The Old World What's your view of The Old World?

[Disciple of Nagash]

So the Old World has been out for a while now and has also been updated (well apart from the poor legacy armies )

I thought it would be interesting to hear what views people have on it following on from a discussion in another thread from thorash who didn't enjoy it. There's the gaming side of course, but also how GW has decided to position it, taking us a few hundred years earlier and not supporting some of the armies previously in WHFB.

An obvious one perhaps for this forum, is I am still really surprised about the decision on the legacy armies, especially VC considering that it was one of the most popular armies in the game. I know that GW want to have this separation in regards to their model range but that just feels daft, as people will purchase AoS and convert, and if GW hadn't produced decent legacy army lists they would have been created.

I do think there look to be some good improvements in TOW for infantry for example, with step up, pushing back etc feels like they can be more involved. I'm not 100% sure what I feel about magic being spread over different phases, I've seen a lot of tactics and feedback that magic feels overtuned though they have tried to step that back with the recent changes.

So what do you think of TOW and apart from obviously making VC a "proper" army again , what improvements should be made?

 

[Oppenheimer]

Best edition in my opinion. The problem with 8e was cannons, magic and being shot off the back of monsters. All those things were addressed in ToW, and I love what they did to strengthen infantry in the latest errata. Very pleased with it!

 

[Unas the slayer]

Oh, nice topic.
I will share my detailed opinions on it later, but all in all i'm positive.
It has its issues and some of them are elephant size, but also old proper WHFB editions were filled with problems.

 

[thorash]

Damn, I got called to the blackboard a little

I would like to point out two things. As I mentioned in the previous thread, I used to be well prepared for a debate about which rules are bad and that the entire edition seems to have learned nothing from previous ones. Now, over a year has passed, and I just wanted to forget about it. I didn't know that I would meet cool people who would want to hear my opinion.

When I find a moment, I will comment specifically on the atmosphere, which is lacking in TOW. I will write something about how I view this edition as a cash grab from people who used to play or got to know the game through Total War, and about the books, which are poor in terms of quality - I will comment on the preparation for printing and product visualization, which is my professional specialty.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

Excellent, I look forward to hearing both of you views Unas the slayer and thorash in more detail.

I do agree that GW knew what they were doing in terms of nostalgia - similar a bit to finally bringing back squats..ah Leagues of Votann (which I also collect!) in 40K. It's a savvy marketing tactic focusing on that older generation who now likely have the surplus cash and want to bring back the fun of their younger days. Personally when I read about the Old World I was elated ...and then that was dampened a tad by it effectively being a prequel, and also removing some the army lists. Atmosphere and lorewise....yes admittedly I haven't yet fully immersed myself. I felt like I knew WHFB lore inside and out, and I was likely most active in the lore sections here before! But that might come with time.

Oppenheimer - saying that TOW is now the best edition is big! What previous editions did you play/compare it to?

 

[Oppenheimer]

I only started at the beginning of 8e. But it used a lot of older books at that point. Still, if you think that's not enough background to say it's the best edition, that's fair.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

Oppenheimer everyone's opinion is fair plus you're correct that the 8th was intended to wrap up a best of the previous editions. IIRC infantry was still a bit of an issue in the 8th though with massive unwieldy blocks.

I'm looking forward to seeing if TOW has managed to get the right balance so normal 10- 20 man size units can be effective

 

[The Sun King]

I think it is great that they support Old World and Age of Sigmar at the same time. For me Old World is in the past, I loved it back in WHFB but I think it is a closed chapter for me as I'm all aboard on Age of Sigmar (and has been since the beginning). I have friends who for a short time got into Old World because of nostalgia, but it didn't really stick with them.

 

[Seneschal]

I feel that OW suffers from a lot of rules bloat and that the FAQ which was supposed to make infantry more viable has made them even less appetizing for certain armies. My initial excitement dimmed after a short while. It works best as a fun thing to do with friends, not a GT level game.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

I think it is great that they support Old World and Age of Sigmar at the same time. For me Old World is in the past, I loved it back in WHFB but I think it is a closed chapter for me as I'm all aboard on Age of Sigmar (and has been since the beginning). I have friends who for a short time got into Old World because of nostalgia, but it didn't really stick with them.

How did you find it getting into AoS? I know GW purposely went into a higher fantasy feel compared to WHFB and in some ways I didn't resonate with it as much, I still love some of what feels grittier in WHFB....although that said the delusional FEC is still possibly the best piece of lore I've seen GW create!

I feel that OW suffers from a lot of rules bloat and that the FAQ which was supposed to make infantry more viable has made them even less appetizing for certain armies. My initial excitement dimmed after a short while. It works best as a fun thing to do with friends, not a GT level game.

