I'm still in limbo over what to do with my Warhammer Fantasy Battle stuff. Probably around 4,000 points worth of models in various stages of painting, sat around, gathering dust and unused.

If 40K is anything to go by, they'll be getting ebayed. I have a fully painted 2,000+ point Eldar army but don't particularly fancy shelling out £40 on a rulebook and £30 on a codex which will be out of date this time next year just so I can use them maybe once or twice.

I'm holding fire until we see what happens with Fantasy, but the entire End Times mess left me bemused and less than enthusiastic for the hobby's future.

Just do what i do and play the old version you like with mates.

Andy Hoare and I play 3rd edition along with the rest of the 'oldhammer' movement.

Just stop buying new stuff if you have what you need, i can guarantee you there will be loads of people up for it if you ask if anyone wants to play *any* of the previous editions.

Likewise with 40k, while Andy also plays the new rules as he works for Forgeworld in our free time we run a blog where we just play rogue trader 1st edition rules, 2nd edition, necromunda and a homebrew version of all three mixed together.

The trick to wining the 'power creep' arms race is not to actually take part once you have enough to have a fun game.

Thats fine if you play at home but not if your only option is the GW store.

And your group may not want to stick to older editions like mine, they wanted to play 7th and i flat out refused to spend £50 for the same rules with minor tweaks.

They keep trying to get me interested but it's not working there's no love left for the company or their games.

If it's just about not spending money on new rules, Piratebay that sh*t! Or have them lend you their copy so you can look at the rules. But don't let GW keep you from playing with yer mates, that's when they win... (they also win if you fall for buying two admech codexes that should have been one book, grumble grumble....)

Wait, GW store won't let you play an older version of warhammer? Really?

They should try that with me...

6th edition sucked 7th was essentially the same but they tacked on a magic phase because they thought three hours to play a game wasn't slow enough.

I'm a space wolf player I love close combat and they ruined it in 6th if you don't go ranged heavy you lose.

Balance always iffy has just gotten worse and worse with Eldar and tau.

I went from 2004 to 2012 not playing because the stoke store turned on the veterans and I had no place else to play I figure I can wait till GW brings out an edition worth playing or goes bankrupt.

That's a shame man. (about the store, staff must be a bunch of aholes)

Ehehehe yeah, **** Tau, a friend of mine told me about this trick in wich they shoot at you from under their skimmer, and when you assault the skimmer lands and you gotta assault the vehicle instead of the fire warrior squad; (Gaaaah!!!)

Atleast in 7th the wolves get a berzerker dreadnought (wich looks a bit goofy to be honest) and Logan Grimnar gets santa's sleigh... yeah that's not good...

There must be a gaming club in the stoke area. Or join the oldhammer group on facebook and ask if anyone is up for playing 'x' edition in your area.

GW stores have never been any good for getting a good game of anything tbh, great for intros.

GW shouldnt stop you playing anything as long as its their models and their rules.

We play rogue trader in warhmammer world sometimes with 25 year old minis, they dont care.. they would probably object if we played xwing there though as its not their stuff.

Now I'm curious if they'd be OK with Relic or warhammer 40k conquest. (not GW but GW licencend content)

Altough I understand that they'll say no to non GW games.

I believe you have to play with gw miniatues (conversions are ok as are scratch builds but if you brought say warmachine minis you'd be asked to put them away) and use a GW or licenced GW rules set.

Its not strictly enforced, no one walks around inspecting your models for non gw parts but if you set up a game of say 'battletech' they would probably ask you to leave it.

In the same way most cafes would ask you to stop if you went in with a McDonalds meal and sat on their tables and used their loos after you'd eaten it

Now I'm curious if they'd be OK with Relic or warhammer 40k conquest. (not GW but GW licencend content)

Altough I understand that they'll say no to non GW games.

By the way if you're eve in the UK, i'm happy to take you to Warhammer World for a game and a beer.

There must be a gaming club in the stoke area. Or join the oldhammer group on facebook and ask if anyone is up for playing 'x' edition in your area.

GW stores have never been any good for getting a good game of anything tbh, great for intros.

GW shouldnt stop you playing anything as long as its their models and their rules.

We play rogue trader in warhmammer world sometimes with 25 year old minis, they dont care.. they would probably object if we played xwing there though as its not their stuff.

In 2004 most people were not using the net and alot didn't even have mobiles so apart from a few friends I completely lost track of the old crew.

