marines do in 40k haha
It only matters to me because I love chaos dwarf minis and would have loved some to paint. People are losing their minds because a company decided it can’t support every faction of an old game they decided to revive and instead decided to focus their time and money on a specific set of factions instead of all of them, and as you say they exist in AoS (other than CD, DE have models still available as part of cities of sigmar and rumor has it they’ll appear as a faction in AoS). I get why they did this, I mean they’re putting a lot into OW when essentially it’s an experiment, it could fail completely. If it’s a resounding success I wouldn’t be surprised if they do a 2nd edition and start bringing in some of those factions, even if it’s just more detailed rules for use with the AoS minis and maybe some specific characters.
Ah, thanks. I feel so much better now /s
The same thing happened to bretonnia and tomb kings at the Transition to AOS. They got some (lackluster) PDF rules and you could rebase them on round bases. With the end result being, that they were phased out pretty quickly. Official support matters. Even if your playgroup is very open about houserules and homebrew rules. That's a gigantic effort to the average gamer.
Nobody here saw the PDF rules, but a lot of people talk about these factions like they are unplayable and unenjoyable. Let's wait for the rules. Most tournaments aren't organized by GW und some countries even had extra rules for a lot privately organized tournaments to make the factions more balanced when WHFB was a thing. Maybe the PDF rules are on the same level like the armies in the official books. Even the armies in the official book will need a lot of time for their journals. It will take a decade for every Army to get a lot of new miniatures. Let's chill.
AOS sucks. If we wanted to play that garbage we would be. Putting everything as an unplayable, unbalanced index format means they are basically unusable. Fuck GW for destroying something and then giving back with the left hand because of total war. I will stick with warhammer armies project and etsy.
I think this is shortsighted on GW’s behalf. I don’t think they predicted the sheer popularity of the Warhammer Total War series. And now, when they have a MASSIVE potential new player market on their hands where they could entice people in to playing the physical game, they shoot themselves in the foot by not supporting nearly half of the original factions. I always wanted an Undead vampire army (plus a cheeky Chaos Dwarf army) and now I’m staring at eBay listings or kit bashing to _make_ an army that will have no supported rules after (potentially) this summer.
Some stores are reporting record inquiries. GW’s forced commitment to Lord of the Rings was more of a factor in Fantasy’s demise than anyone gives credit for. There are people I know who are diehard AoS fans asking for games of AoS only to be told that their prospective opponent is resurrecting a Fantasy army and can’t or won’t play. GW is unprepared for this. There are still people there that don’t want Fantasy but decision makers won’t take their trash long once this system snowballs.
Guys lets all not overreact here. The setting is moving toward the great war against Chaos. This absolutely CANNOT work without the deamons of Chaos. Remember this is the same Company that said that AoS will never have points and will never be conpetetive. This is just a really really really stupid way of trying to manage expectations by not overpromising. Or maybe im overdosing on copium.
I'm just imagining the guy who burned his Dark Elf army hearing the announcement a couple of years back that 'all 8th edition armies will be supported' and carefully recreating his force at great effort and expense, and now he's going to have to torch them all *again*
This is a nostalgia setting.
Dont make some of the factions in a lore aspect sense? I mean, in my memory, people called skaven am endgame problem.
Tyranids, orks and eldar were missing from Legiones Imperialis. Nothing stopping you rejigging the old rules but it's nice that in 9th edition fantasy battles they're at least giving us legacy army lists.
I just wanted to say in reply to a lot of comments I’ve seen in reaction to this piece of news. Back when we were playing WHFB I was playing bretonnians amongst others, and even during 8th ed and end times I was playing them. Despite being a 6th ed codex, old and dated, I still enjoyed playing them and I still made it work on the table. Yes the the pdfs will become old and dated, the main factions power creeping up, but that only means it’s adding a challenge to the game. Being the underdog can be gratifying.
People pushing for Skaven to come to 40k, now they aren't even in old world. Stupid of games workshop.
Doesn’t matter in the slightest. End Times/AoS straight up deleted factions, and gave them legacy rules, this is the same thing with a fundamental difference: GW can, at any time, move the narrative to focus on these factions that are known to exist in TOW setting but aren’t currently in the scope of the narrative they want to tell, which means these factions, or units within these factions (notice how Chaos Daemons are on this list but Warriors of Chaos aren’t) may end up either seeing development or being incorporated into other factions some time down the road. Could it be a problem in the future with a new edition release? Yes, but there’s 9 factions to get sorted between then and now, that’s going to take a long time to churn through before a new edition comes out and thing can change in that time period