Humans of the realms

[CDM]

I've been toying with this idea for a while and always get quite excited thinking about it!

A human faction for each of the realms. 

I would like to see this be the way that GW goes forward with the 'regular' humans in the setting. My thoughts are that I just can't see any more order factions getting a revamp with additional units fleshing out the range. DoK were an exception as they have a very unique look and very recent plastics in comparison.

I would think that they would keep around all the old world factions and that could be done with a legions of nagash style battletome akin to how the agents of the imperium codex in 40k was a mixing together of lots of smaller factions all under one book. Battletome-free cities contains rules for great order cities and the miscellaneous order factions.

-Phoenix temple, lion rangers, oder draconis, eldritch council , swift hawk agents, order serpentis, Darkling Covens, scourge privateers, Shadowblades, dispossessed, ironweld arsenal, free peoples/guild, devoted, collegiate arcane could all be in there with ways of fielding them alone with their own allegiance abilities, traits etc, or feilded together as part of the free cities.

If they ever felt they wanted to expand they could do and just remove them for the free cities and have their own battletome.

What would human factions look like in the mortal realms was always a big talking point. I think they have been addressing this with the narrative they've built in firestorm etc and now malign portents. I would personally like to see what  an aqshy or ghur civilisation  looks like on the tabletop. I would stay away from just  being too elemental, although the new magic thing they're bringing looks like it could be great, I haven't played wfb in over 10 years but watch battle reports at times. The video I watched the other day had the end times magic phase and it looked awesome and very fun where it just stuck to one wind of magic in a thematic setting, that's what I would like I see from this future magic thing, each tied to the realm your fighting in and casting fluffy realm spells!

Anyway sorry to digress! 

On to the human factions (although if there realm specific I suppose you would see beasts & mounts,and aelves and duardin potentially)

GHUR-beastial and  barbaric that could fight for gorkamorka or sigmar! Large monsters, hunting packs rudimentary war machines.

CHAMON- heavily armoured and drilled, mages that could strengthen their kins armour weapons and skin as the battle rages on.

SHYISH -loads of great tidbits coming out from the malign portents stories of mortals fighting side by side with their ancestors, maybe sects seeking undeath in battle where they could change mid battle

CHAOS- darkoath could easily step in here with an expanded force

What does everthing else think though? Where would you like to see GW head with order and humans going forward? What would these factions look like on the tabletop and what sort of minis would you like to see?

Honestly sorry for the long post but I've never been so excited for a setting and miniatures before! So many possibilities in this setting.  

 

 

[Dragobeth]

I would really love new humans, I'm not a fan of the Empire style  so having another option could be nice, no matter the GA.

Of course some may argue that the Stormcast are the "new human army" but SC (I like them a lot, don't make me wrong, I have a lot of them) don't have the feeling of just humans fighting things that are a lot more powerfull than them and I love that feeling, just don't like the Empire glamour.

 

[stato]

My only concern with a human faction is that it might actually restrict how we view humans in the Realms.  With all the other factions they are quite specific or focused. The human population is so diverse in the narrative that i dont think it could be adequately covered by a battletome. They will no doubt create something and im sure it will be amazing, but competitive gaming will take any variety they build into it and after a year 'Humans' will be seen as XYZ city/force and the depth of possibility of humans in the realms will be kind of pushed to the back a little. 

[EMMachine]

I would like to see different styles for humans.

In case of Ghur they could be partly barbaric looking or like the old Middenheim Ulrik Cult or Kisley from WHFB.

For Ghyran, I made my own people (partly they look a little too much like Wanderers and haven't painted enough of them)

Instead of putting all old armies into 1 Battletome a real "City" Battletome or Expansion would be nice, with Battletraits, Command Traits, Artefacts (perhaps there own Command Abilities and Magic Lores) and unique Battleline Choises for the armies would be nice.

The Firestorm Campaign was a step in that direction, but it partly has the problem that the factions often have "Battleline if" Units and not many choices for real Battlelines in some cases (I know this is a matched play problem, but if GW want that such rules are used in Matched play they could do more. I mean it doen't help if one city allegiance could only use Liberators for example because they are the only battleline).

 

[Melcavuk]

Currently alot of the fluff indicates the subfactions we see for the old faction all reside in Azyr, as such would be nice to see an "Azyrian Host" army similar to Nagash book in which those factions which all live and fight together are combined allowing them to benefit from cross subfactional abilities. That way instead of half a dozen sub factions we end up with a mixed order faction representing the standing guard of Azyr and we can get new factions introduced instead.

[BaldoBeardo]

Going by title, came to thread expecting a calendar. Possibly involving swimwear.

 

Much disappoint.

[awcamawn]

5 hours ago, CDM said:

My thoughts are that I just can't see any more order factions getting a revamp with additional units fleshing out the range. DoK were an exception as they have a very unique look and very recent plastics in comparison.

