Warhammer Fantasy Battle….'returns'??

[limburger 21534xp 4]

@twodeesick I’m not apologizing for GW. I don’t consider them my friends.
They just happen to make figures I like in a setting that has aspects that I like (and others I don’t).
They’re not gods.
They are a business like any other and I know they don’t exist to please me.
I buy their games based on what they are now instead of what they could be in the future.
It’s why I ignored AoS until 2nd edition and an interesting faction appeared.
It’s why I haven’t gotten into KoW, because while the current version is interesting from a mechanical point of view I just haven’t seen enough factions I like as an army.

It’s why I hate them for not caring about factions that aren’t (space/fantasy)marines or chaos and only selling half of the minis I want for my army at retail.

I’ve got too little info to tell if this reboot of Warhammer is going to be good.
It has a lot of potential, that’s for sure.
I liked (part of) the background for the classic series (WFB and 40k v1 aka Rogue Trader were my first attempts at getting into this hobby).
I never hated them for ending WFB, because IMHO the system was dead weight.
Killing that franchise and doing AoS has been the best thing to happen.

Enough time has passed for a revival of WFB to make sense.
I get that it may frustrate people who were into WFB from day 1 until the end of days, because when the world ends you expect it to stay dead. OTOH … you should have realised that GW is a business and nothing ever stays dead if there is potential for profit to be had.

//

That was an excellent response by Mantic, but given that it was posted on facebook they are kind of preaching to the choir.
I’m not as ‘down wiv ze kids’ like Gerry so I rely on OTT to be the source of all things happening in this hobby.

[somegeezer 18342xp 0]

LOL. I love Mantic! @redben thanks for sharing for us Facebookless

[horus500 11505xp 0]

@redben I was simplifying the point, but as I said GW left a gap and someone filled it. The collapse of LotR and ending The specialised games also left a lot of talented game designers and hobbists without jobs. It almost made Warlord and Mantic inevitable.

[horus500 11505xp 0]

@torros I can say I didn’t see DBX or FoG dominance reflected in sales. From a retailers perspective GW Historicals sold regularly. FoG sold better than DBX (which I personally preferred as I like DA), but the GW historical books sold more often. I was still getting asked about them long after Warhammer Historicals folded too.
I can honestly say that I attributed it to rule familiarity. They certainly weren’t ’better’  than other rule sets.

[torros 23802xp 0]

I can only base my statement on what you see being the most popular sets that were being played locally and in competitions in the UK at the time. Maybe the sales thing is that you have to buy less for dbx  and although you probably had to buy the same amount of supplements for FoG as you did for Warhammer Historical so the amount needed to buy into the game was about the same

 

Saying that in my opinion all 3 were dreadful rulesets with Warhammer Great War being particularly awful

 

[darren2961 188xp 0]

Be great if this is true but they will need to update the rules has there is some great mass battle games out there now kow 3 ,song of fire and ice and parabellum So the you go I go system and the sheer number of models needed in 8th will need addressing but this is when all said and  done is proper Warhammer mass battle setting which is a massive draw for me

[irredeemable 3742xp 0]

Genuinely buzzing about this announcement. Never played WHFB back in the day (despite owning a few core boxes) but I’ve been playing computer games in the setting since Shadow of the Horned rat, I’ve read hundreds of the Black Library novels and also run a WFRP 3e campaign.

If the chance to collect an Empire or Vampire Counts army rolls around I could see myself getting sucked in.

Purely an uninformed guess, but if they’ve pushed the release of this stuff a year or two down the road it could be planned for when they (once again) run out of LotR stuff to release.

[phaidknott 7012xp 1]

Yup the rules we never that good, but it was the minis that captured our attention. Even although the Empire was just Landsknechts, GW put a spin on them to make them a bit more “fantasy”. If they were to do Warmaster again with 10mm figs, I’d be all over it, however although GW has dabbled in the past with non 28mm figs they never seem to stick around on those scales for long without dropping it eventually.

I do still see a Mordhiem reboot as the most likely candidate, following exactly the same release schedule as NuNecromunda (release a box of 10 minis (2X single sprue), and rules for that gang in a separate book, and “tactics” cards after release of the starter set). It’s worked for them recently, and they’ve been able to maximise “additional” product to go along with the minis (so it’s a sales pattern that seems to work).

Anything “mass battle” would be a serious amount of sculpts needed (ie they could service the whole of Mordhiem with the amount of sculpts needed for a single WFB army), so I doubt they’ll go back and redo everything. But basically the main GW IPs (40K and AoS) aren’t “good” games rulewise, they are a mess and you need an entire bookshelf to obtain all the rules (with contradict each codex release all the time), even with the current book releases, your seeing rules handed out piecemeal for multiple factions (so everyone has to buy). GW is all about the minis, it’s never been the game (I’m sure the only reason most ppl play GW games is because they’ve not been exposed to other gaming rules). And it’s weird, because I know I can get some really nice historical Landsknecht minis (which was the inspiration for the Empire), but they’ll never be “Empire” minis in my mind (such is the conditioning that GW has done to me over 30 odd years). I’m happy to proxy with other game systems, but with GW armies it’s all or nothing.

