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new death battletome announced!


tea_wild_owl

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It's true that Death players have  had very little since May 2016 (I think? When the FEC Battletome released) but they have had way more than Aelf and Slaanesh players. I think a couple more months will be survivable. The storyline is MP Death-centric , and the GW social media team is frequently saying  that "this year is going to a huge one for Death and we're just getting started".

Any low moral issues at this point are more to do with raised expectations caused by too much reading between the lines, than anything GW have or haven't said, IMHO.

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Yeah, it has to do with high expectations but to be fair until now high expectations meant expecting something. While it's true that other factions have been neglected too, you have to consider that Death is not a faction. It's an entire allegiance. You cannot look at the state of GA:Death and deem it acceptable that it has taken them so long to start doing something. Old ugly models, outdated rules, factions without even the possibility of forming a proper army (I'm looking at you Deathmages, without your battleline!), ... I could go on and on, but most people have already illustrated what's wrong with Death many times and I'm not going to repeat myself further.

As I said I'll be happy with any new additions, but for now I jumped ship when Nurgle came out as to not frustrate myself too much while waiting.

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1 hour ago, WarbossKurgan said:

Um.... isn't the entire Malign Portents build up is Death's "snazzy trailer"? xD

You make a good point xD 

 

In regards to low morale I know for myself I'm excited but irritated because I'm an impatient sod and we don't yet have a release date ;) Though it has given me the much needed motivation to start painting my soulblight force. I think there's a lot of worry with how LoN is going to address issues for Death as a faction since we know very little about it currently. I wouldn't say we have hugely low morale though, for every person with worries there seem to be two positively vibrating with excitement.

 

I'm sure we might start seeing more hype when the time gets close or if we start to get more news about what's going on with things this year. Looking forward to seeing what our eventual new death models are though. Tbh I wouldn't mind seeing some updates of our current kits, like plastic bats, vampire lords and a new black coach.  

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41 minutes ago, smucreo said:

you have to consider that Death is not a faction. It's an entire allegiance.

I get that. But it is currently a Grand Alliance made entirely from one old WHFB army book: Vampire Counts.

Order is made up of half a dozen army book forces (Empire, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Dwarfs, Lizardmen) and a new faction (Stormcast). So you can see why it feels like they get more attention. There may be 6 or 7 times as many people with Order armies than Death armies....

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3 minutes ago, WarbossKurgan said:

I get that. But it is currently a Grand Alliance made entirely from one old WHFB army book: Vampire Counts.

Order is made up of half a dozen army book forces (Empire, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Dwarfs, Lizardmen) and a new faction (Stormcast). So you can see why it feels like they get more attention. There may be 6 times as many people with Order armies than Death armies....

And that's a terrible situation if they do  more campaigns like "season of war" during the summer... Which was one giant popularity contest world wide on a GA by GA basis. The results were incredibly predictable AND it was all made worse by giving the winning faction even more goodies/warscrolls than the losers in the next campaign book.  And this doesn't just affect death, it's a kick in the teeth for destruction just as well. 

Snowball effect at it's worst is what you end up with. 

Mind you, that shouldn't be a reason to just abandon an entire old WHFB faction... I'm not saying Aelves should be left to rot. 

But actually consolidating the order factions like they did for chaos (and soon death) would help a ton, rather than having a ton of order armies with a smaller "micro-battletome" like KO, Sylvaneth,Fyreslayers and now these shadow aelves.  The already lobsided distribution of order heavy armies is just being made worse with these smaller subfactions.  Order really should get a few LoN/Maggotkin/BoK/DoT style books. 

 

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4 hours ago, WarbossKurgan said:

Um.... isn't the entire Malign Portents build up is Death's "snazzy trailer"? xD

It is possible that Malign Portents will last all year, so I think we can expect a few more releases for other factions in that time. ;)

Forget "all the way through", we didn't even make it to the /release/ of MP before we're no longer front page news, let alone the main headline.

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So far only the story has been Death-centric. But we can say the same for Nurgle and to a lesser extent freeguild.

