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.
Perhaps future editions might rectify the situation and could catapult it to the level of 6th and 8th (maybe even beyond). Who knows. AoS definitely got better over the years; and TOW is a stronger game at launch then AoS was.
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.
TOW is currently hyped because it is new and supported by GW. Simple as that; nothing more. Imagine for a moment this
hypothetical scenario:
- 8th edition had not been previously released
- The End Times was the conclusion of 7th edition and GW moved onto AoS
- Years later (against any business sense), GW releases both TOW and 8th WHFB at the same time. Both are new. Both are supported.
I can tell you which game would win... and very easily at that. 8th would crush TOW in that scenario.
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.
TOW is essentially half a game.
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).
TOW was released featuring mainly decades old models.
8th also used all these models (they were newer at the time, but were still old even then, compared to the models that were released ). 8th had the Island of Blood box, yes, but TOW has the new plastic and resin character models.
TOW's model support is incomplete for most of its core factions. TOW essentially eliminated nearly half of the factions;
The PDF lists are still perfectly viable, full army lists no different from those in the main-faction lists apart from no optional Arcane Journal rules (as opposed to AoS which changed the playing field in favour of new factions more and more after initially releasing those half-arsed PDFs for 8th factions). 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.
And as for the Arcane Journals for the 7 other main factions not being out yet, as I recall 8th didn't even release its first army book until 8 months after the Edition itself was released.
most of which happen to be the best factions.
Entirely in your opinion.
WHFB was a flagship game, TOW is not.
This is more a good thing now given the nature of modern GW, TOW is spared from the constant meta-setting and relentless Edition chases of AoS and new 40K. Perhaps its edition release cycle will be even slower than 7th and 8th Edition Fantasy and 5th and 6th 40K, which will give the game a lot more time to breathe between major updates.
TOW will suffer from GW's modern day shadier business practices.
It's no different from old GW at the time of 8th, giving their favourite armies the best books and the most frequent model releases, and leaving the factions they hated up to two editions behind or giving them weaker rules, not to mention killing the game off when they got bored of it. GW simply just haven't changed as a company from then to now (apart from the prices). It's up to us as the players to simply make the most of the good stuff they give us, such as in this case TOW's uniform, Ravening Hordes-style threshold lists.
The 8th edition ruleset is better than TOW's herohammer and linehammer nonsense.
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.
8th edition's magic system is FAR better and more intelligent than TOW's aos-level system.
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'. It's a tit-for-tat and each of us prefers one to the other.
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.
To be clear, remember that I myself have been through the 8th era, seen the game, played it and enjoyed it. Yet, for me, TOW scratches more of my itches than 8th ever did. To me, it looks a better game than 8th, just as, to you, 8th looks the better game. We are at an impasse.