Vet nights had 20ish people every week playing on five tables when Tim flipped a coin to decide what got cancelled vets night or kids night he did so with zero respect for loyal customers, we quit on mass and the last time I saw him he was practically on his knees begging us to start a club because his sales had gone through the floor, but even if we'd wanted to we couldn't contact anyone.

I came back when we had space to play again at a friend's that was 5th and it was fun for six months then 6th came out and although I tried the fun wasn't there, two years later 7th was announced and I realized like so many others have that it was time to quit because GW has no clue how to make a fun game and only views customers as cash machines.

Now every week something new happens to reassure me I made the right call, this week it was when they put assault marines already over priced up to £25, that's five pounds a model for half a squad, except it's more because you need glue and paint not to mention brushes...

They are bleeding veteran players and even the new CEO has admitted the cost of entry is too high, even the die hard fanboys are struggling to defend the constant price rises and the way they are rushing out new codexes that replace a book barely 14 months old like the knight codex and Eldar book.

The warhammer news shook even the faithful, Rob my friend was a die hard fanboy who'd defend anything they did but end times broke him when he learnt his lizardmen are getting squated, money he used to spend on GW now is spent on collectable toys from mecca like the alien queen they just released.

So no I don't even want to play older editions and neither do my friends several of which are ex stoke store staffers.

I want to say a big thank-you to Gadge.

First the depressing part,

I was a huge 2nd edition player, with a small group of friends, then 3rd hit and it wasn't bad, but it was lacking something, we played it anyway, allot of our old 2nd edition pieces didn't seem to be in the rules and my friend the ork player's 2nd edition army was in ruins, without a massive reinvestment to make it legal again. When fourth came out we tried it a couple times but that effectively ended my GW hobby overnight, all my Tallarns, Wolves,and Chaos Marines got boxed up and have sat like that since untouched.

Now the not-so-depressing part,

I've been thinking of selling them lately and even listed some of them on some message boards of some gaming clubs, however there was no interest in a bunch of 20+ year old miniatures. Didn't know about the oldhammer movement then, so I joined the facebook page that i found, and a funny thing happened, suddenly I didn't want to sell out anymore, and in the end, I've gone out and located some 2nd ediion rules and I'm going to rebuild, hunt down the missing pieces and templates, get some of my old friends together and enjoy the game of our youth.

So thank-you Gadge for re-kindling my interest and launching me into the exciting world of oldhammer,

Ha! so the owner chose kids over vets huh? He chose...poorly. Kids may be the future, but they got no disposable income.

I'm right there with you on the Knights codex. I saw this in the store and i was like, "Already? It's not even been a year!"

Oh man End times... It was fine until book 5. I must admit i didn't expect GW to pull a White Wolf and just finish off one of their core games like that.

Choosing kids over vets has been company policy for years now because they think vets spend less, well vets also bring people into the game so when you anger them they not only don't bring people in they actively warn people away now.

There's no way you can convince a parent that paying £500 to start playing is a good deal, and unlike when I started you can't buy anything for pocket money anymore.

When they charge £18 for a single plastic figure that's insane, I can get an assault mech for battletech in metal for less than £10.

And unlike x-wing where one ships a quarter to a third of your list that £18 mini is 5% of a list.

Just move on to Warmachine already. It's what all the cool kids are doing.

Every time I see this topic come up, "The WH40K Forums Are Revolting," I want to say (in my best Alan Tudyk/Hoban "Wash" Washburne voice), "And there are some pretty angry people on them, too."

Anyhue. Bringing kids in makes sense. But why not combine the two? Like having two kids play a game while being "advised" by the vets? I mean, it's too late to do anything, but, you know....

Also: Age of Sigmar.

On the one hand, I understand why people aren't happy about the world of Warhammer ending. On the other hand, I'm kind of excited to see what GW is planning on doing.

(I'm also pleasantly surprised to see someone say that something will be The End... and it actually is. Now if only we could get past the 13th Black Crusade....)

13 BC: well that's Failbaddon for ya. The guy just doesn't want to win.

Yeah I'm exited/worried about Age of Sigmar...

13 BC: well that's Failbaddon for ya. The guy just doesn't want to win.

Yeah I'm exited/worried about Age of Sigmar...

But chaos did win it's just that GW chickened out, as for the end times that was a no lose situation for GW warhammer sales had dropped 20% so either 9th revitalises warhammer or they'll drop it totally and all they'll do is 40k from now on.

Never occurred to them sales dropped because their charging regiment prices for ten model's.

