New Aelves

[shinros]

54 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

TK and Brets never sold well even when they got new models or in the case of Brets when they were in the starter set. Both were given plenty of chance in terms of plastic model releases and rules throughout their life. Just look at those great big Sphinxes the TK got they were big expansive to produce kits.  Judging them on the last few years of WFB doesn’t paint the correct picture that’s the result not the cause.  Given GWs lead times and how they were dealt with in the Endtimes its very likely the descison to remove them was made when the End Times was being written.  In both cases the driving concept was destroyed.  The whole driver behind AoS was basically ‘it’s time to stop flogging the dead horse time for something new’.

Still it’s a done deal time for some AoS Aleves I’ve missed the taste of Aelf Flesh 

 

If people read end times again you would realise that TK were killed off in the first end times book lol. The end of it has nagash literally destroying all their lands to prove a point. 

[Kramer]

46 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

Morahti will be Order-alligned, because as stated in the Age of Sigmar main book, she joined Sigmar's pantheon in the Age of Myth

Although I agree with you that I expect her as order, this is a poor reason. 1. It's easiest thing of any new faction is writing it into the fluff. 2. Gork was a part of the panthaon of gods at one point, right? Orks didn't end up being order. 

Agree with most of the rest of your points though. Just wanted to hear if you agree with this. 

[Kramer]

2 minutes ago, shinros said:

If people read end times again you would realise that TK were killed off in the first end times book lol. The end of it has nagash literally destroying all their lands to prove a point. 

But didn't the big guy of TK get a feature in the last book? Memory is a little hazy but I seem to remember him being resurected by daemon gods just to ****** with Nagash?

[shinros]

2 minutes ago, Kramer said:

But didn't the big guy of TK get a feature in the last book? Memory is a little hazy but I seem to remember him being resurected by daemon gods just to ****** with Nagash?

Settra got like one scene before running off at the end. Most of the undead stuff was centred on VC I mean it's kinda telling when Arkhan at the very start of end times hooks up with mannfred necromancers, zombies and all(he should of been in the VC book IMO most people into the lore agree). The very battle with the TK ends with their complete destruction and dominion by nagash.  I just re-read end times TK characters barely get a mention after that war. 

[Aginor]

Ok I admit I have no real clue about the old lore and Dark Aelves in general, but what I kinda expect now, just watching what we have model and army wise is this:

There will be a Battletome for the Dark Elves faction, Morathi unites them, merging the models of the following factions together:
- Daughters of Khaine
- Scourge Privateers
- Darkling Covens
- Order Serpentis
- Shadowblades

.....and a few hero models like Morathi and 1-2 others maybe.

They stay Order because...well, they don't really fit anything else do they? Also I am 100% sure that GW will not kill their Anvilgard box which is still relatively new.
Since it requires only one book and 2-3 models the production cost isn't _that_ high, and it will most likely boost the sales of all the Dark Aelf factions considerably.

I think it would be a good idea to declutter the Order Grand Alliance a bit so next up is perhaps putting all the "High Elves" together into one faction as well. Right now the Aelves are a mess of small factions that are hardly playable.

IMO it would make sense.

EDIT: Also from a new player's perspective:
AoS is supposed to be fun and easy to start and you can do the more complex stuff later. Now imagine walking into a GW store without any knowledge, looking at some boxes and then saying: "Dark Elves look awesome! I think I want to start a Dark Aelf army!" but then you face the choice between half a dozen factions and have no clue how the heck they will all fit together and half of them are so small they don't even make sense as armies..... ....so you just pick Stormcast, Seraphon, Ironjawz, Bonesplitterz or some Chaos Demons because at least those are real armies.
Fun fact: That's one of the reasons why I don't play Elves although I like some of their units a lot. When I chose my AoS army (with no previous Warhammer experience at all) I absoulutely didn't get what the F*** was going on with those Elves.

[Ollie Grimwood]

33 minutes ago, Kramer said:

But didn't the big guy of TK get a feature in the last book? Memory is a little hazy but I seem to remember him being resurected by daemon gods just to ****** with Nagash?

Yeah Settra gets offered a deal with the Chaos Gods. But it’s just him. Do you remember Undead Chaos champions from back in the day?  I rather enjoyed the nod to that.  A cool cameo but I was a bit disappointed as I felt it was worth a little more. 

[Kaleb Daark]

28 minutes ago, Kramer said:

But didn't the big guy of TK get a feature in the last book? Memory is a little hazy but I seem to remember him being resurected by daemon gods just to ****** with Nagash?

 

34 minutes ago, shinros said:

If people read end times again you would realise that TK were killed off in the first end times book lol. The end of it has nagash literally destroying all their lands to prove a point. 

