"Warhammer Historical closes" Topic

warhammer-historical.com

End of an era. But looking at all the high end production rulebooks being published it isn't the end of the world.

I guess WAB 2.0 wasn't the world beater they expected.

I'll still be playing WAB 1.5, and fortunately have all the books I need. It's a shame really, because it could have been great!!!

The Warhammer Historical website has been little more than a facade front for years anyway. There have been no dedicated WH staff for at least two years and the WH products have been an entirely Forgeworld affair since Rob Broom left. Presumably, all Forgeworld have done is dropped the pretence. Forgeworld had been releasing historical rulesets right up until a few months ago – Waterloo is barely a year old – so I doubt the WH products are vanishing entirely. Expect to see them reappear on the Forgeworld main site at some point in the near future. Although don't quote me on that. I could be wrong and maybe FW have actually been silly enough to spend all the effort, time and money in producing new rulesets only to abandon them a few months after release. Maybe we really have seen the final pathetic whimper of GW's historical products. Who knows with those guys? It is a sad day indeed if this is so. But then again, it would hardly be a surprise, considering the way they have been treated.

And indeed, it has it's supporters, but sadly WAB2 has not been the world beater it should have been. Had FW not screwed around with it and the people who had spent years of their life contributing to it, and had they released the finished tested and error free product that was originally intended instead of throwing out most people's work and essentially starting all over, eventually producing some bastard child half arsed inferior piece of – aka an in-house gloss and picture heavy but quality lite publication, with errors and omissions throughout – it most likely would have done far better. It would probably have helped to have released WAB2 several years before they did too. By the time it finally arrived a lot of people had already moved on to new rival games that gave the WABesque experience just as well – or better – from companies who knew how to treat their market properly.

Ain't that right Stuart? ;)

Of those that didn't move on, (or even amongst those that did)plenty were so dissapointed with WAB2 that they just carried on playing WAB 1 or 1.5. The end result is that the WAB scene as a whole is far smaller and more divided than it was before FW took over. The golden days of WAB seem far behind it. End of an era indeed.

Didn't their WWI Air Combat game just come out a few months ago? Oh well always liked their rule books…. even if only for the pictures.

I wonder if CoE and WaC will be able to maintain 28mm single based historicals without WAB itself as the industry big boy? I hope so.

GW really made a mess of Warhammer Historical in the end. Seems quite a sudden decision what with new rulebooks like their WW1 air game only recently released.

I have every confidence that WAB's sucessors – CoE, WaC and HC will indeed continue the fine tradition of 28mm ancient wargaming for some time to come – with single based figures or otherwise – and shall do so with aplomb. :D From what I have read and seen they all seem to be doing quite nicely.

Sad indeed. WAB was my first historical game.

And mine. I had a sentimental fondness for WAb for that very reason and was a loyal WAB gamer – above and beyond all else – for many years. But even I in the end had to accept fate. Nothing lasts forver.

The game is still around of course, even if it wil no longer be sold. But as fewer and fewer play WAB in preference to playing it's newer in-production and properly supported rivals, it will slowly slip away, with only a hardcore of die hards keeping it's weakened heart beating. Sad. It deserved so much better.

GLADIATOR was a badly flawed set (potentially useful, but flawed as it was produced)…

Guess I'll never see my dream of LotOW version 2 in one rulebook, with all the multiple errata & grey areas fixed…

What they forget is that the specialist type games and the historical games are another gateway into the GW hobby world. I have never been into the mainstream WFB or 40K but have always loved their other games such as Epic 40K, Man O War, Warmaster, Blood Bowl, etc. I think the real problem is that they didn't produce figures to support the rules which rather surprised me. Unless there was a tacit agreement with Wargames Foundry? (which I highly doubt)

I know that WFB and 40K attract a large number of players. I guess I am in the minority here. I did love the historical supplements and was planning to buy some if for nothing else the historical research and the eye candy. Just not a 28mm player anymore and have been getting rid of my figures slowly. 15mm is king where I am and I can get many armies for the price of just one 28mm one. Plastics have changed the dynamic somewhat but there are still too many of us with large 15mm collections to jump over to 28mm plastics. And then there are the storage considerations…..

As someone who hated WAB, and deriviatives… I can say that this good news has not come soon enough.

There are some very good rules systems out there that I do not like, but I admire, that are such an improvement on the fantasy nonsense that was WAB.

I have to say that if you want to play ancients get any of the games that do the same kind of thing but better – CoE, HC (cannot speak for War and Conquest…)

I prefer the simplicity and realism of DBMM, for big battles, and I have a couple of old school rulesets (wrg and Shock of Impact) for points based battles, I also have a set of rules By Lloyd Powell that take the designs of Shock and WRG and magnify the strengths of those rules, whilst streamlining the needed morale and other rules.

