Bretonnia ended up in quite an odd place long before the Old World was blown apart.
It had some lovely concepts, some great models (the m@a & archers, plus the pegs and some characters were still really sort after), but as an army design it fell apart.
The point when the list/edition lost having good foot troops alongside the peasants killed it as a viable list.
It became uber powerful knight lance formations with loads of heroes and damsels and epitomised the deathstar/hero-hammer nature of a certain era of the game.
Yeah Dwarves where my main army but at times I got tempted to try Bretonnia, I like knights and learning about the medieval period.
Iām a big lore guy so if I like something I like reading about it and sometimes that is enough to get me to start an army.
Bretonnia was always so damn frustrating, I like some concepts with the knights but despised everything when it came to the treatment of the peasanty.
Since that part was pretty much the peasants of Monty Python and the Holy Grail played straight and treated even more terrible, since GW doesnāt know what to do with their material except make everything miserable.
It just started to feel like the only reason the faction was around was purely to make the Empire look fantastic in comparison.
Not sure it would have fixed the faction but their military should have been the opposite of the Empire.
Empires bread and butter is their warmachines and variety of infantry with some decent cavalry.
Brets should have their cavalry be their meat and potatoes but still backed up by solid, but with less options, infantry, warmachines and, since they are based of quite some legends, mystical beings or monsters.
Mantic made a better knightly faction with the Brotherhood (not least because they actually were far more playable), by them not being ***hats towards the Villeins, properly training them and seeing them as a viable recruitment pool for their knights.
They even handled their ādarkerā theme better.
Their own noble desire to protect the world and settling close to the Abyss to do so costed them mentally.
Practically everybody in their fortresses suffering from various forms of PTSD due to all the terrible things they have witnessed.
Their relationship with other āgoodā factions being strained due to the members of the Brotherhood believing the world taking them for granted and holding many in contempt for offering no assistance or trying to boss them around cough Basilea cough.
That is how you do darker take on Knightly virtues.
People who will uphold their vows in the face of overwhelming odds, believing in the ideals but being terrible scared mentally, physically and mistrustful or even resentful towards others even those who donāt deserve it.
Anyway that was my 10 minutes rant about Bretonnia which turned into me gushing over the Brotherhood.
Stay tuned next time where I rant why the Twilight Kin are a more interesting faction then GW Dark Elves, same bat-time same bat-channel.
Your rant makes me want to read the Brotherhood fluff again. Iām currently reading āFaith alignedā, where Brotherhood plays a big part. So far very good. They are torn between their new (opressive) alliance with Basilea and their āold waysā. Their theme is gritty, very dedicated knights of honour with darker aspects to them. A lot more subtle than old day Bretonnia.
I really have a soft spot for the old Bretonnia models, but wonāt start a GW reload of Warhammer for them. Their games were bad back when I played them, the models are nostalgic at best, outdated at worst, their prices are ridiculous.
Fireforge make beautiful knight and men at arms models for a fraction of the price. They even have pegasi! I may get those models and build myself a Brotherhood army. For KoW. Because itās a very good game!
Having a book with good armies, a book with evil armies, and then separate army books that donāt have the complete army list in is such an absurd, predatory practice even by GW standards.
āhereās our new game, you need two army books right off the batā is such an idiotic approach.
So many pieces of concept art for Kislev, yet theyāre not in the good lists?
And armies that arenāt the nine from launch just get legacy army lists as a pdf. I suspect itās because they simply donāt have the production capacity to add so many plastic kits back into rotation. So theyāre half arsing the release because they canāt keep up.
Always loved bretonnia and Iām almost tempted to pick some knights up for my brothermark, but not tempted enough. The lance formation is the only thing I miss from Fantasy, that was cool.
Oh nice, reading Pious right now and Faith Aligned is the next one ready on my shelf.
Looking forward to it now.
If it ever could I would love to see a brotherhood story or two which basically sets up how people lived and generally mental state before the expansion of the Abyss.
Then goes straight into the expanse of the Abyss and seeing how the people of the Brotherhood deal with all this in battle and mentally.
Just imagine how crushing it would be to hear the Abyss just swallowed up the majority of your fortresses and losing all those men.
I could imagine some people just being stunned or going in almost violent denial because they refuse to believe all that effort and blood was seemingly for nothing or unwilling to even think of all the lost lives.
God I miss that, the time they where written with an ounce of intellect.
Nope letās just have them be arrogant pricks more worried about abusing and starving their peasants.
It get tiring so quickly.
One look at the Special Rules of the āFalcon Horn of Fredemundā already reinforces the lingering suspicion that this is going to be an absolute āspecial ruleā cheese fest.
While all that has been said in the thread is true, I think KOW will grow a bit rather than other thing.
