Warhammer: The Old World – Movement Trays Could Solve The Rebasing Problem
Square bases vs round bases? Games Workshop solved this problem years ago and could easily fix it for The Old World.
Many moons ago I had a Warhammer: Fantasy Warriors of Chaos army. They were all on square bases and it was good. Then, GW nuked the World-that-was and came out with Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. So, instead of burning my army, I decided to rebase them for AoS. While this wasn’t a great experience it wasn’t that difficult. But man oh man I do NOT want to do that again.
And now, we’ve got Warhammer: The Old World on the horizon. And once again Games Workshop has decided to swap bases back to square instead of the circle bases we have now. And you know what, I’m not going to rebase my Chaos Warriors even though they are a core faction in the game.
I happen to enjoy my (now rebranded) Slaves to Darkness Chaos Army and I don’t want to go through that whole mess again. In fact, the thought of rebasing an existing army if a major hurdle for me to even want to play The Old World. The dumb part about all this is that GW solved this issue years ago for a different game system that they created…
Yeah. Lord of the Rings had movement trays designed for round bases. You can insert your own “square peg/round hole” joke here. But it’s pretty clear they have already come up with a workable movement tray solution. Now they can just update that for the current kits and we’re good. They even had movement trays for larger round bases — like the LotR version of cavalry miniatures.
But let’s be real here: If GW doesn’t do this for the existing range of round bases then third parties will. Between MDF laser cutter companies and 3D printer technology that’s WAY more available now than when the LotR game came out, someone is going to jump on that market. I mean, they already have. But GW has an opportunity to at least get in on the basing/rebasing solution instead of sticking their head in the sand.
I know that deep down GW probably just wants folks to buy/re-buy an army for The Old World. But they need to get some buy in from players. Heck, they are going to players for the game. Selling official round base movement trays for use in a rank-and-file game seems like a pretty easy way to get players to play the game. Or at least get people like me, players with existing AoS armies, the option to try The Old World out without having to go all-in.
Not to mention it would allow them to use some existing/current kits for both AoS and The Old World. Or maybe they are just going to repackage the old version of the Chaos Warriors/Orcs/Empire units/etc and resell them with square bases. That seems like a headache that’s easily avoidable with a redo of a solution they already came up with.
So I’ve got a question for any AoS players out there: If GW had movement trays for round bases that were designed for use in The Old World, would you be more or less likely to give it a try when it launches?
And yes, I’ve already found some “conversion” movement trays for round-to-square bases online…
