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7 hours ago, Nico said:

Yes - I referred to them as Allegiance Packs as that's what they look like in the App under the My Battle section (Allegiance Ability). I hope that rumour is true.

On your impressive list, you omitted selling bundles for the podium armies at SCGT, which I thought was an awesome move.

Re: Allegiance Packs, ah, gotcha, thanks.

Re: SCGT-podium-army bundles, oh yeah! That was cool to see. I'll add it to the list + attribute you.

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As a relative newcomer, I'd love to see a "Guide to the Realms" or somesuch with an overview of what landscapes are like in each of the realms as well as how they're navigated when not using a realmgate. Perhaps expand on the Time of War rules for each realm and provide modelling tips for how to make your army look like it came from there.

The Free People. Enough about the stormbros, I want to see the heroic mortals who have to stand up to the ravages of Chaos without snazzy armor and lightning hammers: (non chaos)barbarian tribes, ranger clans, small holdouts of human civilization that don't wear hose into battle.

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A retcon to the Seraphon lore. No-one will blame you.

Honestly, the space aztec lizard daemons just isn't working. And really,  'Seraphon' was a much better name for the Stormcast, implying beings from heaven etc.

If you told me the stormcast had the Seraphon name and saw these gold armoured warriors and angel flying units I would be all over that.

You really need a rethink on how lizardmen fit into the aos lore. Them being daemons was a really interesting take, and I like it, but I still can't help but think the sculpts don't fit the aesthetic, even when I try to divorce my 8th ed mindset for them.

 

I really don't know what to suggest for them, all I know is that what they are now in the lore feels clumsy and doesn't work.

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19 minutes ago, scrubyandwells said:

Hi guys, just launched an AoS-centric podcast. First episode has a big segment building on this thread. Thanks to everyone who has shared ideas so far. 

 

 

Added to the subscription and it's next in line for a listen

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On 8/31/2016 at 1:56 AM, Hedgehog39 said:

As a relative newcomer, I'd love to see a "Guide to the Realms" or somesuch with an overview of what landscapes are like in each of the realms as well as how they're navigated when not using a realmgate. Perhaps expand on the Time of War rules for each realm and provide modelling tips for how to make your army look like it came from there.

The Free People. Enough about the stormbros, I want to see the heroic mortals who have to stand up to the ravages of Chaos without snazzy armor and lightning hammers: (non chaos)barbarian tribes, ranger clans, small holdouts of human civilization that don't wear hose into battle.

We may possibly see that in the season of war fluff. I don't think we will see proper info on the small humans until the AOS role play books since it was the whfb roleplay books that gave detailed information on what normal people are doing. In all the campaign books for warhammer normal people just exist to be thrown into the meat grinder to show how heroic or bad a said person is. 

I personally do also wish for the same some of the black library novels have gone into this but I want to see more. Still this will take time. 

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5 hours ago, scrubyandwells said:

Hi guys, just launched an AoS-centric podcast. First episode has a big segment building on this thread. Thanks to everyone who has shared ideas so far. 

 

 

I can't get the rss feed to work from the website linked on itunes sadly

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  • 2 weeks later...

@scrubyandwellsI agreed with everything you talked about in your podcast discussion - particularly with there being so much room for growth, and the website needing updating / supplementing. I am a relatively new player, who is also trying to recruit some other people / ex players to look into the game. For me, the information just isn’t there, and the flow of information that is there is not helpful at all for new players. I was trying to get my fiance interested, my goal was just for her to see if there was an army that she likes the vibe of and wouldn’t mind painting (she’s enjoyed helping me occasionally), but the website is terrible unless you know what you already want. There is no way to say "have a look on the website and see if there is anything you like", it's just not built for that. They should look at the websites for most video games to get an idea of the level they should be on. Anyone who has been to the website of any game these days has seen these kind of websites (though they aren't always fantastic), black backgrounds and nice visuals.