The Wood Elf/Wanderer plastic kits are more recent than the witch elves!

Ghur humans would be the most interesting imho but I think I'd rather see something for destruction first.

[CDM]

4 hours ago, awcamawn said:

The Wood Elf/Wanderer plastic kits are more recent than the witch elves!

Ghur humans would be the most interesting imho but I think I'd rather see something for destruction first.

Wanderes are jot all plastic though so I think that makes a big difference to GW. I actually think wanderes are in a position for a battletome with their range.

Ghur humans could represent either destruction or order. Same as a shyish human faction could represent death or order.

[Rogue Explorator]

I will say that I am completely opposed to human factions by Realm, particularly because the people of the Realms are such a diverse bunch. It would just bloat up the game with 8 human factions and then shoehorn all people from the same Realm into their own little corner.

I would much rather see the free peoples explored by a expansion of the free cities. The free cities might be dominated by (the rather homogenous it seems) azyrite culture, but they are still quite Cosmopolitan places with a lot of room to explore and expand into many different directions. I think any free cities releases could never have the sense of unified look and homogenic society the Kharadron, Idoneth or Fyreslayers offer. Thus building on the free cities, who also represent the free mortal humans of the Realms at their strongest, would also be a good basis for those who want to build one of the countless smaller communities.

But for how the various human people of the mortal Realms are and what they look like, there is only one way to do the matter justice: Offer the occasional example via art, "official" model conversion or isolated focus on a single place (like Necromunda did for 40k), but otherwhise leave that space blank for the hobbyists to fill in themselves. This is how it was handled for the inhabitants of the countless imperial planets in 40k, and I feel that approach really worked there.

[MacDuff]

Personally, I love the idea of human faction being forced to adapt to the realities of their realm. But it doesn't have to require different rules - the modeling ideas alone this idea provokes are amazing.

[Melcavuk]

Alternatively do like KO and ID, have one human battletome and then a list of one famous freeguild city per realm that gives specific bonuses to the army. This way you get a single book instead of eight and yet can feel the personalisty of the realm within the army.

[Bloodmaster]

With the release model gw is presenting right now, it might be possible to hope for different human factions for every realm, both in looks and rules. In addition an overarching battle tome "free cities" would be nice, reorganizing and bundeling some minor factions of different races. Troop choice might be dependant on the city you choose, modelwise not to much new kits are needed and all cities could share  basic similarities in design caused by their shared heritage and ancestry in Azyr. 

On contrast, humans of the different realms deserve different designs and rules in accordance to their realm, as stated. Make them play significantly different to each other. Open them up to other GA not just order. They are a huge opportunity, much larger than some other faction. Undead will be undead, orcs orcs and even elves will be pointy eared arrogant picks only with different tragedies as a flimsy justification for them being dickish to others. Humans on the other hand hat highly adaptable. It's their one common trade in all of fantasy literature and games. And it is THE link to reality, connecting the imagined with is as a consumer, making us highly invested in the world

[RuneBrush]

I think I'm with @Rogue Explorator on this.  I think the ideas of some more human factions is a nice one, but not necessarily realm based (or at least not realm based for everything).  The reason the current factions work is because each consists of "many" individuals and they could feasibly pop up in any realm to fight any opponent.  It's not difficult to imagine a company of Freeguild fighting against a band of marauders in Ghur or a horde of Orruks appearing in Chamon because there's some good bashing to be had.  I don't think that necessarily works when you lock humans to a specific realm unless they're nomadic and it'd feel ridiculous if they all were - you'd also need a lot of them in order for create an entire faction.

What would work would be realm based human factions that form useful allies.  So the Woodcutters of Ghur that would allow another unit an ambush move.  Perhaps even expanding the allies rule so that they would ally with Order or Destruction - or possibly even more restricted, in that they'll only ally with Ironjawz or if the army doesn't contain Aelves or Sylvaneth.

I think one of the strongest elements about humans in AoS is the diversity we get, which exists even in the established cities.  But in order for that to work, you're talking about small groups of humans rather than thousands of them.  The realms may be near-infinite, but it'd be very weird if there were suddenly 8 human civilisations that we'd never heard of but suddenly discovered the ability to travel the realms in the matter of a few months.

[Kirjava13]

Well there are loads of reasons one can imagine for new factions getting involved. New empires only recently formed that become enough of a geopolitical power to project force. A change in leadership sees policy change too. Geographical or magical fluctuations reveal a previously-unknown faction. A new group decides that now is the time to intervene. Run wild!

[CDM]

@RuneBrush @rouge exploratorThe lore is not comelette and will always evolve. I don't think this would take anything away from the myriad of human civilisations, it would just show a few of them!