26 minutes ago, shinros said:

Settra got like one scene before running off at the end. Most of the undead stuff was centred on VC I mean it's kinda telling when Arkhan at the very start of end times hooks up with mannfred necromancers, zombies and all(he should of been in the VC book IMO most people into the lore agree). The very battle with the TK ends with their complete destruction and dominion by nagash.  I just re-read end times TK characters barely get a mention after that war. 

Nagash destroyed the land of the tomb kings and it's inhabitants in its entirety when he attained godhood  - Setra was his rival since the beginning.

 

End times end with Setra being brought back into being by the chaos gods, the four chattering laughing voices.

You have a story arc right there, which wasn't left open ended without a damn good reason.  Look to how many named characters were killed off outright in order to finally put them to rest.

From a model standpoint, they were fairly new and expensive to make the tooling for.  Now, it may be that TK's as were were not right at the time, but there may come a time in the story when they will come into maturity and get a makeover - the plastic models rather than the metals can be re-written into a new story and faction much like the flesh eater courts were originally part of vampire counts - and look at how much of a favor it did them.

 

Brets on the other hand had not had an update for over a decade, so there was no chance of them getting anything with what was a new evolution of the game waiting in the wings.

I've got my own views on the brets demise, but it's not for this thread.

 

[Kaleb Daark]

2 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Yeah Settra gets offered a deal with the Chaos Gods. But it’s just him. Do you remember Undead Chaos champions from back in the day?  I rather enjoyed the nod to that.  A cool cameo but I was a bit disappointed as I felt it was worth a little more. 

never say never, also he gives the chaos gods a great foothold in the undead realm in the future.

[Jamopower]

I don't honestly believe this release is nything  else besides the Morathi/Daughters of Khaine for a Sylvaneth type of force. If it were larger release, it would be very strange to tease us just the small portion of the whole faction. Just compare with the legions of Nagash stuff how differently it's rolled out.

That said,I do believe on the rumours about two aelven armies this spring, but the other one will have their own book.

This discussion by the way makes me really want to do an aelven army to AoS. Not shadow elves or the khaine stufd, but exiled elven mishmash that are the shadow of their former glory and protecting their relics of old, sort of Jewish diaspora theme. Mixture of the three elven faction kits, painted in washed tones with bright gold for the sacred relics carried on standards and on tvee heroes.

[Double Misfire]

12 minutes ago, Kramer said:

But didn't the big guy of TK get a feature in the last book? Memory is a little hazy but I seem to remember him being resurected by daemon gods just to ****** with Nagash?

 

11 minutes ago, shinros said:

Settra got like one scene before running off at the end. Most of the undead stuff was centred on VC I mean it's kinda telling when Arkhan at the very start of end times hooks up with mannfred necromancers, zombies and all(he should of been in the VC book IMO most people into the lore agree). The very battle with the TK ends with their complete destruction and dominion by nagash.  I just re-read end times TK characters barely get a mention after that war. 

He didn't even get a scene in the final End Times book, but in the tie in novel by Josh Reynolds, who'd taken it upon himself to fanservice up the fate of every conceivable Warhammer character he could find on wikipedia (anyone care about finding out what happened to Valnir the Reaper? Nope! me neither). Settra swearing revenge and what happened to Gilles/Bretonnia were a couple of pretty egregious loose ends/cliffhangers that appeared in The End Times - Nagash and were never followed up in the main series. I blame the editors. 

 

Re: all the Dark/Shadow Aelves as a part of Order stuff in this thread:

It's a totally understandable thing for people to raise an eyebrow at if you look at the composure of the grand alliances from launch. Death were both undead armies (then just the one undead army); Destruction were a pair of armies with pretty identical asthetics and MOs; and Chaos was Chaos (which has always really been a single, overwhelmingly huge army) plus Skaven; while Order were the summation of all six of WFB's "good guy" armies plus the garish looking new gold space marine things.

It's very easy to see the grand alliances four massive, super-inclusive "master armies", all of whom should have equal representation in the background and on the tabletop (I'm looking at you whiny Death-babies, you are truly the Chaos Space Marine players of AoS. Destruction players, you're great, keep being awesome!), I prefer to think of the grand alliances, and the keywords associated with them as more of a shorthand way of tagging and cataloguing a limitless amount of factions, some huge and some tiny. If I identified as an Order player, sure I wouldn't be able to conceivably argue that I hadn't received more goodies than any of the other grand alliances since AoS's launch, but as someone who during WFB primarily identified as a Dwarf/Empire player and now likes to think of myself a Free City player, I can't say that I've received any more new releases, rules or background representation than a Vampire Counts or mixed Death player beyond a far wider range of units I could ally into or combine between my armies if I chose to.