The truth is that wathever GW throws in the market make it popular for a time (as has a lot more reach than other companies).
So GW revitalizing a rank & file game will just generate more google searchs for rank & files games (People looking for cheap miniatures, for reading strategies, etc), so that means any other games of the kind (specially one so close in style, like KOW) will get a lot more clicks than before.
Many players (even old players from WH that have their armies gathering dust for 20 years) may know KOW for their first time, and thatās good.
That aside, I donāt have much trust in GW taking the old world seriously (specially only releasing armies that are not popular in Age of Sigmar), so probably the hit on popularity will sink again. In the end, the flagship of GW is wh40k, and, generally speaking, Manticās sci fi line doesnāt have a lot of appeal for wh40k proxies.
GW pricing of the old metal miniatures has not really increased and if i compare it to mantics pricing atm it is even competetive. And the plastic kits are even a real bargain except for the overpriced heroes.
I paid 165ā¬ for the bretonnian army box but this includes a 55ā¬ hard cover rulebook and a 55 ā¬ hero on royal pegasuis (totally overpriced). That leaves 55ā¬ for 12 Knights, 32. Men @ Arms, 24 Bowmen and 3 Pegasus Knights., some dice and the templates. That is dirt cheap, not only for GW pricing.
A Mantic Army Box has less minitures, no rulebook, no dice and cost only 20ā¬ - 40 ā¬ less (depends on the shop) and has much worse sculpts (depends on the army).
Same with the Bretonnian Foot Knights. 50ā¬ for 20 Knights with options to build them either with Hand Weapon and Shield or Battle Axes and TWO command sprues is is a competetive price.
And ik was really shocked, when i checked the EoD prices.
The Sandborn Wyrmriders cost even more then the GW Nekro Knights. 50ā¬ from Mantic equal price at GW but third patrty shops have the GW Models for 40ā¬ while Mantic Models are at 42,50ā¬
Respectfully I donāt think that Sandborn and Nekro riders is a fair comparison.
The Sandborn are made of resin (and also available to print last time I checked), it would be fairer to compare their price to GW resin models of similar size prices.
After a quick look the fact that a pack of 3 resin iron hills goatriders for their MESBG is 68 euros, which are smaller and less elaborately designed already shows that if GW had made their Nekro riders resin they would be more expensive.
I thought GW does not do resin anymore (except for ForgeWorld)?
Their advantage is, that they have a big enough fan base to produce everything as hard plastic sprues.
Iām still massivily underwhelmed by the Old World release though.
I guess itās fair to assume that the old world will get a lot of old and new players attention.
Wether KoW can profit off of that is to be seen.
Mantic is not a ācheap alternativeā anymore and they shouldnāt be. Though personally I think a few of the newer miniatures are just not good enough for the price tag, though that is down to personal preference as I just donāt like the twilight kin elves (or the NA ones, but the mantic elves have always been a yay or nay range in the community)
FW does not exist anymore, it is all GW now and they are doing classic Resin and Metal for their non-main games
And price comparison is a little odd when you go with Resin vs Plastic, as of course plastic should be cheaper
And that GW plastic is equal to other companies resin in price already says a lot.
On the other side 3 Ushabti cost the same as 6 Guardians that come with both weapon options
The Bretonnia box itself is good, specially as Mantic does not have any human plastic cavalry and therefore nothing comparable
Iāve been shocked to see that GW is actually releasing metal models for TOW, I was sure theyād just port those molds over to resin like they did for failcast. Itās been entertaining to see so many gamers younger than me gripe and/or come to terms with how to hobby on metal
^ top hits when I asked Google about TOW metal models ā¦
Iāve largely avoided the TOW content being whipped up right now, and I probably will continue to do so. I listened to Tabletop Timeās pre-release thoughts, and Dave asked the question, who is The Old World actually for? As a person who never played WHFB, and never really wanted to, he was genuinely curious what the draw of painting 100+ models that were outdated when the End Times happened, and for a system that was declared financially dead, could be?
His conclusion is an interesting one that will stick with me. To Dave, The Old World is most likely for people who are nostalgic for Warhammer Fantasy Battles but never got to play it. Iāve seen some excited chatter from WHFB veterans chuffed to get their movement trays and scatter dice out (most people who have actually rolled scatter dice wouldnāt share that feeling!), however overall I think Daveās comment rings pretty true. I did play a lot of WHFB and whatever nostalgic feels I may have were crushed by the bad feels of 7E, the worse feels of 8E, and the worst feels of the End Times. Further solidifying that TOW isnāt for me, tho it is annoying to see the GW hype machine churning content out for it at the moment. Blessedly we all know that machine canāt stay focused on one thing for long
