New versions of Mordheim, how will they handle background?

As we've all heard GW has finally realised they have money to be made from older ip's and have summoned necromancers to resurrect the corpse of the independent games dept.
An apt analogy as far as Mordheim goes because the memory of the previous Warhammer world is in tatters as far as existing game background goes with the complete dissolution of the previous game backgrounds for all armies.

What I am wondering is how they will address this for new players unfamiliar with the world. I mean they can't just say "here's some rat guys, their names and ranks mean nothing to you, but you can find out more from their army book." As it no longer exists, in fact some of the races do not exist anymore as they were featured in the Mordheim era.
Will they dumb it down like other GW stuff lately? Just a brief description of each faction? Or will they add more literature to the range? Like complete army books for each faction or packs for expansions with a whole scenario and background?

It will be interesting to see how they approach this, its a bit like attempting to fix a rusted out car when you've burnt the manual and scrapped all the spare parts.

Personally I'd love to see a core book like inquistor or Warhammer fantasy roleplay with a load of expansion and faction books but thats not the traditional GW way.

Any thoughts?

Blood Bowl always existed in it's own world, separate from the "Main" Warhammer World, and Mordheim was always a historical setting: 500+ years in the past.

The World-That-Was has been destroyed but it hasn't been deleted from the fluff - it existed in the distant past.

So I see no reason why they would want or need to come up with a different setting than the one in the original game. After all, why use the name if they don't use the setting - it would create an expectation that it would not meet.

I suspect the new Specialist Games will not be aimed at newer players anyway, so confusion over the "now" of the setting and the past isn't as much of an issue.

It won't be released until at least 2018 though, so we will see what they do with Blood bowl (later this year by the look of it) and Necromunda (next year, as far as I can tell) before they get to Mordheim!

Oh I think they'll keep the settings as is for Mordheim, as far as the older player crowd that could be a difficult task given their attitude towards retaining gamers over consumers.
I was really wondering how they'll cope with not having a constant flow of "assets" to take background fluff and artwork from. They do have a huge back catalogue of stuff to use though and it would be great to see a good old school look.

A bit ironic that it started out as an extension of wfb and now it may end up as a self contained world keeping the wfb lore alive.

Same as the models themselves. The original Mordheim plastic sprues gave a lot of options to build unique models when combined with the older Plastics ranges. GW's habit of letting a lot of kits go out of production now and the fact that every new warhammer release is a 30 foot tall demigod with wings and a magic laserhammer in a fixed pose could make that tricky. The metal casting processes lent themselves particularly well to the small run game systems over pricy plastic moulds. Maybe forgeworld will get in on the ranges?

Although one thing is for sure, GW won't be able to resist some nice plastic scenery and that could be really cool.

Sinistar wrote:

Although one thing is for sure, GW won't be able to resist some nice plastic scenery and that could be really cool.

Amen to that! New scenery is the most exciting aspect of the whole thing to me.

I think part of GW's resoning that Specialist Games have "failed" (in their terms) in the past is that people have been able to use their existing collections of miniatures to play them, rather than buying all new warbands (gangs, teams, etc). With the way AoS has moved away from the World That Was, any new players will have to buy Mordheim figures, rather than use Warhammer figures, to make their warband. GW will see that as a win.

Well here's hoping for a huge range of core Plastics. I'd love to see a load of generic humans, skaven and orcs to start with and some add on resin or plastic sprues for different factions.
As long as they don't do that whole realm of battle boards junk again. They looked awful.