Warhammer: The Old World – The ‘Made-To-Order’ Problem
Games Workshop has announced a wave of Made-To-Order miniatures for The Old World. And there’s a glaring problem with this release.
The Old World has landed and folks are busting out their old armies and taking them for a spin. The Bretonnians and Tomb Kings have also landed with their Army boxes as well. The Old World is back and things seem solid so far. But I’m a little concerned about the longer term plans for some of these kits and armies. Especially with the announcement of the Made-To-Order releases coming.
The Made-To-Order Problem
What is Made-To-Order (MTO) and why is that a problem? Well answering the first part will inform the second part. So what is MTO? Games Workshop puts it this way in their article:
“The following miniatures are all cast in metal, with a smattering of plastic horses where necessary, and will be available to order from 10am local time on Saturday the 27th of January, on a Made to Order basis. They will only be available until 8am GMT on Monday the 5th of February, and your order may take up to 180 days to arrive.”
So, they are metal miniatures that will only be available to order for a little over a week and they may take up to 180 days to arrive. To break that down even further, that means you’ve got about a week to order these miniatures that won’t show up for basically six months.
Okay…so maybe that won’t be that much of a problem, right? It’s not like these miniatures are going to be key components for their respective army or anything. Let’s look at a list of the first batch:
- Bretonnian Lord on Pegasus
- Bretonnian Lords and Battle Standard Bearer on Warhorses
- Bretonnian Paladins on Foot
- Damsels of the Lady
- Tomb Kings (on foot)
- Liche Priests and Battle Standard Bearers
Hmm. Some of these do have replacement kits like the Bretonnian Lord on Pegasus.
I’m sure most of you are keenly aware of how important those Battle Standard Bearers can be. And let’s not discount those Damsels of the Lady who are potent spellslingers in their own right.
And while it’s good that Forge World is making a lot of resin characters to “fill in those ranks” not all of these miniatures have 1:1 replacements. I’m more worried about the Tomb King players in this instance. And also some of those infantry options, too. And this is just for the first two armies coming out. At least the Orcs are getting it done right.
Some of these character are pretty important. Getting them in your army is going to be super important as the game matures. But even those Forge World options can take a couple weeks to get depending on where you live and if they are in stock. And I could check but the new warhammer.com website isn’t exactly the best shopping experience thanks to new queue measures and a general lack of filtering between GW and Forge World kits…but that’s another issue.
At this point, I’d like to just pop in to my FLGS and just buy the stuff off the wall directly. But, again, this is about Made-To-Order problems and guess what: you can’t get these kits at your FLGS.
If you’re a new player or a person that’s interested in starting The Old World you’ve at least got those new Army Boxes to get you started. But once you want to add some new stuff or units to your army you’re going to have a hit a HUGE wall. And for a lot of folks, by the time they realize they even need those models, those Made-To-Order windows will have long since closed. And even if you do manage to get your order in have fun not-playing the army you want for six months.
Supply chain and Made-To-Order issues aside, I think one of the biggest hurdles that The Old World has is getting important miniatures into the hands of the new players. They are the ones that are going to be purchasing models — or at least they are going to try to. But nothing will kill their interest in the game quicker than realising they can’t compete because they can’t get key parts of their army easily or quickly.
I hope GW irons out the kinks for their Old World line sooner rather than later.