 

As for models on the facebook page they talk about how their is more death models that will show up. BUT it won't come out right away so I expect them if they indeed do come out before Malign Portents ends is either the middle or the end. Nagash's "Secret Weapon" if you will.

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I know it might be a bit out there but I've got a funny feeling that at some point this year we'll be seeing a new zombie model... finally.

As a zombie lover I'd be ecstatic if they did but on the flip side I'd have to start all over again with the horde.

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2 minutes ago, lare2 said:

I know it might be a bit out there but I've got a funny feeling that at some point this year we'll be seeing a new zombie model... finally.

As a zombie lover I'd be ecstatic if they did but on the flip side I'd have to start all over again with the horde.

That would be lovely. Hopefully we can get some better zombie rules in LoN ;) Make them be able to be more enticing than taking 40 skeles.

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3 minutes ago, Lightbox said:

That would be lovely. Hopefully we can get some better zombie rules in LoN ;) Make them be able to be more enticing than taking 40 skeles.

As much as I love skeles, running 60 zombies is just crazy fun. The issue is you have to use so many points to buff them into a killing machine. like to run them with a necromancer, wight king with standard, corpse cart, and Nagash. That's a lot of points to focus on zombies though.

Would love to see some deadwalkers loving with this release.

 

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That would be great, certainly more than I'm expecting.  My current expectations are that, in addition to LoN, we'll see maybe two more Death battletomes, one being nighthaunt and the other probably deathrattle, which between them might have a couple new hero releases maybe (fingers crossed for a skeleton wizard), but otherwise are new formations and allegiance rules layered over the same units and models we currently have.  Maybe with a few units that currently have equipment options getting separated into separate units entries to pad the books out some.

That's just my expectations, mind.  More than that would be lovely.

Back to zombies, while I'd like new models (might not actually buy any, I've already got a bunch of the old ones, and new models prices from GW are far too steep for me to purchase them in bulk horde unit form these days), I'm actually kind of fearing new rules.  Current zombies are actually pretty neat, particularly in how  they let us skirt the battle line requirements, but I half expect them to lose their mob up ability in particular.  Or maybe the rule will remain, but their batch size will just go from 10 to 20, making it no longer cost effective to fill battle line slots that way.

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7 minutes ago, Sception said:

I'm actually kind of fearing new rules.  Current zombies are actually pretty neat, particularly in how  they let us skirt the battle line requirements, but I half expect them to lose their mob up ability in particular.  Or maybe the rule will remain, but their batch size will just go from 10 to 20, making it no longer cost effective to fill battle line slots that way.

Hmmm... this never crossed my mind. Now I'm fearful they'd implement some kind of nerf to them - ha ha! God, if they did, I'd probably move over onto full blown skelly forces. I'm all about the hordes when it comes to death.

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Moving to full skelly forces is likely what every single part of GW would want to see.  The suits would prefer you to purchase the newer, more expensive skeleton models.  The sculptors would prefer everybody stop buying zombies altogether, because that's near about they only way they could justify making new zombie models to the suits.  That said, there is a bit of hope that we might see new zombies, if someone at GW was able to convince the suits that the lackluster current kit is causing them to lose sales to Mantic.  For most units, using mantic models instead of GW models is trading quality for cost, and GW's generally already being the higher priced, higher quality people in the market.  But in the case of zombies in particular, the mantic models are cheaper and better, at least in design, the materials are still kind of garbagy, but regardless that can't sit will with GW.

But then again, if that was going to push them to put out new zombies, I would have thought we'd see them, like, half a decade ago, or more.  The mantic zombies have been in the market for a long time.

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It's a single unit in a smallish faction in GW's B game system. Given that major models in popular 40K ranges are as old as the hills, I'm not surprised Zombies are as old as they are.

Tbf GW don't operate in the manner you describe. Sculptors don't decide what to make. The Design Studio starts at Concept Art and floats ideas around, this then goes to the Sculptors and bounces back-and-forth a bit until everyone's happy.

