"Where did TOW come from?" Topic

Maybe GW is growing??

Where did the resources for TOW come from?

I'm not sure if it's going to just be a replacement for LOTR, or AOS also.

Future funding was likely going to come from there, I would suspect.

Had other games become discontinued that may have given up capital for TOW?

It was looking cheap enough with mostly casting old moulds. However, complete new armies, like Cathay, are and were on the table.

What is TOW?
Darn it, you're not the only one to flood the pages with acronyms, expecting us all to nod and smile and know what you're talking about.

The Old World?

With old figures. Not a lot of work to bring 20 year old figures back out.

Exactly.

Work smarter, not harder.

They spend an awful lot of time and money on the rubbish they they have been pushing of late, so it's about time.

I don't recall older figures breaking while being removed from the sprue, for example.

Also this is the Warhammer board, so GW, TOW, AOS, WFB, so on, can't be considered to difficult to figure out.

It certainly saves a lot of typing.

"What is TOW?"

Thinned Out Wallet

;-)

I get the impression that there is latent demand for the game. Lot's of folks have armies and continue to play anyhow. GW still has the molds and uses many of them for AoS, so why not? Take the latest edition, tweak it, print it, and put the square bases back in and there you go. A full game line that could be restored fairly cheaply and gets Fantasy players back, and more importantly, their money. Why not do it?

"print it,"

Inject it, or cast it, just to clarify.

It does certainly say something with AOS losing armies to TOW.

Including that GW are trying not to have the games run parallel.

However, they both still have orcs, dwarfs, empire types, I believe.

TOW, AOS and LOTR are all variations of a theme. There can be only one.

I suspect what will happen is an eventual merger of TOW and AOS. There already slightly is, but I mean one actual game. Likely TOW style. Then, at first several eras each with several armies, before a likely full merger or kull.

What they have must confuse new people. An orc is an orc, is an orruk??, is an ork.

There is some serious "stuff" going on behind the scenes.

LOTR seems up in the air, AOS getting stripped, TOW getting new army/s.

This must go back about a year or so, and likely around the time of them getting the Rohan licence. Trying to give lotrta refresh, so also applying a similar idea to TOW and AOS. Things seem to line up.

However the Rohan success is questionable, AOS is likely annoying more than ever holding onto skaven, trying to turn some stolen hand me down into some type of flagship product (as far as I know), but in contrast, TOW gets a brand new army preview.

The winner seems obvious going forward.

I still worry AOS has and will have misaligned sales, due to people buying the figures for TOW.

I guess book sales will be key.

"Where did TOW come from?"
Simple… GW bottom line.
They knew many left their replacement game, so they thought they could squeeze money out of those that quit them.

I'm not so sure.

That was evident from the start of AOS.

So why only do it now?

AOS was always using many WFB sprues, so with metal or resin casting, GW could easily have been having WFB support back with a year of AOS, even just a few armies straight off.

Just a rule book and hand full of army books reprinted, a box or two of plastic and a few blisters for each to get going with. Could have easily been achieved within a year for minimal cost, even if only mail order to start with.

No excuses there.

So people bailing on AOS and GW trying to get players back because of it is not the reason.

To support me there, GW have a long history of producing limited quick product lines.

For example, when you could (gone by the time I got there) buy a pack of a zombie orc catachan and mutations sprue to make chaos mutants.

Or limited older metal, like they are doing right now.

Or the numerous mail order combos and mixed part limited products.

So they could easily have cast a bunch of square bases, if they didn't still have them, put them with sprues already going out for AOS and spinning some metal from moulds they likely had stored away. And order a few reprints of a hand full of books.

From memory, lizardmen, beast men, chaos warriors, skaven, elves, empire, dwarfs were all still available to whatever degree while AOS was going. So miniatures were never a problem.

No, GW did nothing. But then something has had them bring it back.

Likely it's planning to lose the LOTR licence, as TOW has the same armies as LOTR, especially now with Cathay for Easterlings/harad. And the players in their 10-30s now older and having nostalgia and cash is likely part of it also. And with it so cheap to do, as I exhausted above, how could they say no?

"I still worry AOS has and will have misaligned sales, due to people buying the figures for TOW."

An interesting YouTube vid to back me up there:

YouTube link

I would add that LoTR is a very different game from TOW and AoS.

Firstly, the miniatures are a different scale. They are 25/28mm models as opposed to the Heroic 32mm used by the other two (granted, I think SOME of the old TOW minis are not too much bigger than LoTR). They did this on purpose.

Secondly, LoTR was made to model Tolkien and the movies, not Dungeons and Dragons stuff. You could argue the point, but I do think there is a real difference there. Might, Will, and Fate points have no equal in the other two games and they do give LoTR a very different flavor. Heroes are a big deal in the in house games, but not like LoTR. It really has a very different feel and I have to tip the hat to Alessio and the design team for such an excellent set of rules.

I don't know if they are going to lose the license. They've had one for years and it's where GW cut its teeth. As for the other two? IDK. AoS still gets a lot of play time where I live, and I've never seen TOW played. Then again, that's my neck of the woods. I do know that Warhammer Fantasy had a HUGE following here in Maryland and I don't see those guys tossing their armies just because GW moved on. So a latent demand to tap into.

"I think SOME of the old TOW minis are not too much bigger than LoTR). They did this on purpose."

Now remove the bracket.

The rules may be different, but remember, GW are a miniatures company.

Big toothed green skins will always look "cooler" then a dark blue man in tattred clothing.

While LOTR looks more realistic, AOS is anything but.

TOW sits in the middle.

But now people who want to play big company historical don't have to settle for LOTR, squinting out the odd cave troll. They now have Warlord games offering big fancy historical boxed sets on par with GW.

It is funny that, while AOS is obviously emulating computer games, it's a computer game that has brought extra interest to TOW. Turncoats, but we'll have them.

Overall I'd think TOW, and LOTR the most parent freindly of all the games. So if the money's happy, there will be sales.

That is likely part of the success of both games, including WFB.

Not many people would deny their kid a box of elves or some noble horsemen, as opposed to some demonic monstrosity or such like. If you want pleasant looking offerings, they are the games to pics. Yes they also have some nasties, but they have the most pleasant.

After the paint and AOS name debacles, we know GW like to try to own everything. Even the latest iteration where they are blanket sueing everyone, reason or not.

So better they own TOW, rather than licence LOTR. Especially now that they have sucked the blood out of it, there isn't any left for anyone.

I'd think they could get the rights for a dime, as no ones going to pay anything for the rights to produce minis everyone already has. GW itself is obviously having a tough time of it, or they wouldn't have brought out TOW as competition.

The only way anyone is making money from the licence is by either changing scale enough to make current figures completely unusable, or just somehow licencing the figures from GW.

There have been other Jackson LOTR figure lines, a clix one for example, but non as popular or long lasting as GWs. That would be the reality for anyone taking it on. Even just the second hand market would crush any new similar range hoping to establish itself.

They would have more hope with just doing Tolkien without the films.

Infact, GW would be best dropping it and picking up GOT or WOT (brah, ha, ha, you will never solve my riddles!). Then do them in the same scale, if possible. Use the same core rules and people could just keep adding to existing collections.