I think firstly it should be clear to people what the hell Warhammer is - Warhammer is a tabletop wargame where you get to choose, build, and paint your own army so that you can take part in narrative battles against other players. Then, it should be clear that there are two major game systems (RIP LotR/the Hobbit). GW clearly understands this, if you have ever heard a manager give the briefing to a new player they do exactly this, but the website doesn't reflect that at all.

Once you've clicked on AoS, it should take you to some kind of "Find your Allegiance" section on the website, which would be an interactive flash kind of webpage. First you would start off with "The Grand Alliances". Side by side there would be the four alliances, with pictures (probably in the new flash art style) with imagery of some of the leaders/troops to show you what kind of smaller factions exist in each one. It should be pretty easy. Underneath each one would be a few sentences on what makes that grand alliance special and maybe what their goals are. "The Chaos alliance is made up of daemons and mortals worshipping the Chaos gods, who fight together to..."

Clicking on each one would bring you to a similar page, something like “Find your recruits”, but with the smaller factions instead, and a brief description of who they are, their history, their strengths/weaknesses or just their play styles, what they want, etc. E.g. The Sylvaneth are spirits of the forest, fighting beside their goddess Alarielle the Everqueen to..." I would think that you would put the fleshed out factions first so that people would see something like Sylvaneth and the Fyreslayers before clicking on something like the Shadowblades for instance. I think GW has made this much harder but subdividing things so much, but if people had the feeling that they were looking through the smaller factions to find recruits for their bigger army maybe they wouldn't feel as weird about it.

Clicking in on that would obviously take you to that faction, where they could give you a few paragraphs of information running down one side, and you would be hit with all the pictures of the models now for the first time, even if it was essentially just the catalogue for that faction as is. It would probably be useful to have a sentence at the end for armies like Sylvaneth (and all armies moving forward) saying "An army composed entirely of Sylvaneth warriors..." and then quickly sum up the allegiance abilities - or even just "has access to unique abilities and spells". So that people understand that there are benefits to going specific.

I feel like this would really help people find armies that interest them. It's stupidly hard for someone who has seen enough about the game to think it might be cool (but not enough to know how everything is divided) to figure out what army they might collect. You would think would be a massive priority for GW as that would lead to them getting excited and probably quite quickly to a sale. They can’t just rely on people telling their siblings about what they can collect and people like me coming back into the hobby with some experience. If they are hoping that this job can be done entirely by the managers I don’t agree, and in my experience even good store staff haven’t been particularly helpful in deciding on an army. It falls back on the "find what models you like", but the stores aren't that good for that because they have such a small percentage of the stock, normally focusing on whats new and often being sold out of that anyways. It’s only after choosing your army that they can do their sales thing / help you buy stuff to build your army. For me, I bought the Sylvaneth battletome just to see if I liked them, because there was no other way. The warscrolls are free on the website which is awesome, but you don't learn enough from those IMO to decide on your army. In the other direction from me, one of my friends bought a bunch of skaven and enjoyed them for a little while, only to later buy the Chaos book and realise that he much preferred other factions, which led him to lose motivation because he felt like he had to spend a bunch more money now to really enjoy the game like he would want to.

The other thing I'd love is to be able to buy the 40K style data cards for the new allegiance stuff. I'm sure they will do it eventually, but I'd love to not have to make my own cards with the spells / items / traits that you can now pick for your heroes. 

Sorry for the long post!

 

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On 17/09/2016 at 11:50 PM, MidasKiss said:

Then, it should be clear that there are two major game systems (RIP LotR/the Hobbit)

Not sure I agree that's any more.  The Hobbit is coming back shortly (big investment on that) although it won't be a main runner game in fairness - I'd say 30k was as large as AoS and 40k, just driven from Forge World.

I get where you're coming from with regards to the GW website though, thing to remember is the website was a huge investment under the old CEO (I mean huge here, we're talking the 7-figure mark).  The old CEO's focus was growing GW as a business, thus the website got created as an online store with a blog attached so was never fit for purpose on selling the "hobby" - that's what the physical stores were meant to be for and White Dwarf/Visions.

What I would say is that GW is starting to enter new grounds so we may see some improvements on introducing the hobby to new customers.