I'm not looking at the teased new aelf release and rubbing my hands together at all the new units I'll be able to add to my existing Order stuff any more than I would be if a new Chaos faction were being teased because they've got no thematic place in my Free City themed force and would break the Tempest's Eye allegiance I've themed my army around. They've got no more to do with my guys than Seraphon have got to do with Fyreslayers.

[DantePQ]

I'm also thinking about Lady Attia comment that it's something Big not only DoK refresh with 2-3 new kits. Maybe they will really release huge "BT:Shadowkin" wave. 

- DoK fresh (Morathi, another hero, 2 kits)

- Cthulu Elves (Malerion, monster, 2-3 kits) 

and some of the kits could be for both subfactions, as some of the older Aelven rumor engines doesn't fit DoK refresh as it could easuly be Morathi, dual unit Harpies kit (maybe with hero), dual unit Meduses kit (maybe KH alike - shooting version, CC version, spellcastin version?) so no "new" Elves per se and those rumor engines with Scroll and little shadowy dragon imply somekind of Elves. 

Also it could be quite easy to fold Scourage Privateers and Darkling Covens into it. 

[Tullbeard]

One thing I’ve been thinking about is the history of Morathi.

Morathi has always been the sorceress Queen more-so than a worshipper of Khaine (hence the bad blood between her and Hellebron). Her city of Ghrond in the world that was was where all the sorceresses came from.

It certainly looks like the Daughters of Khaine faction will be falling under Morathi and this looks great. But I can’t image that she will have suddenly lost her affinity with magic - she is the head of the sorceresses.

So, isn’t it possible that Darkling Covens get folded into this new faction as well? Lets recall the lore of the Darkling Covens which is that the foot soldiers are all mindless thralls of the sorceresses. It would make sense for these sorceresses to fall in line behind the old leader of their order.

[Bloodmaster]

This whole shadowkin/DoK  thing, especially in one army book, makes me wonder all the time. My prediction would have been, that the DoK as  a faction are dropped and renamed, getting a mixed line of a few old kits with a bigger amount of new models, somewhere between the treekin and skydwarves. But more important i don't see a combination with another fraction army book wise. 

[DantePQ]

Morathi always has been huge Khaine worshipper but it makes perfect sense to use Sorceresses in her amy , but I doubt in will include foot soldiers as it was rumored that her faction is all-female but I would love to use Sorceress on Black Dragon as I love this model. Also it will be needed to have some kind of hero level spellcaster (as Morathi sure will be one) so unless Mistweaver is part of that force (And I think she isn't) they need some kind of spellcaster and Sorceresses make perfect sense. 

@Bloodmaster I'd agree and refresh with new units released alongside older kits makes perfect sense and it's all speculation on my part based on information from Lady Attia (and she knows a lot and is 100% reliable) that's it's part of something "Big" not only refresh of DoK (even with faction name change) with 3-4  new kits thrown in

[Menkeroth]

It's unlikely DoK will merge with others and I really hope they won't. But getting new kits? maybe. With GW you never know.

[Jamopower]

If it's part of the Malign portents, it is definitively part of something big. Just that everything is not (dark) aelven related.

[zedatkinszed]

2 hours ago, Jamopower said:

I don't honestly believe this release is nything  else besides the Morathi/Daughters of Khaine for a Sylvaneth type of force. If it were larger release, it would be very strange to tease us just the small portion of the whole faction. 

3

Have to agree based on the evidence in the teaser. It's all about Morathi, Khaine and the DoK. Nothing else. And teh rune at the end is Khaine's rune from the old Dark Elf pantheon (google it). DoK also have gotten a ton of attention in White Dwarf (they're one of the four armies for a tale of 4 generals this year) and on the Warhammer Community site - it was not coincidental or accidental. Also they got the allies box. This has been set-up for a long time.

43 minutes ago, DantePQ said:

- DoK fresh (Morathi, another hero, 2 kits)

- Cthulu Elves (Malerion, monster, 2-3 kits) 

 

3

This seems very possible to me.  Equally, a rebox and battletome for DoK with 1 hero, 1 unit, and Morathi would be good enough for me. The DoK are a well-developed faction (as are the Darklings - could be that they are the second faction, not the shadowkin - that would be disappointing though).

Also if they do a Dark Aelf release they'll probably follow with a Light/High Aelven one. Also as regards Shadowkin/Cluthu Aleves, there are 2 shadow kin Aelfs already out there: Tenebrael shard and Mistweaver from Silver Tower. They will get merged into the Shadowkin release BUT I'd be surprised if/when GW launch Shadowkin that they don't follow it with Light/High Aelves soon after.