Sci Fi and Fantasy revenues absolutely blow away historicals. Historicals were just a filler between projects to keep employees busy. With closing, it shows that WH isn't even worth the distraction for Forgeworld.

Look at Coolmini or Not's website and you can see very nice Sci Fi and Fantasy painted minis with high votes, look over to their historical side and we see much lower enthusiasm.

It's where it's at mates. Company needs profitable revenues to survive!!!

WH was charity.

Thank you WH!!!

Another brick in the wall of Mordor.

I have no intention of ceasing to play WAB but it is frak'n sad that there isn't even a faint hope now for the unreleased supplements to see the light of day.

Glad I never got around to picking up WAB Ver 2.0. I can honestly say that that is the first rules set I have ever said that about. I have the supplements for the original that I wanted so I guess they will go to the dead letter files of rules I keep around just for kicks.
VR
James Mattes

To me the only surprise is that it took so long for this to be formally announced, just confirming what has happened in practice already.

It is a shame- like Pictors WAB was my first entry into Ancients. As a WFB and W40K player I had never got into the likes of DBM/A/x. To me it was WFB without most of the herohammer elements and thus I really liked.

There seemed to me to be some sort of link, however informal, between WH and Wargames Foundry- encouraged by this I picked up my first Ancients figures- Foundry EIR and Late Romans. Did nt do anything with them as I had no local opponent at the time.

I liked the idea of Armies of Antiquity- GW used to do basic lists for all their armies on release of new editions- i.e. Ravenning Hordes- its a shame that they moved away from that. WAB then produced some meh supplements and then some great ones (Alexander the Great and Hannibal and the Punic Wars).

My big gripe with WAB was that WH never released the WAB Successors supplement that Jeff Jonas had written. And then FW pulled the plug on it when it was put online as a PDF.

I had hoped that WAB 2.0 might kickstart things as a defibrillator. However it just prolonged the coma….

Cheers

James

I can't say I'm surprised. Sad, perhaps, but not surprised.

Er…its only a set of rules, play something else, write your own or use earlier editions. It's hardly the end of the world is it?

Well at least JJ can put the Successor PDF back online for people who missed it. I still think its better then the AA 2.0 lists.

"I think the real problem is that they didn't produce figures to support the rules which rather surprised me."

Yeah, baffles me GW never did plastic Romans or Vikings. The ex-GW dudes who founded Warlord seem to be doing OK on them…

@ Locknar

I hope JJ sees this and does put the Successors PDF back online. I really want to use it as reference point for working out Hail Caesar armies for various Successors.

@ Cooper Steve- totally- GW would have made a mint selling plastic Romans to the kids in their stores.

Cheers

James

I apologise if my comments on the death of support for a gaming system I did not like were unpopular, however I will stand by them, because…

1) If you want to continue playing your game with your soldiers, you are more than welcome to continue.

2) If you are happy to tinker with the game to make a game you want to play, and get other friends to play with you, you are able to do that without being counteruled by numerous "must buy" expansions that explain fiddly little special rules that make no real difference in a proper battle.

3) If you are looking for a new set of rules you will not buy these rules anymore, and be forced into a very unhelpful structure that according to some reasonably important commentators on historical battles "poorly reflect reality".

4) I will play a number of complex rule systems, and I can see that many people are happy to play something less complex and they will be happy. I am not advocating that they all switch to some "horrible"* Newbury style rules or suffer my wrath, I am just saying that this might encourage some of them to try something a little more demanding/ rules heavy/ complicated or even just different! Wargamers are a contrary bunch, and many spend more time talking than gaming. I think DBA is great, but if that was the only rules for ancients I would run a mile. Options for styles of games should be able to increase now one of the 800 pound gorillas of gaming has been shown the exit.

Historical gaming…is that what we did before GW!

(Newbury rules – a great set of very complete ancients/medieval rules that had more complexity than was needed by a WRG gamer, that had no pictures, no charts, no posh layout (actually it looked letraset(tm)) but still ran to about 80 close typed pages of basic rules, that included written orders, messengers, signals, morale, formations etc.)

"Considering the competition, producing historical wouldn't be profitable for Forge World. Why would anyone in their right mind pay for Romans and Vikings at GW prices?"

If that were the case, nobody would buy FoW miniatures.

For the same reason people buy GW figures instead of other brands. They like the style and their store carries them. No matter what you think of GW, their marketing and designs are top notch.

It might have been interesting to blend historical with fantasy more. After all Empire and Bretonians are really historical type armies with fantasy thrown in. Might be neat to see Romans with war machines and some Da Vinci type machines too. Maybe Roman/Greek mythology thrown in too (yes, I know Crocodile Games has done this already…)

Clearly as the man at the helm of Warhammer Historical for 7 years, on the one hand this is a disappointing day for the community following on from this expected announcement.