Yeah I think there's some fairness in a lot of core rules and some complexity that's maybe not needed. Which armies are suffering with the infantry changes, presumably more elite focused armies?

I've not seen any details, but I assumed with the continued expansion and inclusion of Cathay it must be doing reasonably well (although heard lots of bad things of how broken Cathay is )?

 

[The Sun King]

AoS is for sure more high fantasy, but I don't think it is any less gritty. And Cities of Sigmar has done a lot for introducing the normal humans into the lore. It is quite dark when you read it. And I like that each faction has a built in weakness - Idoneth have no souls etc.

 

[Seneschal]

Disciple of Nagash Yeah, the more elite armies. High Elves for example would never use infantry outside of a casual game. Their dragon is currently the strongest and Dragon Princes (the cav unit) have received a boost with the change to Impetuous now being a leadership test. HE will run all cav, dragon and some Sisters typically.

 

[Unas the slayer]

Not detailed as i would have liked, but let's give it a start. Further considerations will follow

MINUSES

1) TOW is of course a cash grab, and even as cash grab it fails spectacularly, given that a large portion of the Old armies has been left unsupported.
Yes, never say never, but I fear that as time passes, the neglected armies will fall behind. This cuts away a good chunk of old players.

2) The game system is still chunky as an elephant. Enjoy scrolling your rulebook to look for minutiae

3) despite being rules-heavy, they dropped the 8th magic system, which was tactical and rewarding. I get the reason behind this decision, but i miss it nonetheless.

4) different bases. yep, it can be bypassed simply by glueing larger bases under the old ones, or use tray adapters, but it's still annoying (however, this also counts as a bonus, see later)

5) as with WHFB, the game system and the miriad of rules is easily abusable, and the few tournaments i saw were filled with a very competitive approach. I don't want to play a polished but still old game, only to face toxic and unfun lists.

6) even for supported armies, some of the old units are gone and that irks me to no end.


BONUSES

1) TOW is a cash grab based on nostalgia, but i like nostalgia, i like fantasy rank & files and the sweet feelings of years ago memories. and even if WHFB was better (spoiler: was not, it was a mess) that system is no more supported, which brings us to...

2) it's basically a new, supported game. New and young players don't and won't play a 10 years old game, but TOW? sure they do. and they buy Cathay. this means that i am finding people to still play the old way, a thing that before TOW i wasn't more able to experience.

3) larger bases means also less headaches to place the single models in a packed formation. I have no nostalgia at all for those 3D puzzle games. And the new models absolutely need larger bases.

4) if played in a not competitive way, with the goal to just have some fun with your friends and field thematic lists, it gives you a great, fun time. And it takes not that much time for a game, certainly less than 40k.

5) the truly broken spells of 8th are gone, and magic feels more balanced. It's still very strong and the last "patches" to solve some of the problems missed the mark. But it's still better than the last iteration of WHFB.

6) i don't like AoS lore. i like the more grounded lore of oldhammer.

 

[Sception]

Not to argue any of the other points in either direction, but on the base size front, but I'm definitely on the 'it's a positive thing' side for the base size changes. WHFB was pretty desperately in need of the base size increase by 8th edition. Scale creep had been a thing for like a decade already, and by 8th edition many of the larger & more dynamically posed kits were downright painful to rank up when crammed onto the same base sizes as the older, smaller, static, chorus line models they were replacing. I remember having to number all of my ghouls because they could only rank up one particular way. And that bother was nothing compared to the 8e witch elves.

Re-basing is a hassle. And the core rules for Old World being written in a way that tries to pretend base sizes don't matter causes a bunch of problems that will hopefully be ironed out in a proper second edition when they can hopefully focus on tOW as it's own thing and stop worrying so much about old WHFB collections. Kind of sad they didn't learn from 1st edition AoS, which also caused way more pain than it prevented by trying to be base agnostic so they could pretend you didn't need to re-base your old fantasy models.

But even with all that, the base size increase was still a needed change that imo is for the better, and something that IMO would have happened a long time ago had WHFB never died - albeit in a slower piecemeal way, one unit at a time spread out over multiple editions, as we've seen in 40k.

My only complaints about the new base sizes are 1) not giving the accurate dimensions for their bases (the official light cavalry bases are NOT 25mm wide, the official chariot bases are NOT 50mm wide, etc) - either they should have just made new base sprues from scratch or they should have listed the accurate sizes. And 2) the failure to introduce a 60mm square, which several units really would have benefitted from, including tomb scorpions which look ridiculous on the wide rectangle while their claws hang way out over the front and their tail way out over the back, and especially the Slaan. the lack of an official 60mm square base option is imo the direct reason why mage priests can't be put inside temple guard units in the Legacy PDF, a concept which is core to the army's aesthetic identity. Thankfully that's one of many issues fixed by that Renegade Legacy Pack I'm always banging on about.

