You say this now, but in time TOW will grow and grow while the old editions of Warhammer Fantasy will just continue to diminish as more people pick up the supported game. Ultimately the roles in that meme will be reversed, with TOW dismissing the last remnants of old 6th and 8th Edition fanatics making their own little noises.
TOW will be bigger as it is the currently supported game. GW could literally take a giant steaming shit in a box and sell it to many of its consumers (and no, I'm not including you in that group).
However, we must also be fair. You have to split apart editions of TOW (as they arrive) the same as we do for WHFB. It's nonsensical to compare 6th/8th edition WFHB to all of TOW once TOW has multiple editions out. You'd have to treat them in the same way. For instance, 8th edition WHFB vs 1st edition TOW. At the end of the day, if it wasn't for the axing of half the factions (and to a much lesser extent, the timeline shift), TOW would be 9th edition WHFB. TOW second edition would be 10 edition WHFB and so on. Looking at it through this more realistic lens, I doubt TOW1 will be as long lasting as WHFB6 or WHFB8. Once second edition arrives, the current TOW will not have the advantage of being the "current" game and fade quickly.
I liken WHFB 8th to Mozart and TOW to Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is current and by far more popular, but we'll see who stands the test of time. The fact that 8th edition is nearly 10 years unsupported (and 6th much longer than that) is a testament to their greatness. 5th or 7th editions on the other hand have not held their own quite so well. We'll see how 1st edition TOW does.
That's what I'm expecting... the celebration of its release should have persuaded GW that people like it, want it and that it's a money-spinner, so there's no reason why it shouldn't continue to grow from here.
It's possible. It may take off or it may not. It's much too early to tell.
In this scenario though, who's to say if 8th wouldn't have reduced some factions to PDF support too, or if TOW would have adopted all factions. This is nothing but conjecture.
You missed the point. The example was provided simply to highlight that if they were both released today, head-to-head (with TOW losing the advantage of being new and currently supported), 8th edition would stomp it!
The TOW release has been lazy, even by GW standards. It doesn't have the new model support that 8th edition had. Compare the TOW launch to the Island of Blood box. No contest. Even AoS got a proper launch back in the day.
- 8th launched with more new miniatures (better priced too, but that is a different story)
- 8th did not hide those new miniatures in a box with decades old models
- 8th launched with models available in store for all of its armies (a brand-new player wanting to start a TOW Wood Elves army for instance would have to go to Ebay to buy the models or wait who knows how many months/years for GW to catchup)
- 8th didn't relegate near half of its armies to second class status
Not true, it's a full set of rules just as 8th is. The magic in TOW is less complicated, yes, but that seems to have been implemented to compensate for increased complexity across the rest of the system (including when to use said magic).
I referred to TOW as half a game because it did away with half the armies (the unofficial free pdf crap doesn't count), not because it has half a ruleset. I've never claimed that TOW has an incomplete ruleset because that would a nonsensical stance.
TOW is NOT more complex across the other phases! You're just pulling that out of no where, with no supporting evidence whatsoever (and for the record, having three break test outcomes instead of two does not equate to tactical complexity). From the looks of it, it is roughly on par in terms of movement, shooting and CC complexity, but undoubtedly more simplistic in terms of magic. Most of the rules and mechanics are either the same as or slightly tweaked versions of what came before. Ergo, on the strength of the magic phase discrepancy, 8th is the more complex game overall.
More to the point, all these base army lists are at the same starting level, with no powercreep in favour of any side, which is more than can be said for 8th which started with a mishmash of 6th and 7th books (and one faction completely unsupported), and failed to fix the problem by its end with three factions still using outdated books and one using a Forge World fanfiction micro-list in a book not even fully dedicated to that army.
You’re making stuff up again. From all the years we’ve debated, you should have learned that I will
always call you out on it. You only leave yourself exposed and undermine your argument. You can’t support your claim that all the armies are at the “same starting level”. Just because they were released at the same time, does not mean that they are on the same level. The meta hasn’t even had enough time to work itself out yet, so that claim is completely unsubstantiated. As for the powercreep, by its very definition we need time to make the determination. Only when the TOW 1st edition release cycle is complete can we begin to make a fully
informed judgement on that front.
Forge World fanfiction? So, the free pdf rules that GW releases for TOW that they openly state are not tournament legal and have no long-term viability in the game are perfectly good, but Tamurkhan, being one of the most beautiful and well received (and valuable) publications put out by the company is somehow fanfiction? Do you know what the term fanfiction means? The custom rulebooks you so diligently write and talk about are fanfiction, the Tamurkhan book (which literally has the GW logo gold embossed on its spine) is not. And no where did GW / Forge World ever state that the Legion of Azgorh was not tournament legal army like GW did for the TOW pdf armies.
GW simply just haven't changed as a company from then to now (apart from the prices).
Really? Then you’ve been sitting at the back of the class and not paying much attention. Modern day GW:
· Lock new models within boxsets of mainly old models (forcing consumers to buy a bunch of crap they don’t need, go to Ebay or wait for an unspecified amount of time before the model is released on its own)
· FOMO limited edition releases
· Don’t have all their models readily available, let alone readily available in-store
· Have discontinued entire armies (AoS) or individual models (AoS and 40K)
· Price gouging their consumer base (at many times the rate of inflation)
LOL, 8th Edition has its Warmaster-wannabe Horde BS which is no different from Linehammer, and to be honest I think 8th, with its far greater capability of stacking Magic Items to achieve cheesy builds like your beloved Hortennse Lord and Daemon Princes, was more of a Herohammer than TOW right now.
Seeing a horde on the battlefield looks better to my eye than a 1x20 line. 8th edition managed to incentivise both going wide (extra horde attacks) and deep (the all important steadfast and steadfast negation). The two were constantly in competition with one another; a back-and-forth tug of war. TOW is almost exclusively skewed towards going wide.
8th edition also had game mechanics built in to penalize expensive hordes in the form of uber spells, templates, chaff, etc.
As for Herohammer, from what I’ve read and seen, that almighty High Elf or Chaos Dragon Lord meta is not looking too promising. As for Hortennse, I’ve already detailed how to deal with him, its not my fault if you are unable to do so.
TOW's mastery of rank-and-flank rules, inherited from Warhammer Ancient Battles, is far and away better and more intelligent than 8th's kids-game 'let's smash two massive Horde units together and see what happens'.
If that is how you played 8th edition, then I’m sorry to say that you never really understood it beyond a superficial level. It’s a shame we live an ocean apart, or I’d show you a thing or two on the battlefield. We’d see how your “opinions” match up against my data driven analysis and number crunching.
The vast majority of your argument all stems from your pro-8th opinion, which for once will gradually become more and more in the minority as TOW gains more and more momentum as a supported game. Time is against you, my friend.
For once we agree, time is against me in that sense. People will follow what GW currently supports and pushes. It’s as simple as that. AoS enjoys that advantage over Warhammer Proper… but it doesn’t make it a better game. I’m under no delusion that the "current game" will be more popular than the unsupported game. Nor do I really care.
*
I’ll just look down at the simple masses with an air of superiority*