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25 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Not sure I agree that's any more.  The Hobbit is coming back shortly (big investment on that) although it won't be a main runner game in fairness - I'd say 30k was as large as AoS and 40k, just driven from Forge World.

I get where you're coming from with regards to the GW website though, thing to remember is the website was a huge investment under the old CEO (I mean huge here, we're talking the 7-figure mark).  The old CEO's focus was growing GW as a business, thus the website got created as an online store with a blog attached so was never fit for purpose on selling the "hobby" - that's what the physical stores were meant to be for and White Dwarf/Visions.

What I would say is that GW is starting to enter new grounds so we may see some improvements on introducing the hobby to new customers.

That's interesting. What's the news on the hobbit? In Australia none of the stores seem to stock it, apart from the biggest store in Sydney which has one box in a corner. I always forget about 30k though, so my mistake but it also feeds back into my point about things not being visible/clear.

I'm not webdesigner, but even if they made a website on squarespace for all the stuff I mentioned, and just linked it back to the webstore that's set up it would be better than now and not cost much money at all. If they sent out the artwork anyone could put together a half decent website in a few days. If they want to do it themselves I understand, but I don't know how hard that is.

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Just now, MidasKiss said:

That's interesting. What's the news on the hobbit? In Australia none of the stores seem to stock it, apart from the biggest store in Sydney which has one box in a corner. I always forget about 30k though, so my mistake but it also feeds back into my point about things not being visible/clear.

I'm not webdesigner, but even if they made a website on squarespace for all the stuff I mentioned, and just linked it back to the webstore that's set up it would be better than now and not cost much money at all. If they sent out the artwork anyone could put together a half decent website in a few days. If they want to do it themselves I understand, but I don't know how hard that is.

There's a team working on sorting out the hobbit, led by Adam Troke.  As I understand it (speaking to the guys at one of the Open Days I went to), they're creating a new source book (There and Back Again) with lots and lots of scenarios to recreate parts of the film/book with supporting miniatures, new plastic scenery which is getting towards completion.  It's being moved into the new Specialist Games set up which is one of the reasons we've not heard masses from it - but I expect that to change (Bloodbowl & Adeptus Titanicus should be out before the end of the year).  The new miniatures look amazing - Keith Robertson has moved over to that team full time (Dain and warpig are brilliant).

I've a feeling we may see more microsites come in time.  The Season of War website GW created was brilliant (both technically and design) and was the first time they really have created anything like this.  I can see something being produced to cover each of the game systems in time.  No idea when though, if it's anything like where I work (as a web dev) I've work load waiting for at least the next year and we only contract items out when we don't have the in-house knowledge :P 

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On 9/17/2016 at 5:50 PM, MidasKiss said:

@scrubyandwellsI agreed with everything you talked about in your podcast discussion - particularly with there being so much room for growth, and the website needing updating / supplementing. I am a relatively new player, who is also trying to recruit some other people / ex players to look into the game. For me, the information just isn’t there, and the flow of information that is there is not helpful at all for new players. I was trying to get my fiance interested, my goal was just for her to see if there was an army that she likes the vibe of and wouldn’t mind painting (she’s enjoyed helping me occasionally), but the website is terrible unless you know what you already want. There is no way to say "have a look on the website and see if there is anything you like", it's just not built for that. They should look at the websites for most video games to get an idea of the level they should be on. Anyone who has been to the website of any game these days has seen these kind of websites (though they aren't always fantastic), black backgrounds and nice visuals.

Thanks man for the outstanding post. I've added it to the running list and will follow up on its details with you a little down the road.

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Here's some wish-list ideas received recently:

1 - Keep supporting narrative play, through example and more campaign books. Our group has always played narrative, even in 8th, but it takes more work to read, understand, setup and play this type of game knowing that the game might not be "fair" or "equal." I think the campaign book battle plans are underrated and many of my games have come down to the last turn to decide the winner. This is a perfect job for Warhammer TV -- educate and inspire.