Skirmishammer might be good but the warhammer players are going to shun it on principle only the fanboys will buy into it and that won't be enough to save warhammer.

Don't even get me started on pricing

At one meeting about 'premium pricing' i was despairing at trying to get a lot of new senior bods who didnt really play that one plastics went past about £1 per figure no one would be able to afford big regiments and they wanted 'special rules' to make big regiments better in the game to encourage you to buy more.

That didnt work so they clearly have gone for 'warhammer tank substitutes' with huge plastic kits that are expensive but very good in the game (like skaven war machines)

Essentially once you push the price of a small box of plastics out of 'pocket money' territory you lose the teen market who don't want to wait and save their funds they want instant gratification with their £10 their parents have given them so buy into a game where £10 buys you a usable unit.

Edit: Teen not 'team' market, auto correct and not proofing my post on my part.

@ HoboJebus: Oh yeah Chaos won! That was the only good thing about book 5. I've been a chaos boy since my first WD (132) so when end times came out, I was very glad teh gods finally started to play for keeps and kick some ass! Of course round book 1 i figured it would end with Nagash vs Archaon (mirroring warhammer 1st edion's cover: chaos warrior vs skeleton).

But if you read the books it turns out Slaanesh was actually holding back because (s)he didn't want the warhammer world destroyed (yet).

Yeah I've also heard about the skirmish rules/round slottabases. I kinda called that a while ago. Either people have something against square slottabases or the movement phase in 'hammer was just a bit clunky.

Either that or GW looked at Warma/hordes and said: few models, skirmish, round bases! We can do that to!

Is it just me or is there a lot (let's call it) cross-pollination of ideas between those games?

@ Gadge, you're bang on target when you said "instant gratification":

It takes patientce enough to get into a hobby/game where nothing is playable out of the box... WITHOUT first having to save up all your money for a month!

@ HoboJebus: Oh yeah Chaos won! That was the only good thing about book 5. I've been a chaos boy since my first WD (132) so when end times came out, I was very glad teh gods finally started to play for keeps and kick some ass! Of course round book 1 i figured it would end with Nagash vs Archaon (mirroring warhammer 1st edion's cover: chaos warrior vs skeleton).

But if you read the books it turns out Slaanesh was actually holding back because (s)he didn't want the warhammer world destroyed (yet).

Yeah I've also heard about the skirmish rules/round slottabases. I kinda called that a while ago. Either people have something against square slottabases or the movement phase in 'hammer was just a bit clunky.

Either that or GW looked at Warma/hordes and said: few models, skirmish, round bases! We can do that to!

Is it just me or is there a lot (let's call it) cross-pollination of ideas between those games?

It's not coincidence they've hired alot of ex PP staff for everything from model design to rules so it's pretty obvious where the idea to turn warhammer into warmahordes comes from.

@gadge you dead on once you go over a tenner it's out of a kids price range as that money will go on sweets or magazines instead of getting saved, and mum and dad are highly unlikely to think a model kits worth the money being asked.

But as they don't do customer surveys they probably think little Johnny gets £30 a week and can afford it.

Is new Warhammer a skirmish game? Or have they just come out with new skirmish rules?

From what I've read online, wich I believe is "rumour grade" material at best is that 9th will be split up in 3 pieces: the first being a simplified warhammer rules/skirmish game and the later books will build off that untill you have the whole warhammer massive armies experience. This seems to be confirmed by the mention of using round slotta bases for the figures.

From some GW to retailer documents,: age of sigmar is billed as a "brand new systhem" and a "great way to get new customers into the hobby" Translation : we figged out nobody plays this game and we hope AOS will do the trick getting in new players. In fact they pretty much say as much in the next few lines.

Players will still be able to use (and add to) their existing figure collections. 100% of now availabe models will be suported.

It's a continuation of the story line (Sigmar falling trough the warp i guess... That's how book 5 ended.) but not going back to the old world. One the one hand: yes! no reset button! On the other hand: Dafuq? How do you get 100% models suported when characters have died? Bah thinking about this makes my head hurt.

From what i've heard, the story is Siggy used the winds of magic to create a new world, from wich to continue his fight against chaos*, wich is like all weird with bits of the old world and other realities mixed in. Which I'm kinda ok with. I hope we get some weird place based on early John Blanch art so we can have Empire Knights with the Mona Lisa Standard.

So far it seems I was right in comparing it to what White Wolf did when they rebooted the World of Darkness.

* Because that went so well last time.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/06/age-of-sigmar-latest-just-how-different-is-it.html