Warhammer Historical Gone for Good?
May 24, 2012 by brennon
It seems that Warhammer Historical may indeed be fading away like the Ancient Armies between its covers. Heading over to the website reveals a sombre notice for those of you who enjoyed this Historical Wargame...
After a little bit of digging it seems the Warhammer Historical line was handed off reluctantly to Forge World but even then it appeared the writing was on the wall for this game.
Outside of popularity at a few convention events and with dwindling demand the game began to fade away until it was no longer viable to keep it running. While existing stock can still be purchased elsewhere there will be no new content and we imagine the IP won't be moved to another company.
It appears the game was having limited success but the real question is did any of you folk play this? For those of you that did, where will you be heading next for your Historical Wargaming fix?
Let us know in the comments below whether this closure will be having any effect on you?
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Can’t say I ever played it but I felt reassured by the knowledge that it was there.
BoW Sam
I think we can all be fairly confident that Black Powder/Pike and Shotte/Hail Caesar et al. will fill the gap that this leaves.
I own the Warhammer Ancient Battles rulebook, as well as Armies of Antiquity and Shieldwall. I never got to play them, unfortunately, as miniature gaming outside of 40k is sadly lacking in my area, and historical miniatures even more so.
And I completely forgot to give my thoughts on the news. I’m kind of disappointed myself I don’t really care for some of the rules in Black Powder, and Field of Glory hasn’t really been able to grab me. That being said, since I don’t play I suppose my opinion counts for little i the long run.
Guess that explains why GW didn’t want their WW2 version to feature in Wargames Illustrated any more…
That’s a shame. I always really, really wanted to play Warmaster Ancients, Over the Top, and Legends of the Old West. I never got the chance to play them, or even purchase the books; Games Workshop didn’t exactly make it easy to purchase their historical rulesets, especially for someone across the pond. That, and GW didn’t do much promoting for their historical games. The success was always going to be limited. Talk about a wasted opportunity! GW could have used Warhammer Historical to try out pdfs for gaming supplements and rules. They could have produced various (more than 3) dynamic… Read more »
Dismayed to hear this, but can understand why the line has been dropped. Essentially games like the Legend series and Trafalgar/Waterloo, etc are represented by smallish scale of miniatures and the ranges out there are well covered by companies other than GW. Another factor may be that this will be incorporated into the FW website in due course; fingers crossed for this option. If anyone gets the chance to play these games, get stuck in as they do play very well – there are a number of these games I intend to get my hands on. Hopefully I’ll still get… Read more »
sad to see Warhammer Historical go. A cynical person might wonder whether this reflects GW’s plan to keep their customers entirely within their own hobby ecosystem. For WFB, LOTR and 40k a customer needs only GW stores and the GW site to get everything they need, and the more incurious customer will never look elsewhere. Since GW don’t make historical figures, a new player following the Warhammer Historical button on their site would need to start looking for alternative miniature companies- which means other wargaming retailers. At that point, they’ll probably discover WarmaHordes, Kings of War and other systems too,… Read more »
Noggin you just pointed out what I thought when I read the announcement from GW.
I only played “Legends of the Old West” and further will do. It would have been nice to get more publications but there was’nt really a need to get more than the basic rule book and “Blood on the plains”.
I’m thinking we haven’t seen the last of these notices; just replace “Warhammer Historical” with “Battlefleet Gothic” or “Mordheim”. in the as-soon-as-our-molds-wear-out-and-we-don’t-convert-them-to-overpriced-resin future.
true but if it’s 28mm then there are a wealth of suitable minis available as long as the rules are there to download
I recently brought the new rulebook for ancient battles about 2 years ago – it was a lovely full colour new-style book but sad to see go.