2 - More scenery. The game needs it and if people could get their hands on GW pieces then they would get a better experience. I know they produce a range at the moment, but they're limited to a few ruins and a massive castle. More smaller sets are needed, which could have cool warscrolls and even come from the stories of the world itself, e.g., ice lake sections from Ghyran, rivers of metal from Aqshy… Maybe even look at the "battlefield" in a box-style presentation. Then they could do box sets to fill a table or just an army with starting terrain, e.g., the Icewind Assault set with 5 pieces of terrain for just under 200 pounds would sell, I’m sure.

3 - I love the fact they have stood up for the old kits, love the fact that legacy is no longer a thing. So along those lines it would be next level to give them a battletome too. Either a shorter version with just the new spells and artefacts or even more exciting would be to take the work of Tyler Mengel and endorse that into print/pdf with the GW stamp. The fluff-mentioned Crimson Kings might already be in the pipeline so maybe this isn’t something they would even need to do.

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Some more ideas received:

1) Organized Matched Play Events/Leagues:
I would like to see Games Workshop take a page out of Wizard of the Coast’s playbook and run matched play tournaments worldwide. With the recent announcement of ITC rankings for AOS from Frontline Gaming, I could see the hyper competitive and sometimes toxic environment associated with 40k tournaments/rankings finding their way into our AoS community.  While we as an AoS community are ultimately responsible for what we deem as acceptable behavior, if Games Workshop were to put out an official way to run and score tournaments it could help curb some of this behavior. If the event pack included a code of conduct and rewarded painted armies and emphasized favorite opponent votes it could go a long way towards curbing this attitude.  

Another idea would be to put out league packs with some rewards for playing games of AoS or painting models (possibly league exclusive figures / cards / tokens / objective markers / etc.). For example, if over a 2 month period you are able to play 1 Narrative game, 1 Matched Play game, and 2 games of your choice in combination with painting 1 unit you could earn an exclusive model. I think the summer campaign was a great idea and helped bring players into stores to play AoS, which is good for retailers and good for Games Workshop.  Continuing this type of play could help maintain a strong interest in the game moving forward.  

2) Expanded Start Collecting Line:
 Each release needs to have a starter box to help players bulk out a force quickly. While a good deal of armies now have access to a starter box, many of those still had to wait. There is also a glaring omission from the line in Fyreslayers. I wonder how much more represented Fyreslayers would be if the army was a bit more accessible.

3) Expanding the AoS IP:
 Expand the AoS IP into other formats (mobile gaming, role playing games, console games, board games). Silver Tower is a great start, but keep the ball hot while the iron is rolling!

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Paul Conti:

My #1 is an organized play system like Magic has. Official rules setting body like the DCI. Etc. Online rating system. "Official" way to play, official rulings, codified rules. Official tournament formats.

Alexander Nygård:

I'd love to see GW continue and expand their community outreach. The Warlords stream is the most modern thing they've ever done, and it was great. Knocked it straight out of the park. More of that, including coverage of fan-events (like SCGT). Preferably open a Twitter account. Prize/community support increases for LGS and gaming clubs. Continue to work out new ways to reach their "silent audience". The guys who just check online/the LGS for new stuff, buy it and go home. Get this group to further engage in their local and the global community.

For AoS specifically:

1. A tide of Narrative events. I'd love for them to become the norm. Where are our doubles? Why aren't there more campaign weekends? Where's the organized Open Play? I hope the GHB has allowed for these events to grow. The competitive scene survived, even managed to catch a lot of new players as AoS got along. I hope to see more of the open spirit of AoS being organized into awesome events.

2. Equilibrium of factions. Now that the newer factions have their own various traits and artifacts, a lot feel a little left behind. Low hanging fruit, but some sort of book or document to update all factions (or at least all the ones with battletomes) would be appreciated.

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Jeff Egan:

I can't think of much to add, since GW has really checked off my highest priority stuff during the past year. The only item I would recommend is for them to return to writing "'Eavy Metal" painting articles and perhaps asking them to get Jervis (or whomever) to do a game theory column, one in which he would offer insight into the reasoning behind some aspect of rule writing/the game.
 

