Torch Carrier of Warhammer Fantasy
May 30, 2018 7:56:08 GMT
KevinC, TheREALricksalamone, and 4 more like this
Post by admiral on May 30, 2018 7:56:08 GMT
From this topic:
There are people on the DL forum who recently said their group only plays 6th ed WFB as they find every later edition to be garbage. That's a 14 year old edition IIRC. I also a few years ago knew of a blog for an Oldhammer group that just did 3rd ed. That's pretty close to a 30 year old edition.
Oldhammer is alive and well in the UK, with lots of people sculpting Oldhammer style miniatures for casting and selling, and events where old veterans sometimes introduce their young family members into 3rd ed WFB, Warhammer Quest and the like. Moreover, the style and quality (even then, GW held very high quality standards, no surprise given the talented staff) tends to draw some younger folks to the 1980s aesthetics in models and artwork as well.
It seems true Warhammer holdouts crystallize around 3rd edition, 6th edition and 8th edition. Or are there any 4th-5th herohammer groups as well?
In middle Sweden it's all 9th Age, growing directly out of the Swedish Composition System group, with Age of Sigmar gaining ground particularly in 40k strongholds. There's some Kings of War action in Gothenburg as well. I play 9th Age. It's fun and what's available to get opponents around here, but I can understand those who don't like the current direction. 8th edition saw the most fun Warhammer games for my part, and most intensive tournament going in my hobby group.
I'll give you folks a tip from Chaos Dwarfs Online's long experience of being an army left out in the cold and having to fend for itself: Run contests to harness creative energies. The hobby needs to be more than a wargame. Painting/modelling competitions are nice, the occasional fluff writing contest should not be underestimated, and artwork contests, with base rules that anything entered can be used by anyone in the world, will give you your own material to adorn new army book expansions, homebrew campaign packs etcetera. For something trying to establish a new life such as T9A, art contests are the most important part. For something carrying on the direct legacy of old life such as EEFL and Oldhammer, there are much quality art aplenty from GW, but modelling/painting/scenery contests and the occasional writing competition could serve you well, and don't miss out on your own art generation.
Please pay close attention now: The hobby scene after the End Times has split from the once monolithic Warhammer, which dominated the massed fantasy wargame scene so completely that large competitors dared not intrude on it for many years. Those splinters who have a big enough company backing them up, such as Age of Sigmar or Kings of War, have a strong advantage. Community things like EEFL and Oldhammer can very well go on steaming for years to come, and a big community thing morphing into ambitions of a company like T9A face a very interesting future (all bets are off as to outcome).
Vital rules and wargame apart, T9A holds a critical advantage in the long run, and that is starting afresh with Warhammer's golden model of classic fantasy. You ask yourselves: Why reinvent the wheel? Warhammer is great as is. The thinking of the Ninth Age is only subtly different to your conclusion. With good reason, they run a Warhammer clone setting if you will, but sailing under its own ensigns. Child diseases aside, T9A's background (if handled well enough in the future) may be set to rival or even eclipse Warhammer in some areas. Tying T9A to Warhammer, not its own setting, runs the risk of stagnation.
EEFL, on the other hand, is a torch carrier of the actual Warhammer Fantasy, a setting with such a rich imagery and background and established renown that it will keep all contenders in shadow for years to come while they try to build up their own background to capture our imagination and run away with it wholesale just as Warhammer did through sheer brilliance, darkness, detail and humour. Warhammer Fantasy steams on in computer games, and Games Workshop may very well return to the setting in some form if they decide there's enough profit to be made. In the meanwhile, Warhammer is a bright, but fading memory. Games Workshop crushed their own dominance of this scene (although AoS now does decently financially, from what I can gather), and now the likes of Osprey, Mantic, CMON and T9A all smell morning air. The old giant is gone, it's time for new saplings to contend for the massed fantasy wargaming niche, a niche which largely owes its existence to Tolkien's epic imagination.
You risk stagnation, but from what I can see you're doing well to fend it off so far in the army book & expansion section. You can take the next step and harness people's creative energies through contests, and draw more moths to the light of EEFL by becoming a creative hobby hub. Lustria Online and Chaos Dwarfs Online have both made themselves into just such hubs of hobby, with frequent competitions for writing, artwork and modelling paintjobs. There is a working model there, elements to import from it. CDO in particular has survived and even thrived for years without official support. That's one fringe army that was left out. Nowadays the whole of Warhammer Fantasy have been left out in the cold.
We may be looking at an ebb and flow of stagnation and re-energizing of T9A wargame, or perhaps a terminal decline that has already set in? My bets would be on a rocky ride, but not to doomsday already. What you should like to do, is transform Eight Edition for Life into a creative hobby hub that not only gives the impression of being the keeper of ancient ways, but also carries on the alluring fun and sheer creativity that made Warhammer great in the first place.