Yes I play WAB If you play other Warhammer games the basic mechanics are the same. You could get a 40K/fantasy player up and running in no time at all. I suppose it’s downfall was that everybody else made the figures apart from GW, so they were hardly likely to push it. That said the rules are still out there as well as period army lists (codex) and they should now be cheap to pick up. You have the rules if you and your friends can play 40K/fantasy and have fancied a go at Ancients historical you’ll find this quite… Read more »
Can’t say that GW have given Historicals a lot of support
TBH I never knew it was still going. Thought it had stopped yonks ago.
No wonder it has dwindled and only had limited success.
The writing was on the wall for this when they had that big 50% off sale around Christmas time unfortunately. Lots of good stuff in their books but with other companies, such as Warlord, putting out books of comparable quality now and able to back them up with mini ranges its a shame but not the end of the world. I’d recommend picking up Trafalgar and Legends of the Old West if you see them going cheap. Waterloo was good too but Black Powder probably a more useful purchase now.
Their Warhammer English Civil War was my entry into historical wargaming. These days I go to Iron Ivan for my historical needs.
I am primarily a HIstorical gamer and designer. It is a shame that GW could never succeed in the much much larger market of historical gaming. The standards are much higher for game design and GW games are pretty much considered Kindergarden gaming in the historical gaming. There were a lot of good people envolved in the projects though and Flames of War was born from a project that started with GW Historicals. So it was worth it in the end. Don’t hold your breath looking for Rick Priesty’s games to become the historical standard. He has a long long… Read more »
I had no idea this game existed.
to blank with GW, They are going to fare. I understand why they did it but, man come on. There is so much out there that is not, I repeat not 40k, fantacy or lord of the rings. I just bought there new book and was looking forward to the second book. I switch to historical and was loving it. Here in CA, there was very little to no historical to speak and I could pick there historical and play with one fast read because I am a ex GW gammer and knew fantacy. GW are just becoming the bullies… Read more »
when is enough enough?
If they would put a 10% into there historical like they do there big there this would not of blanking happend.
This happened because GW historicals was never supported in stores due to not producing figures where the main turnover and profit have always been for GW. Historicals was seen as a fob off to the community allowing a leap from GW sci fi/fantasy to historical without challenging the mind set of those weened on 40k and such. No real investment was ever made in it beyond a conversion to real world army ideas and tactics as it was never intended to be added to the core business. When world economics clamped down hard it was on the cards that rationalisation… Read more »
Not so sure why everyone goes on about profits, because what any and every business in a free market does is find a good/service to provide and figure out a price. Games Workshop’s price may be too steep for you or the goods they provide (finecast) might be shoddy, but do realize they are not a charity and that is a good thing as they employ many people in Britain and around the world. GW made the decision to shelve a game that was too costly to keep going. This actually will allow others in historical gaming with the challenge… Read more »
They could stick the rules up in PDF form like the other unsupported games at little to no cost /shrug
PS assuming the pdf downloads are still there of course …
I enjoy my Warmaster Ancients but Im not so keen on WAB…the source books for WAB are awesome…I have a shed load of them. Good news is that figures are independent from GW so the game cant really die WAB struggled due to lack of support by GW, DBx systems and Field of Glory plus its basically WHFB so if you hate that your not be keen on WAB…IMO. You still see WAb played here and there, in fact I saw a game of the ECW variant in action last night. Saddest thing is that all the specialist games are… Read more »
Since there are stil a number of us even here commenting on historicals I think the reason it gets so little support is the amount of differing rule sets for each period and the figures are not sourced under one roof. Thus the real wargame is still raging. Which ruleset do we play and do we need yet another set of rules? I still have loads of the old wrg books… :s
What can be said. When you don’t give something a bit of coverage, people will never think about it. Really, how hard would it have been to add it in White Dwarf? Nothing much, just showing that this is on sale.
we have Rick, Jarvis, Alesseo and the perry twins to turn to. black powder has some great stuff and Rick and Alesseo just got together to make a book for bolt action world war two in god scale. I am sure they are going to pick up the slack, I know that I am in support of them now more then ever.