But it’s interesting to note that CA who did Total War were offered both backgrounds for the Warhammer computer game, but they chose the Old World over AoS. I wonder how many gamers it’s drawn in that see Warhammer as the “Old World” still and wonder what this AoS stuff is when they find the game behind the computer version. They buggered it up with AoS, kicked the WFB community in the teeth (and never looked back), so I doubt many would “return” to a possible reboot of WFB anyway (just new gamers). But then we Grognards DO love to grumble, then do things we swore we wouldn’t anyway 😀

[limburger 21534xp 3]

People on the internet love to complain (loudly) how X sucks or how Y is ‘da best’

But when it comes to actually doing they buy whatever the new editions ‘demand’
Few if any ever stick to their favourite/best version of a system.

It’s why everyone moved into AoS and 40k 8th.

Both 8th and AoS are great games provided you don’t get drawn into an arms race based on GW codex releases.

Besides … I’ve yet to see a popular system that had rules that were perfect from a technical perspective.
Fact is that people focus on the shiny aspects of games, which is why this new Warhammer variant is going to sell regardless of the whining from the fanboys who still feel abandoned by a company that never considered them their friends.

Don’t let emotions cloud your judgement of whatever new system GW may or may not create.
I wouldn’t expect any miracles and I definitely wouldn’t stop buying just because GW hints at a new product.

The best we can do is have fun with whatever games and armies we do have available.

[torros 23802xp 2]

Theoretically you would only need 2 or 3 variations of each figure type to make it work. If you made these as one piece models it wouldnt take too long  to get them all done. Two or three years max ?

[caledor2 4268xp 2]

@phaidknott I think that CA choose warhammer old world because that fitted the best with the type of total war and there was already a lot of content for armies, art of cities and big amount of fluff. While AOS was still a skirmish type of game with not a lot of new content.

@limburger not everyone moved to the new editions. Since GW stopped WHFB and moved to the new 40K my brother and I didn’t move to the new editions. Several of the options I had in my army for 40k became obsolete. And I din’t want to start collecting a new army for AOS so we never got into it. Later I did check out the rules (because you could download them) but it didn’t interest me.

We did start playing historical games though and found the rules sets much better than what GW had to offer.

 

What I have noticed is that “newbs” don’t know much more than GW and think that they are the greatest best miniature gaming company in the world and that nobody can do better. Those that I know or hear from anyway.

[martlevMember 332xp 0]

It will be interesting to see how they handle it. I half expect a single book with all the rules being released, including the army lists which will be limited to what they still sell. I can also see them simply producing movement trays that take round bases into them.

[warbossd 4562xp 1]

I’m genuinely excited to play a mass ranks game in the Old World. As a WHFB player who kept all my old armies and rulebooks three years will be a long wait.

To not go round bases in custom movement trays would be stupid as it is the mechanism that allows most cross functionality of minis within gaming products.

I am also predicting the ‘9th edition’ ruleset will be massively pared down to simplify gameplay. Due to the nature of the character driven narrative in the old world ‘hero hammer’ style power creep in hero models is inevitable but please god let them keep a grip on magic in this edition.

I’ve never liked AoS because as many have said if I get more than a 1000 points on the table I can’t track all the rules interactions and end up having a long and slow game experience with a lot of book flipping.

I’ll continue to use my old armies in both KoW and 8th Ed WHFB because why wouldn’t I? In 3 years I may even be able to retire my 8th rulesets to ebay and the completionist collectors out there.

At nearly 50 years old I’ve seen so many games come, go, die, be reborn, change companies etc, I no longer get agitated about it. Capitalism is reality and we all need to pay the bills. These influences are never gonna go away.

[limburger 21534xp 0]

@caledor2 of course some people don’t update their games, because there is no real need to do so.

It’s not like you need anything from GW to allow you to continue using the ‘old’ versions, is there ?
Things do get tricky if you depend on their apps to manage your army lists … (which is why I prefer physical products)

I’d argue that the only reason to ever stay up-to-date with versions of a game is when you’re playing tournaments.
For everything else it’s usually a matter of availability, because if stores don’t sell the minis you need for your army it could be tricky to maintain them.

//

I hope they’re not going to be mean and tell us the game is ready for release next year 😉

[caledor2 4268xp 0]

With GW you never know. They would do a lot to get more people into their games and selling more minis. And getting people exited is something they are good in. I remember back in the day the rumours that went around for a plastic thunderhawk.

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