You may not be able to take large liberties with the setting the way T9A can do, starting from a fresh slate, but you can still flesh it out very much indeed, just as Games Workshop itself should have done, had it continued Warhammer. There is still so much more life and quality that can be wrung out of Warhammer Fantasy!
You have one hell of a setting in your lap. Best of luck, gentlemen.
Oldhammer is alive and well in the UK, with lots of people sculpting Oldhammer style miniatures for casting and selling, and events where old veterans sometimes introduce their young family members into 3rd ed WFB, Warhammer Quest and the like. Moreover, the style and quality (even then, GW held very high quality standards, no surprise given the talented staff) tends to draw some younger folks to the 1980s aesthetics in models and artwork as well.
It seems true Warhammer holdouts crystallize around 3rd edition, 6th edition and 8th edition. Or are there any 4th-5th herohammer groups as well?
In middle Sweden it's all 9th Age, growing directly out of the Swedish Composition System group, with Age of Sigmar gaining ground particularly in 40k strongholds. There's some Kings of War action in Gothenburg as well. I play 9th Age. It's fun and what's available to get opponents around here, but I can understand those who don't like the current direction. 8th edition saw the most fun Warhammer games for my part, and most intensive tournament going in my hobby group.
I'll give you folks a tip from Chaos Dwarfs Online's long experience of being an army left out in the cold and having to fend for itself: Run contests to harness creative energies. The hobby needs to be more than a wargame. Painting/modelling competitions are nice, the occasional fluff writing contest should not be underestimated, and artwork contests, with base rules that anything entered can be used by anyone in the world, will give you your own material to adorn new army book expansions, homebrew campaign packs etcetera. For something trying to establish a new life such as T9A, art contests are the most important part. For something carrying on the direct legacy of old life such as EEFL and Oldhammer, there are much quality art aplenty from GW, but modelling/painting/scenery contests and the occasional writing competition could serve you well, and don't miss out on your own art generation.
By Helblindi
Please pay close attention now: The hobby scene after the End Times has split from the once monolithic Warhammer, which dominated the massed fantasy wargame scene so completely that large competitors dared not intrude on it for many years. Those splinters who have a big enough company backing them up, such as Age of Sigmar or Kings of War, have a strong advantage. Community things like EEFL and Oldhammer can very well go on steaming for years to come, and a big community thing morphing into ambitions of a company like T9A face a very interesting future (all bets are off as to outcome).
Vital rules and wargame apart, T9A holds a critical advantage in the long run, and that is starting afresh with Warhammer's golden model of classic fantasy. You ask yourselves: Why reinvent the wheel? Warhammer is great as is. The thinking of the Ninth Age is only subtly different to your conclusion. With good reason, they run a Warhammer clone setting if you will, but sailing under its own ensigns. Child diseases aside, T9A's background (if handled well enough in the future) may be set to rival or even eclipse Warhammer in some areas. Tying T9A to Warhammer, not its own setting, runs the risk of stagnation.
EEFL, on the other hand, is a torch carrier of the actual Warhammer Fantasy, a setting with such a rich imagery and background and established renown that it will keep all contenders in shadow for years to come while they try to build up their own background to capture our imagination and run away with it wholesale just as Warhammer did through sheer brilliance, darkness, detail and humour. Warhammer Fantasy steams on in computer games, and Games Workshop may very well return to the setting in some form if they decide there's enough profit to be made. In the meanwhile, Warhammer is a bright, but fading memory. Games Workshop crushed their own dominance of this scene (although AoS now does decently financially, from what I can gather), and now the likes of Osprey, Mantic, CMON and T9A all smell morning air. The old giant is gone, it's time for new saplings to contend for the massed fantasy wargaming niche, a niche which largely owes its existence to Tolkien's epic imagination.
You risk stagnation, but from what I can see you're doing well to fend it off so far in the army book & expansion section. You can take the next step and harness people's creative energies through contests, and draw more moths to the light of EEFL by becoming a creative hobby hub. Lustria Online and Chaos Dwarfs Online have both made themselves into just such hubs of hobby, with frequent competitions for writing, artwork and modelling paintjobs. There is a working model there, elements to import from it. CDO in particular has survived and even thrived for years without official support. That's one fringe army that was left out. Nowadays the whole of Warhammer Fantasy have been left out in the cold.
We may be looking at an ebb and flow of stagnation and re-energizing of T9A wargame, or perhaps a terminal decline that has already set in? My bets would be on a rocky ride, but not to doomsday already. What you should like to do, is transform Eight Edition for Life into a creative hobby hub that not only gives the impression of being the keeper of ancient ways, but also carries on the alluring fun and sheer creativity that made Warhammer great in the first place.
You may not be able to take large liberties with the setting the way T9A can do, starting from a fresh slate, but you can still flesh it out very much indeed, just as Games Workshop itself should have done, had it continued Warhammer. There is still so much more life and quality that can be wrung out of Warhammer Fantasy!
You have one hell of a setting in your lap. Best of luck, gentlemen.
) knowledge to this section.
I want to be not sad 