Then it goes over to Rules who look at the models and kits, while Background have been writing the fluff for it. Using both the model itself and the Background, they work out Rules that should fit it and fit within the range it's going into.

Finally it goes to 'Eavy Metal to be painted, then it's a stop by Marketing to ultimately package and sell it.

"The Suits" are a popular bogeyman in every operation, but the fact of the matter is that GW simply makes cool toy soldiers. That's what they do. Sometimes they pop out your preferred flavour of Cool Toy Soldiers, sometimes they spend three months slightly reinventing Space Marines. C'est la vie.

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4 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

It's a single unit in a smallish faction in GW's B game system. Given that major models in popular 40K ranges are as old as the hills, I'm not surprised Zombies are as old as they are.

Tbf GW don't operate in the manner you describe. Sculptors don't decide what to make. The Design Studio starts at Concept Art and floats ideas around, this then goes to the Sculptors and bounces back-and-forth a bit until everyone's happy.

Then it goes over to Rules who look at the models and kits, while Background have been writing the fluff for it. Using both the model itself and the Background, they work out Rules that should fit it and fit within the range it's going into.

Finally it goes to 'Eavy Metal to be painted, then it's a stop by Marketing to ultimately package and sell it.

"The Suits" are a popular bogeyman in every operation, but the fact of the matter is that GW simply makes cool toy soldiers. That's what they do. Sometimes they pop out your preferred flavour of Cool Toy Soldiers, sometimes they spend three months slightly reinventing Space Marines. C'est la vie.

From the perspective of a professional Product Manager, if that is indeed an accurate depiction of the way GW produces new products, it is mindbogglingly inefficient, disjointed and could be a significant driver of customer dissatisfaction.

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I'm loosely including concept artists and sculptors in the same bunch.  art (concept artists, sculptors) people, business people, paper (rules & fluff) people.  And maybe things are different now, but it certainly has been the case in the past that the business people could veto anything the art people came up with.  It was actually a big deal in the 3e revamp of the space marine line.  The art people wanted to do a new rhino to go with the new marines that had been approved.  Business said no, because the existing rhino sold well, and the marine revamp was already expensive.  Then the art people went back and asked if they could do a new predator, and the suits approved that, because the existing predator did not sell well, and after the investment was already made in the predator, they went back and said 'you know, we already have this new chassis, might as well release it as a new rhino too'.  Iirc, this was all in the design notes, like public record even.  It was wild how open and uncontrolled creator/community communication was back then.  Then again, that was before both Kirby and the player community went entirely off the deep end causing everything to close off.  Things are less opaque now than they were during that time, but still a lot more rigidly controlled than they were in the time before.

Anyway.

Even if we cut the suits out of it, I still doubt we'll be seeing much new in terms of death models.  Whether my understanding or yours is more accurate, we agree that the new model pipeline starts with ideas bounced back and forth between concept art and sculpting people, and there has been absolutely zero indication that any of them have any particular ideas for or interest in the undead at this time.  What little attention we've seen has been from the paper people, the rules & fluff writers, trying to do the best with what they have despite little to nothing coming down the production pipeline.  And I don't fault them what they've done - some of the novels have been good, the narrative buildup to Malign Portents, barring the most recent swerve, has been great.  I'm sure Legions of Nagash will at least be interesting, despite being less than convinced that it will seriously impact our competitive situation.  But there's only so much they can do when the model pipeline for the undead is bone dry and the sculpting people are still crazy for chaos, and just don't seem to have any ideas for the undead at all.

I mean, again, the shardspire skittles and knight of shrouds are great looking models, but is there a single actually novel design concept among them?  Can you point to any aesthetic aspect of those models whatsoever that feels actually new or distinctively Age of Sigmar-y, rather than like some leftover 8th edition undead models that, while again perfectly nice in their own right, GW just accidentally forgot to release way back in January 2012?

AGAIN, these are nice releases, I'll probably get both... eventually.  But these are not models that give me any sort of feeling that there's some significant new release wave or major conceptual juvenation* of the undead in this game waiting just around the corner.

..............

* can't be "re"juvenated if you were never juvinated in the first place.