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From @ObiJon02:

Big picture:

GW’s content and product are great — maybe the best in the world. Where they need to continue to funnel even more effort is into people.

So that’s my one wishlist item for this next year of AoS: focus on people.

“People" is a big umbrella, but here’s how I’d start to break that into smaller, manageable, and achievable chunks:

Build the cast of characters: More Community Highlights, Social Media Outreach; Promote your Catalysts from the Community

Every great story has a compelling cast of characters that you can follow, identify with, root for or rail against.  Look at how everything from Reality TV shows like Survivor and American Ninja Warrior to serial dramas like Game of Thrones are put together: the narrative is driven by characters, their interaction, their conflicts, their triumphs, their defeats.  

As you mentioned on the S&W show, this is such an incredibly unique community who have rallied around AoS.  Simply put, they are the biggest, relatively untapped resource that GW has at its disposal.  Look at the time and energy that so many members of the community put into this hobby: from the very well-known folks like Dan Heelan, Wayne Kemp, Russ Veal, Ben Curry, etc., who spend hours producing podcasts and organizing the independent tournament scene in the UK, to Eric 'StoneMonkGamer' of 'Mortal Realms' and Dave Witek of 'Garagehammer’ fame here in the US, to hobby heroes like Tyler Mengel and his Endless Desserts project, to folks of all degrees of notoriety on Twitter, Facebook, TGA, etc. GW needs to make even more of an effort to promote and feature these folks, and literally thousands of others: give them a voice, give them a face (…more on this in a second).

No question we’ve seen some great strides here both on the large-scale projects, by including Dan, Wayne, Russ, and Ben in on the General’s Handbook, and smaller scale with GW’s Facebook page pulling from artists’ work they admire on Twitter and FB, but this is really just the beginning. I mentioned giving people a voice and a face, and in some respects they need to do this quite literally! If you thumb through White Dwarf or Visions, many, many times you’ll see a byline or attribution to folks like Amy Snuggs or Ben Johnson for their amazingly-painted miniatures, but they’re never pictured alongside the amazing work they’ve produced and volunteered for GW to use in their magazines.  

This seems like such an obvious miss — if we’re really thinking about 10x’ing Warhammer, you need to get newcomers over the stigma of ‘playing with toy soldiers’.  Show the faces of the people who do ‘play with toy soldiers’ and how diverse a group it really is! White Dwarf and the newly rethought Warhammer TV are great avenues to do exactly this — make it a regular feature to interview and promote a range of hobby and tourney heroes from the community.

Huge kudos to GW for pushing more towards Warhammer TV, and building celebrity this way from their own team as well. Duncan! Need I say more? The Warhammer TV coverage at the Warlords was such an incredible win across the board: the community loved it, and to me, it really showed the potential of where this could go. Duncan’s painting videos are amazing, but Warhammer TV could evolve into so much more — Rob and Duncan’s player interviews really capture this idea of promoting members of the community directly. It needs to become more than a one-time thing.

What’s your origin story?: Recognize the history, GW Lore, and focus on the people who were there

Every great company has an origin story. Think of Steve Jobs and Woz founding Apple Computer in Steve’s garage (not far from me actually!). In looking through some of the investor docs on the GW site, the company has a lot to pull from — there’s such a rich history. They need to take the time to craft the narrative about where they came from, and how their origin shaped the values and direction that the company has taken, and looks to take in the future.

I’d love to know more about the ‘startup’ years of GW, and what the landscape of tabletop minis was at the beginning. How did they become the ‘giant’ they are today in the miniatures arena? What are the biggest struggles that the company has been through and how did they weather them? What were the biggest missteps, and how did they course correct? Creating this kind of lore and narrative about the company itself seems like another obvious thing to draw on.

