Warhammer Fantasy Rumours – What’s After The End Times?
January 7, 2015 by brennon
Some news broke yesterday over on Warseer talking about the future of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and just where it's going to be heading this year. It's certainly quite a lot to take in and BEWARE, make sure to take everything you read with liberal amounts of salt, but let's see what we can make of it...
This is what it breaks down as...
- The Old World is utterly shattered and looks nothing like it did in the past. This shattering is so devastating that it's on a 'dimensional' level separating civilisations into bubbles of reality.
- The timeline will be moved on by a couple hundred years or so.
- There will only be six factions present in the world. One of these will be a heavily armoured 'religious' army almost built as a mirror to the Chaos Warrior. Think 'Space Marines' of Warhammer.
- Skirmish based wargaming switching to round bases and ways of 'ranking up' with trays similar to those used in War of the Ring.
- Low model count linked to smaller range with limited run miniatures released for months at a time before vanishing again. Same with Mini-White Dwarf expansions to keep the story going.
...and some of the thoughts on the factions...
- Empire humans with a mixture of Bretonnians, Dwarfs and Ogres
- Elves reunited
- Orcs & Goblins
- Chaos including daemons and more
- Skaven
- Undead with a removal of most of the Egyptian theme
Now this all sounds very drastic and maybe it's just what Games Workshop needs to do but I'm of the mindset that this might be a step too far. I like the idea of them looking at things from a skirmish level but the way that they're reportedly playing on the fluff of the 'New' Old World just doesn't seem right to be.
It also makes sense for them to cut down on the number of different factions for a game that just doesn't sell as well for them as Warhammer 40,000.
I'm sure we'll see soon enough but let us know what you think of the changes. There's a forum topic open where folks have been discussing this already HERE.
What do you think?
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may you live in interesting times
May you find what you are looking for.
As I said in the forums, GW have been on a slippery slope downhill for a while now, plus a recent profit warning. Perhaps they have felt that they need to take a chance and go for the overhaul (though I believe the core rules are pretty much staying the same).
If this is all true, and I doubt ALL of it is 100% true! this looks like, to me, GW taking a big risk to revitalise the game. Whether it pays off, time will tell.
This could be an interesting 2015, I’ll be keeping my eyes on this.
@brennon, I feel that GW probably did need to do something drastic with a game that isn’t selling as well as it’s partner, 40K. They are probably also thinking about “life after The Hobbit/LoTR”
True – although I view some of the changes in the background and ‘feel’ of Warhammer as a bit too drastic maybe @kommissar What I would have liked to have seen is a fair enough change when it comes to skirmishing and the reduction of faction numbers but maybe not a complete overhaul of the army design and feel (from what we’re hearing) to make them seemingly unrecognisable from what we’ve had before. I guess I might be jumping the gun a bit since we haven’t seen anything or indeed heard what’s happening with End Times: Thanquol yet nevermind the… Read more »
As far as I know, the Hobbit / LotR game is around for still a while yet due to the deal GW struck. With regards to what is happening in 9th edition, you’ll still be able to use your 8th edition armies; I realise a merge is not going to be everyone’s come of tea, but if one takes a step back, you do see there are too many army lists (Humans / dwarfs / Ogres all being in one army list isn’t new; pretty sure that was the case with elves as well…). I’m not going to say whether… Read more »
The human religious order reminds of the bastilaens for KoW?
this could the make or brake of GW this year?
Interesting – must say it will be with out me (most likely) I’ll stick to 8th they can’t take that away from me and got too much invested in 8th, – new game/new fluff I doubt I’ll fall for that
I’m guessing the “religious Army” and combined empire faction are the same thing ?
… like some sort of full on crazy Sigmar religious zealot knights or something 🙂
and chaos being recombined together with warriors deamons and beastmen
… my only worry is about ogre kingdoms, they’re one of my favorite factions …
Or full on crazy Karl Franz religion – as *spoiler alert* he become assented so on the first step to godhood at least
How dare they mess with the Dwarves.
Not sure how this will pan out but I imagine Mantic will be there to pick up the pieces if it all goes pants up for WHF.
Will be an interesting year for fantasy.
I’ve bought the rest of the kits I need to complete my 8th ed Empire army. If this is true, I’ll happily stick my head in the sand and continue with that :o)
Good luck everyone, let’s hope GW don’t completely screw this up.
Sounds like we’re all gonna have to be buying up our favourite armies and models before GW do away with it.
This rumour seems legitimate because pretty much everything GW shouldn’t be doing is stated here as what GW intend to do. And everything they specifically will not be doing is what they should actually be doing. That gives this legitimacy.
“limited run miniatures released for months at a time before vanishing again.” makes sense if you’re milking a very small base of customers, which is what GW do, also this is borderline wicked I feel.
