That is a mighty big ask of any gaming group.
Are saying that a gaming group who doesn't see it your way isn't a decent gaming group?!
That is a mighty bold claim and if I'm being honest, very self-centered.
Come on friend, surely you can't believe that to be true.
Is it really any more selfish to request players of the Big Nine in my circle, including myself, to sacrifice some updates to give these people more of an equal chance, giving an overall more fun game for everyone, than for a player to keep badgering one of their friends who plays one of the non-focus factions to play against a new update to one of the Big Nine, knowing the latter is at a big disadvantage?
The whole raison d'être for my viewpoint is that I simply want to see an Edition of Warhammer Fantasy that has every faction in the same boat with regards to balance, so that everyone can have a fair game and a fun time without their army being on an uphill climb or getting an easy win, simply because GW gave one side a better book, a newer book or more units to play with. The main way in which this can now be achieved is with TOW's set of threshold army lists (at least until we can get confirmation that the non-focus factions will gradually make their return into the game through campaign books and/or army books).
My desire to set this as the standard way to play TOW in my gaming circles is nothing to do with personal ego - if someone else had come up with the idea instead (in a gaming group I join or elsewhere), I'd be equally eager to support them in making it happen, even if it meant I couldn't use anything new that GW would release for the focus factions I own in the future, because my only interest is in the greater good of preserving a balanced way of playing the game so that everyone gets a fair crack of the whip.
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You better have a huge surplus of TOW gaming groups to choose from because I assure you that your standpoint will be an extraordinarily rare outlier.
The primary impetus to abandon 8th for TOW is twofold:
- TOW will be the currently supported game
- TOW will have a larger active player base (so it's easier to find players to play with)
Your strategy instantly kills both of these advantages. I'll stop short of saying that nobody will adopt your viewpoint, but most players will want to play with the new toys that are made available to them. They will be excited for their shiny new army books and when the newly minted models are released, people will want to buy them and add them to their armies. They won't want to leave them on the shelf because you happen to play an army that only receives the free PDF rules.
Again, I'm not fussed about my own welfare here, I have four armies that are all among the 9 focus factions. If I wanted to I could just use those four armies, updates and all, and keep my Lizardmen and Skaven for when I play games of 7th, 8th and TOW with threshold lists. My concern lies with those out there who only collected PDF armies before TOW and aren't interested in collecting any of the Big Nine, just as I had concerns for Bretonnian, Tomb King and Beastmen players in 8th Edition. I may not be able to do anything to make things better for these players on the fully official front, but I can do something in the casual scene, and if even one person benefits from such a gesture then my work is done. I'm doing this in 8th by creating 8th Edition books and addenda, and in TOW I can do similar by setting the house rule of threshold lists only (until it can be confirmed that the PDF factions will get future support).
Currently my main gaming circle features 2-3 people who are pretty much open to any version of Warhammer I want to introduce, and are not in touch with GW's releases, and having learnt that my local GW stores don't host many games anymore, I haven't anything to lose by sticking with my chosen TOW strategy, and still potentially have something to gain from those others who want to play TOW and will be fine with keeping to threshold lists. For me, the only way is up with TOW. As long as I gain some new opponents that's all that matters. And I'm used to playing with older stuff not many others play now, I've been doing that with 40K for a while now and I still have my most stalwart opponents around to enjoy those older rules with me.
When the new stuff comes, the unsupported stuff will gradually fade away. We've seen it before, and we'll see it again.
The thing is though, what new stuff could there possibly be to replace the old if GW go down this route of getting rid of the non-focus factions? The factions I can think of that could be added in their place are:
- Kislev
- Albion
- Estalia
- Tilea/Dogs of War (which really needs a serious reinvention to be considered a coherent army rather than a silly jumble of mercenaries, sorry DoW fans)
- Norsca (if GW wants to make them a separate entity to WoC, which would require some serious lore work)
- Fimir (if the controversial aspects of their lore are cut)
- Halflings (if only as a joke army)
- Gnomes (if GW are willing to expand them from being a WFRP race into a full faction again)
- Araby
- Cathay
- Ind
- Nippon
- Snakemen of Khuresh (not even entirely confirmed as official, much of the work done to expand them had been done by the fan community)
Now this looks like a significant list, but of those, only 4 are non-human, only 4 could be considered non-Good (particularly bad for a game which already has significantly more Good factions than Evil), some are only very loosely-defined ideas and not many have the real personality or coolness of the non-focus factions from previous editions. Of the above I personally would only ever consider collecting four of them (Albion so long as they're proper Celts and not campy Gaels or dull Stone Age savages, Fimir, Gnomes and Snakemen). Certainly seeing some of these arrive into the game would increase variety by a small amount, but I doubt they alone could keep the game alive for long. GW need a long-term plan here if they want TOW to be successful and well-received, and outright ditching half the original Fantasy factions is not a sound long-term plan.
Too political, given current events? Am I missing any?