And as I mentioned before, 3 years ago when I was made redundant from the business, I wish to extend my thanks to all those who provided support and encouragement during that time, and after.

On the bright side, you have War & Conquest, as identified by some reviewers as WAB 3

Anyone wanting to submit army lists or proposals for publications are more than welcome!

Kind regards

Rob Broom
scarabminiatures.com
warandconquest.co.uk

Well as Raglan being telling me, War and Conquest is the future for Ancients. Now I will definitely buy a copy!

yawn…….

Are the errata and other pdfs for logsheets and QRS still available elsewhere?

The big downside is that I can see the Ancients players who enjoyed WAB splitting into smaller groups, some sticking with WAB 1.0, other 1.5 or 2.0, others moving to HC, W&C, CoE or some other system.

Whilst having lots of choice of rulesets is great it does make it harder to arrange games locally if your are all playing different rulesets.

Luckily for me, at my local club HC seems to have appealed to both the WAB players and the anti-GW players and has thus became the (local) Ancients ruleset. So I will stick to that for the time being, just using my WAB / FoG books and Impetus files as reference points.

Cheers

James

"IIRC, when FoW first came out, there weren't that many alternatives."

Perhaps there weren't, I am not as interested in 15mm so don't know. However, there seem to now be a plethora of choices and yet people still buy BattleFront, even at the high prices.

Time for me to give War & Conquest a try methinks.

It's hard for me to move onto something new after playing WAB since it first came out and I'm sure I'll still play lots of games of it, but this is the ideal time to see what Mr Broom has to offer.

I also quite like the idea of the 'living' army lists on the Scarab forum rather than just going straight to print and making lots of avoidable mistakes.

My order's in for WAC – I expect to have it on my doorstep by the 'morrow and not a minute later!

oldbob,

Since we spoke last, I have played several games of War and Conquest and I still stand by my orginal comment – it is the future of ancient and medieval wargaming.

IMHO its just shame it arrived late at the party, otherwise HC and CoE would not have had a look in.

Raglan

David

Order received and thank you.
It arrived here after todays post run, but will be despatched asap

kind regards
Rob Broom
scarabminiatures.com
warandconquest.co.uk

Rob, you've got a car I presume… ;-)

Seriously though, I'm really looking forward to getting hold of my copy. I have a feeling from looking around that Lord Raglan may have something there.

It's sad to see Warhammer Historical go, I really enjoyed playing that system. I have copies of each of the revised versions on my shelf.

I've moved on to War & Conquest. Rob managed to fix many of the flaws of WAB and added a number of really great new twists to W&C.

A friend and I both pointed out 2000 point armies for W&C. He played the Gauls and I had EIR Romans. Unknow to each other we both loaded up our armies with light and skirmish troops, something we would never have done in WAB!

WAB is one of the few sets of historical rules I find worth owning and playing. The others being those that are carrying the WAB torch forward.

Anyone have a copy of Armies of Antiquity 2.0 they'd like to sell?

Pity.

I just ordered a copy from Aventine Miniatures!

So have they stopped producing the booklets or have they closed the business? And what about prior orders?

Why all the nhand wringing ? One door closes, another opens. There'll be other rule sets along anytime now (perhaps they already move amongst us !).

It was inevitable and it's here now. So, if you're a WAB-ite and want to take a look at Clash of Empires, with well over 100 published army lists, including nearly 50 online, we're having a wake in honour of the good work that WH Historical did with a couple of super special CoE offers.

link

Sad to see – more so for Kampfgruppe Normandy from my point of view. For 28mm ancients I have wholeheartedly jumped aboard the W&C wagon after trying the other options on offer even having some army lists accepted and published by Rob (so far Pontic, 2nd Punic War Carthaginian and Sertorian Roman). The group is growing and the I can only see good things ahead.

Sad for WAB fanatics but the writing has been on the wall for some time.

"Why all the handwringing?"

Since rules are at the heart of wargaming, it's understandable that if a favourite set disappears there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or at least a little bit of discussion.

I played a few times and seemed like a fun set, but I'm certainly no ancients connoisseur. I think I'll have to pick up the "version 3" though.

I put together a eulogy for WAB on my blog it is a little tongue and cheek at places, but hopefully the closing message is what resonates. View it here:

link

I love WAB and had a BIG game lst night.

Jules

I've heard one of the new games is very much like WAB.

Is Clash of Empires or War and Conquest more like WAB?

Baconfat

War and Conquest is an evolution in miniature wargaming, you can't really compare it to WAB as it takes your wargames to a totally different level.

I would highly recommend giving War and Conquest a go, I don't think you will be disappointed!

Happy wargames.

Raglan