Most of the companies currently producing skirmish games push out single high-priced “character” figures, which have their own individual rules, as a means to drive sales. The only difference between those companies and GW is that GW has enough players of their games for limited production runs to work. Limited production runs have the potential to increase the collect-ability of their figures, assuming that business model doesn’t piss off so many existing WHFB players that the player base collapses, and may actually mean an improvement in some of their sculpts. If GW does go down this route with WHFB, I… Read more »
A potential danger of limited production-run figures is if they all have individual rules, because that would probably result in every new unit being more powerful than the last as an incentive to buy it.
Too much change for this old war-gamer, I have to wonder how much of this is driven by the court case with Chapterhouse games and how much was driven by the failure of 8th?
A long-term decline in sales is probably the main reason. Did Chapterhouse do much with WFB IP? I don’t pay that much attention to what they do because I’m not into 40K, but the impression I got from following the court case was that their focus was in 40K “accessories”. That said, I’m sure GW will take the opportunity to shore up the Fortress Wall anyway.
After chapterhouse I’m expecting the removal of all generic icons and armies, Tomb Kings is mostly generic fantasy and a theme that has not much to trademark.
How are the Tomb Kings generic fantasy? Other than “mummies” of which they are not even a unit in Warhammer. Surely Tomb Kings are their most original unique army (i.e ripping off the Mummy movie franchise), I’ve not seen anything like this sort of army outside the source material GW copied.
Skeleton warriors and the Egyptian theme are all well used throughout films and fantasy stories long before the Mummy movie franchise, it’s the stuff like this that isn’t able to have a trademark that will suffer most in the months to come.
Where? Skeletons, and then (separately) Egyptians are all over the place, but putting the two together was a stroke of genius I thought, for GW.
Yup, the Tomb Kings army has a great look. Never bought any, but always thought it would be fun to make a diorama with them and some Hirst Arts terrain.
No Lizardmen… NO LIZARDMEN!!!
dang it, I didn’t notice that (@ . @)
Yeah unfortunately you cold bloods are getting nuked to hell by daemon fire and such. Not much left of Lustria nowadays.
Perhaps the United Elves will use some lizardmen as mounts? 😉 All kidding aside, it seems kind of drastic to remove them from the game.
Ah- I’m reminded of the time when our local Squat player found out that there was no plan to release a codex for him.
Then again, I’m also reminded of the way that my Genestealer Cult army got nuked.
I guess it just happens sometimes?
On a side note- you’ve got seven factions listed now (if you include the new one). Maybe there will be a new one, maybe it will be part of the combined empire. On the other hand, it seems odd for the Skaven to be all alone.
And back in the day we would put up with it but now there are enough companies that I at least know of that make toy soldiers that it may well be the final nail in my GW collection/playing
The United Elf Alliance !!!!
Elves mounting Lizardmen?
That’s just so very wrong
My goodness, and I thought this was a family show!!! lol
kinky
Remember back in 5th ed when Lizardmen had their first army book….. *sigh*
No Fimir !!!!!
IF the army re-vamping is true, I am done with this GW game too.
If 40K started as WHFB in space the circle has now closed if I have understood correctly. Races separated from each other = races separated from each other in Space. I don’t see how it will appeal to long standing players who have invested a fortune into the large armies with figures on square bases that were increasingly encouraged by GW. They may as well carry on playing 8th edition. TBH I like skirmish games and there are not that many of the calibre of the likes of Infinity that I can think of off the top of my tired… Read more »
(Reposting here my comment on FB) On the plus side: 1) I’m all for overhauling the rules, which are a bloated antique, IMO. Hopefully, they’ll streamline them and introduce more modern mechanics. 2) I’ve argued for years that GW should augment Fantasy with a skirmish variant, to ease the barrier-of-entry and compete with the rest of the market. On the other hand, I’m not happy with: 1) Over-consolidating the armies. Beastmen and Tomb Kings, sure. Dwarves, no. High Elves and Dark Elves? Absolutely not. Total fail, that one. There is no way those two cultures could reconcile, IMO. 2) Totally… Read more »
“2) I’ve argued for years that GW should augment Fantasy with a skirmish variant, to ease the barrier-of-entry and compete with the rest of the market. ”
As I understand it this will be replacing rather than augmenting?
But I see your point
The notion that the round bases might have accompanying movement trays suggests that GW will attempt to have both a skirmish-level game and an army-level game, which are compatible. Much like how Lord of the Rings Strategy Game can scale up to War of the Ring. That’s just my presumption, of course. All of this is speculation, naturally!