41 minutes ago, Tullbeard said:

So, isn’t it possible that Darkling Covens get folded into this new faction as well? Lets recall the lore of the Darkling Covens which is that the foot soldiers are all mindless thralls of the sorceresses. It would make sense for these sorceresses to fall in line behind the old leader of their order.

1

Unlikely - look at GH17 - they got their own sub-faction rules. Most likely they'll get a rebox at some point. There's absolutely no reason to "fold" anyone in from here. DoK are a lightly armoured H2H sub-faction in the main. The Covens are a mix of magic and heavy infantry. The 2 flavours don't mix. And neither do the Privateers and their realm reaving flavour. GW seems to be giving each sub-faction (i.e Sylvaneth & KO & Fyreslayers) a very distinct identity (which is a good thing) I just don't see them bringing the old Dark Elves back and despite being a long time DE player I think that's the best choice.

[Kyriakin]

Yea, I feel the former Dark Elf factions have three very strong and distinct identities as hags, pirates and ninja-assassins.

Where it gets a bit vague is Order Serpentis vs. Darkling Covens, but the latter is viable on the table at least.

High elves, on the other hand, feel like they should be as one. Whether they are Phoenix Temple, Elderich Council or the ultra thrown-together Swifthawk Agents, they all just look and feel like High Elves to me.

The closest thing to an exception may be the Lion Rangers, as they are slightly more feral and have a potential USP in the form of the white lion themselves.

In fact, white lion cavalry and a giant white lion-themed Manticore could be freaking awesome.

[DantePQ]

Also what's worth mentioning is that "HE" factions didn't get anything in GH2017 and their model range is still fantastic as far as newer kits are concerned.

[Menkeroth]

1 hour ago, zedatkinszed said:

Unlikely - look at GH17 - they got their own sub-faction rules. Most likely they'll get a rebox at some point. There's absolutely no reason to "fold" anyone in from here. DoK are a lightly armoured H2H sub-faction in the main. The Covens are a mix of magic and heavy infantry. The 2 flavours don't mix. And neither do the Privateers and their realm reaving flavour. GW seems to be giving each sub-faction (i.e Sylvaneth & KO & Fyreslayers) a very distinct identity (which is a good thing) I just don't see them bringing the old Dark Elves back and despite being a long time DE player I think that's the best choice.

Seconding on that. They seemed quite weird together back in the day and would be much more so today, so I hope GW expands them all. The only exception is to merge Order Draconis with Order Serpentis, that could be interesting enough.

46 minutes ago, Kyriakin said:

High elves, on the other hand, feel like they should be as one.

They should not. Former high elves are quite different all, and though they require some organization they are not one and never will be, I hope. They are all quite distinct.

[Twitch of Izalith]

I think that they will keep the factions small and distinct because small now means opportunities to expand with new models later.

Even SCE don't have as many units as some 8th edition old world armies.

If they put all the old dark elf units in one faction they have nowhere to go other than a few new characters. Shadowblades really need to go in with someone else for now though!

 

[Jamopower]

 Shadowblades would be quite safe bet to go with the rumoure shadow elves.

 

Concerning high elves, they always have had a very distinctive separation for the "aspect warriors" some are from Chrace, some from Ellyria, some from Hoeth etc. It just never went past those units. I believe there would be equally room for very intereating subfactions, but because of the small amount of units, they would need a lot more fleshing out. The "common core" levy would work, but is too bland for AoS to be honest.

[Double Misfire]

6 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

I think that they will keep the factions small and distinct because small now means opportunities to expand with new models later.

Battletome: Ironweld Arsenal for 2040 please. 

[Menkeroth]

2 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

The "common core" levy would work, but is too bland for AoS to be honest.

exactly, that's why it will never work. They are all quite different from now on.

9 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

Shadowblades really need to go in with someone else for now though!

One-two heroes and units and they are set to go. I think they will be expanded too..., or left as one of the auxiliary factions, like Eldritch Council or Ironweld Arsenal, why not.

3 minutes ago, Double Misfire said:

Battletome: Ironweld Arsenal for 2040 please. 

agree!

[Tiger]

8 hours ago, stratigo said:

it’s okay to dig the bad guy. It gets worrisome when one denies his villainy entirely

Malekith was narcissist with too much dark mojo. I am amazed how easily are people willing to go with an idea that Malekith wasn't responsible for the actions that he did.

I hope that authors are willing to change the personalities of those who have survived the End Times to some degree. Should they speak of the world that was, I hope the tone is set as if the speaker is speaking of a dream and without any strong attachments to it. Otherwise AoS is going to turn into rather messy teen drama as more actors are introduced into the play.