 

[Unas the slayer]

tomb scorpions which look ridiculous on the wide rectangle while their claws hang way out over the front and their tail way out over the back, and especially the Slaan. the lack of an official 60mm square base option is imo the direct reason why mage priests can't be put inside temple guard units in the Legacy PDF, a concept which is core to the army's aesthetic identity.

yep, both asinine decisions. A pity

 

[Seneschal]

2) The game system is still chunky as an elephant. Enjoy scrolling your rulebook to look for minutiae

This^ So much this, It's far worse than the 6th edition rulebook and that one was a royal pain at my club to go through.

Agreed on the scorpion and slaan issues, it boggles the mind what they were thinking,

 

[Mr. Anderson]

I'm neutral to TOW since it's nothing we've adopted into our group. I've only tried it a couple of times so far and it seems good enough, not too different from the rest (other than 8th).

Not a super interesting response, I know.

Of course I'm also just happy that Fantasy is back and available for others to get into!

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

Some interesting insights there.

I liked this point:

2) it's basically a new, supported game. New and young players don't and won't play a 10 years old game, but TOW? sure they do. and they buy Cathay. this means that i am finding people to still play the old way, a thing that before TOW i wasn't more able to experience.

Yes of course TOW is a nostalgia cash grab BUT this is a great point that new players will pick up what they see as a supported game instead of us oldies trying to get them to play an old edition of WHFB. The more that get playing, the better supported the system will become.

The biggest misses for me are of course not properly supporting all the old factions as I mentioned before - even if they said they won't get new models for the moment but committed to keeping their rules updated would be enough.

The base size thing is an daft one - most players I've found wouldn't be fussed that much about resizing their models bases, especially the old nostalgia crew who are just happy to have a supported edition again! Plus the points mentioned above about it will actually benefit a lot of the models we have.

I'm personally still not sold on the magic approach - I liked it's own phase - but then I loved the old 4th/5th with the cards! I'm not saying we need to go back to the ridiculous spell of the 8th, having one spell able to easily wipe 300/400 pt units off the board wasn't great, but that magical fantasy there was enjoyable.

 

[Unas the slayer]

Yes of course TOW is a nostalgia cash grab BUT this is a great point that new players will pick up what they see as a supported game instead of us oldies trying to get them to play an old edition of WHFB. The more that get playing, the better supported the system will become.

yep, that's really the biggest plus of TOW.
We already have 3 new guys that are building their TOW armies (and a couple of other ones that are planning to), while they never considered WHFB as a viable game.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

yep, that's really the biggest plus of TOW.
We already have 3 new guys that are building their TOW armies (and a couple of other ones that are planning to), while they never considered WHFB as a viable game.

Well don't forget to direct them our way, get them to creating a painting log!

 

[SethDrallitoc]

It's too expensive. I, for a second, considered buying it. It was the day after release, and the online store told me that all three books were sold out.

Rather than giving in to the FOMO, I considered it a bullet dodged.

I have quit GW or Warhammer - whatever they are calling themselves these days.

I am still playing games.

Still buying and painting miniatures.

Still building terrain.

GW will never see another penny from me.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

What did you play now SethDrallitoc - an older version of WHFB or something completely different?

I know a few people who have said GW prices are ridiculous and it is a pity as some of the new models are beautiful, but can appreciate paying for example around £100 for a single character on a dragon is expensive! I've always personally got models from a variety of ranges, just found some great non-GW banshees I had stashed away the other day, so I'm pleased there's a lot more people doing it nowadays, including the 3D printing options as well.

 

[Unas the slayer]

the cheapest option could be:
- buy the core rulebook
- play with old miniatures, setting them on cardboard trays
- 3d print new models
- use wahapedia or something similar for the rules of your army (thus avoiding the purchase of 2-3 additional books/journals)

 

[Vengeance Crusader]

Personally, I've been REALLY enjoying ToW. When it dropped, I resolved myself to not just re-buy my old army (I sold my nearly all of my VC army when AoS came out), and used it at an excuse to start the other army I always wanted: Warriors of Chaos.

So far, I've been having a blast. My hope is that VC will get a fully-realised ToW release soon, which would very much tempt be back to the forces of Darkness... (The other ones...) ^v^

(Also- totally forgot I had this account- but the recent Blood Knight battle force got me reminiscing about my WHFB VC days and decided to see if I still had an account here- it worked!)

 

[Unas the slayer]

(Also- totally forgot I had this account- but the recent Blood Knight battle force got me reminiscing about my WHFB VC days and decided to see if I still had an account here- it worked!)

so... welcome back!