Similarly, for me personally coming to the hobby in the early 90’s around the age of 10-12, I remember riding my bike to the local comic book store to pick up White Dwarf along with my brothers. The first thing I would do is flip through the pages looking for the ‘Eavy Metal section, and in particular search for Mike McVey’s work. He was such a huge influence at the time. I came across an amazing interview that Mike posted to his twitter account recently, recalling some of the early days of his career at GW. They should absolutely be claiming folks like Mike McVey, Jes Goodwin, etc., and reference their broader successes to trace how far reaching GW's influence has grown from such humble beginnings. No doubt they’re looking this way with recognizing the legacy of John Blanche in WD, with Blachitsu, but there are so many more folks who were and are still involved.

Related — @Bishmeister1 runs one of my favorite recurring features on Twitter: #warhammerflashbackfriday.  You may have seen these posts already, but he’s scanned old early 90’s White Dwarfs, like this:

Post script - It doesn’t need to stop with the old masters though, back to “Building the Cast of Characters”, I would love to see the current crop of ‘Eavy Metal, Army Painters, and Model Designers get a little more name recognition for their work.  Same goes for the Black Library authors. I think Kenny Lull on Combat Phase Podcast may do more for the BL authors even than GW! Get Duncan or Rob to interview Josh Reynolds, or show us behind the scenes of making the incredible-sounding Realmgate Wars audiodramas.

Broader outreach geographically: US Events a la Warlords, traveling WHW show

I think the steps taken to promote the Warlords event at WHW were amazing, and showed what an appetite there is for live streaming these events. I would love to see something similar done here in the US. Given that GW is running the AOS tournament at the Las Vegas Open in coordination with Frontline Gaming, maybe we could see a similar setup. But there’s so much more territory to cover in the US, it really feels like some sort of traveling event or series of events in different parts of the country would be a better fit.

Along those lines, what would a visiting, traveling show from Warhammer World look like in the US? How could GW send some of the incredible dioramas or commission new dioramas just for the show that would be more appropriate to pack and send off for a pop-up installation around the country? I’m thinking here of some of the success that Disney has had with similar shows of either Star Wars/Lucasfilm or Pixar artwork in major museums like the MOMA in New York or the DeYoung in San Francisco. Talk about outreach to a different crowd! I’d love to see GW try something like this.

And the US isn’t the only major market that could use more attention — the Australian scene is definitely budding as well, with the guys at Heralds of War podcast reporting in on the local growth that they’ve seen. China and Japan also seem to be particularly underserved or under-represented in the general presence/chatter on Facebook and Twitter with regards to GW, AoS, etc.

Next gen Warhammer outreach: 

I think David Griffin and you covered this beautifully on the first episode of S&W, but I wanted to make sure you included it on the list. School clubs or some other kind of young leagues/tournaments are critical to creating the next generation of the hobby. Even in my response to you, and thinking back about so many people I’ve heard interviews on podcasts, a large portion were exposed to the hobby initially around 10-15, and came back to it many years later. We need to reach and provide opportunities for the next generation of Warhammer gamers, hobbyists, and creatives.

Mainstreaming - San Diego comic con, celebrity gamers

Final point, again like you mentioned, comics have found a way to become mainstream, and this has happened in a generation. Look at the rise in popularity of events like San Diego Comic Con, which has now become a highlight not only for geek culture, but for massively mainstream tentpole film rollouts from the major studios. How can GW tap into this? Maybe it’s as simple as getting into Comic Con or relying on other mainstream figures — celebrity Warhammer players — again to take away the stigma of "this is a fringe thing" to this is something that XYZ actor/musician/writer/et al. does.

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On 9/27/2016 at 9:58 PM, scrubyandwells said:

*snip*

Post script - It doesn’t need to stop with the old masters though, back to “Building the Cast of Characters”, I would love to see the current crop of ‘Eavy Metal, Army Painters, and Model Designers get a little more name recognition for their work.  Same goes for the Black Library authors. I think Kenny Lull on Combat Phase Podcast may do more for the BL authors even than GW! Get Duncan or Rob to interview Josh Reynolds, or show us behind the scenes of making the incredible-sounding Realmgate Wars audiodramas.

 

 

Those authors...I gotta catch 'em all! :) 

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