I like the idea, but I think this could push a lot of players away from the game. We’ll just have to wait and see, it’s a massive gamble for GW and could potentially back fire massively. Yet, maybe a massive gamble, a last throw of the dice is needed to revive the game and the company.
I can see why Kirby has stepped down, if it goes horribly wrong then it’s not occurred on his watch.
Sorry should rephrase that last sentence; if it goes horribly wrong Kirby can say it didn’t occur on his watch
When Ambassador Spock can reunite Vulcans and Romulans, it can also happen in The Old World. I would be surprised it it is not possible to make “clean” elf-variant armies in the new games. that aside, I expect that consolidating the armies is more about streamlining stock and shelf space in shops more than anything else. I find I am actually looking forward to this. Round bases. WOO! Enthusiastic squeals! And the question remains: What new standards to the size of bases will they make to screw the third partiy basemakers this time? Will they even make a 20mm round… Read more »
Spock made peace between the Vulcans and Romulans? Sweet.
How’d that work out for him eh? …
25mm, changing to 32mm as soon as you’ve finished your army 😉
Hopefully Beastmen and Bretonnia get they long waited new army books.
I would not put money on them getting them
LOL
I’m doing my best to keep an open mind about all this, but one thing I haven’t seen people addressing is the plastic kits GW are producing. They continue to invest in plastic sprues, which require sales in bulk to be worthwhile. They haven’t withdrawn ancient and rubbish plastic sprues (like the 40K ork warbuggy). Which makes me wonder if or why they would invalidate a lot of their existing range of plastic. And it’s hard to see how these army mergers, if made permanent, could do anything but invalidate a lot of existing sprues. Unless the implication is that… Read more »
Oh, just checked out the warseer post. The implication does indeed seem to be that they are effectively cancelling WFB and replacing it with a new game under the same name.
You will probably still be able to get some of the mini’s from Aliexpress, and at 20-30% less than at GW, if what’s on there now is any indication. From what I’ve seen, they have a pretty comprehensive 40k selection, at the same discount, and they ship for free. Not sure if the figures are the real deal, or Chinese knock-offs. I suspect they are knock-offs, as none of the stuff is identified as Warhammer.
actually GW dickheaded there way in there and stopped it somehow. A LOT of models GW no longer produce were also removed. This may change though.
So skirmishing in a fantasty world with dwarves, men and elves…where have I heard that before, oh wait! Lotr SBG! Funny if they’ll change warhammer into a game they’re phasing out and want to get rid off.
I find that GW is too big for its own good now. It needs to pump stuff out always in order to reach sales projections and that can’t last forever. My hope is this is not a quick fix for them but a well thought out plan for the future of the game and the company at large.
I don’t mind the idea of merging army’s as long as all the units I have I can still use. The base thing ? not keen, cant see any reason for it. Skirmish ? Just start supporting Mordheim again. I don’t mind them messing with all the fluff but I like the game as it is a few tweaks here and there will be ok but I like big blocks of ranked up troops!
For that there’s 8th. Stick with us … I mean stick with it 🙂
One word: Kings of War
😀
It’ll be the only mass market large scale fantasy game available if the above stuff is true. Just in time for KoW’s new, improved, re-balanced edition too. I guess it shows that GW has decided that it is now the 40K company and this policy allows it to shove Warhammer into the corner of their stores currently occupied by LotR and give the gained space over to the huge amount of 40K stuff they’re pushing out now. An odd solution to their obvious problems I’d say, but GW has long been determined to never take the “easy” path, even if… Read more »
“There will only be six factions present in the world. One of these will be a heavily armoured ‘religious’ army almost built as a mirror to the Chaos Warrior. Think ‘Space Marines’ of Warhammer.”
So having turned up in an ET book, Draigo will be founding Fantasy Grey Knights then? 🙂
Is there any timeline on when this change will happen?
Surely at the End of Timeline! lol
Is it worth saying that if the models do go onto round bases, then we might expect new fantasy models to be more “dynamic”?
I.e. New troops can now be designed without the need for them to all form up in ranks as tightly as they currently do.
Don’t count on it. They’ll be ill-conceived and hastily churned out, just like everything else they’ve produced in the last few years.
If you think that all the models that GW have produced over the last few years are ill-conceived / hastily churned out, I’m not sure there is much point in debating with you when it comes to GW stuff.
TBH I think you raised an interesting question. However, dynamic poses do not necessarily mean better quality models. The tendency with GW is to throw the kitchen sink at figures and while their may be a prolific amount of detail, it is often confusing and disorganised I suspect that if they are going to do limited runs you can expect plenty of that sort of thing. Fine if you like it, but personally I am not a fan, but then I have never bought into the belief that “GW does the bestest minis”. Though it might be nice if they… Read more »
*there dammit, there not their