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Another sign we aren't seeing new models for a while is the fact that there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of death rumour mill photos. Most of the ones in question appear to be dark aelves now. Of course you never really know. We will have to wait to see I guess!

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5 hours ago, lare2 said:

As much as I love skeles, running 60 zombies is just crazy fun. The issue is you have to use so many points to buff them into a killing machine. like to run them with a necromancer, wight king with standard, corpse cart, and Nagash. That's a lot of points to focus on zombies though.

Would love to see some deadwalkers loving with this release.

 

I do love my zombie hordes... Just don't wanna think about painting them. Don't wanna paint my 30 odd skeles either tbh.

 

I hear Manfred isn't bad with them but I'm mostly a soulblight player so unless LoN changes things it'll be hard to get all their required goodies in. I hope they don't get nerfed, we -really- don't need battleline nerfs, they're like our one pretty decent thing ;)

 

I'm looking forward to seeing if LoN gets me to toy about with more alleigances though. I'd love zombies and spirits to go with my vamps.

 

Still need to make some pirate bloodknights to go with my 2 wraith fleet vamps...

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As I said before I am not expecting any new death models I am not allowing myself to be setup for disappointment. Considering this aelf announcement as well is somewhat sealing the deal for me. GW are dodging around the issue about new death models and I bet when we see no new models and people complain they will point to the knight of shrouds or the shadespire kit. GW please prove me wrong I want to be wrong. 

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The thing I am annoyed at is the shadow queen trailer has no link to MP. Every video has the splash screen and this one does NOT. Also they said that the realm of light and shadow have nothing to do with the MP campaign. Why is everyone jumping to conclusions. We have seen a video, which isnt branded as MP and thats all it is. Going by GW release schedule we wont see angthing to do with that video for another 6 months. And then like 12 before models or leaks.

 

I mean hell how long did we "know" about MP before we saw anything concrete.

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On 1/23/2018 at 10:54 PM, Sception said:

Please read the thread, or at least like the first page or two.  Nothing's getting axed, apart from maybe some redundant keywords, & possibly some scroll consolidation maybe.  The current model line for death remains unchanged, apart from some things being repackaged on rounds.

The 'six allegiances' are the ones with allegiance rules in the book, they wont be only subfaction allegiances death has.  FEC for instance, will remain its own allegiance with its own allegiance rules in its own battletome, and those rules will stay current even though they wont be reprinted in this book, though the FEC unit scrolls will be.

As for which allegiance rules *are* in the book, that was in the origional announcement and discussed at length early in this thread.  Just look back.

I apologize. 

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I still think we could get a nice surprise from LoN and potentially some models to fill in gaps at some point.  I've yet to read anything to say we're not getting new models - just the book contains all of the existing warscrolls.  Yes that might be somewhat optimistic of me (and it's possible I've missed clarification), but I'd rather be like that than already condemning the new battletome before we've even seen a page of it.

The rumour mill has been sparse and getting sparser, largely constrained to "big" releases (new Aelves has been rumoured since AoS first came into being so it was a pretty safe bet).  We've had more releases sprung on us by GW over the past year than have been leaked by the rumour mill, in fact LoN wasn't rumoured and neither was the new Custodes Codex which is a testament to just how much influence GW actually has over the rumours coming out now.

GW Staff have said that Death players won't be disappointed* from Malign Portents, if there wasn't anything else in the pipeline I can't imagine they'd have said that, instead staying quiet.  However this is a narrative driven campaign that is going to last most of the year - we're not going to get all of the goodies up front.

* though reading some of these comments I thing some people would be disappointed whatever happens

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Hey, as long as we get LoN before the Aelf release I'll be a happy camper. All I really expect are some new allegiance abilities and some spells, and I'll be more than happy with that. Death, like Free Peoples is probably a hard nut to crack for GW. How do you make something unique so that you can protect the IP with Death? Zombies? Skeletons? Ghosts? Vampires? When something comes, I'm positive that it'll be big, but it might take a while. In the meantime LoN brings a breath of fresh air into playing with Death armies.

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