We sort of had realm based with ghur=ironjawz/bonespliterz

Ulgu=DoK 

Chamon=KO

Ghyran =sylvaneth

Aqshy=Fyreslayers

Shyish=death

In no way is this complete and obviously they don't stick to one realm but it does sort of show a stock faction from a particular realm.  I think that they are going to play on the realms going forward and human factions would be a great way to go. They can always do new rules for free cities and free guild etc but they are not going to release new models in that aesthetic  and that's what drives big releases.

 

[The Wanderer]

I actually think the idea of multiple 'human' factions is a really cool idea!

We already get multiple types of Dwarves and Elves so why not humans? You could have the different factions represent different stages of development based on how ravaged their realm is. So a 'free cities' type faction that is quite advanced and organised down to a savage/hunter-gatherer faction for realms still overwhelmed by chaos.

[AthlorianStoners]

Love this idea! I started working on some Freeguild from Ghur to just this effect 

http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/16839-freeguild-of-ghur-the-beast-within-kroot-conversion/

[bsharitt]

For better or for worse, I think Stormcasts are going to be the main human faction in the same way Space Marines are in 40k despite being a sort of human++. GW does seem to be setting up the freeguild narratively as an Imperial Guard analog, of course I wouldn't bet any thing on that being the long term model until we see some sure enough new kits and at least a book. I could certainly see them going with the seeds they've planted with all these stub factions they have now and grow them out in the same way they have the sub imperial factions on 40k. Now that the narrative has started to solidify, I don't think we'll see these core free peoples go away.  I do really like the idea of a LoN style tome that ties all the free peoples together into a single tome with some decent traits, artifacts and stuff for combined armies, but separate city allegiances that combines a couple of sub factions that go together thematically, similar to the Firestorm allegiances, but just made up of the free peoples, and make some keyword based for human, aelf and duardin only allegiances.

Outside of the free peoples stuff, I'd love to see a destruction faction of barbarian humans who follow Gorkamorka. Unfortunately I think such  faction would overlap too much with the Darkoath(who I wouldn't be surprised to see expanded) so all barbarian humans will keep following chaos.

I do believe that within the next few years(but probably not anytime soon) we'll see a wholly new human faction that brings something new to the game and not necessarily a reimaging of something existing. Basically a human version of Kharadron and Idoneth.  What it might be is something that takes and existing facet of humans and dial it up to 11 since that's really what the Kharadron and Idoneth are doing. If GW were to ask me to take some small shard of humans in AoS and run with it to make a whole new human faction, I think I'd go with magic. The faction would be made of up human wizards and mages of all kinds, but the core troops and warmachines would be magical constructs and perhaps summoned entities. On the table top I'm imagining they would be very powerful, but the wizard heroes would be the lynch pin. The construct units would go from amazing to sub par, perhaps even non-functional,  if there isn't a wizard nearby enough. Of course a big part of their allegiance abilities and spells would be geared towards anti-sniping.

[Dragobeth]

35 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

I do believe that within the next few years(but probably not anytime soon) we'll see a wholly new human faction that brings something new to the game and not necessarily a reimaging of something existing. Basically a human version of Kharadron and Idoneth.  What it might be is something that takes and existing facet of humans and dial it up to 11 since that's really what the Kharadron and Idoneth are doing. If GW were to ask me to take some small shard of humans in AoS and run with it to make a whole new human faction, I think I'd go with magic. The faction would be made of up human wizards and mages of all kinds, but the core troops and warmachines would be magical constructs and perhaps summoned entities. On the table top I'm imagining they would be very powerful, but the wizard heroes would be the lynch pin. The construct units would go from amazing to sub par, perhaps even non-functional,  if there isn't a wizard nearby enough. Of course a big part of their allegiance abilities and spells would be geared towards anti-sniping.

I love that idea, now I want to play something like that.

I too fear that SC are the main "human" army right now, but man, magic robots and that type of things are a MUST to me (please GW, do it).

[Rogue Explorator]

9 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

I do believe that within the next few years(but probably not anytime soon) we'll see a wholly new human faction that brings something new to the game and not necessarily a reimaging of something existing. Basically a human version of Kharadron and Idoneth.  What it might be is something that takes and existing facet of humans and dial it up to 11 since that's really what the Kharadron and Idoneth are doing. If GW were to ask me to take some small shard of humans in AoS and run with it to make a whole new human faction, I think I'd go with magic. The faction would be made of up human wizards and mages of all kinds, but the core troops and warmachines would be magical constructs and perhaps summoned entities. On the table top I'm imagining they would be very powerful, but the wizard heroes would be the lynch pin. The construct units would go from amazing to sub par, perhaps even non-functional,  if there isn't a wizard nearby enough. Of course a big part of their allegiance abilities and spells would be geared towards anti-sniping.

So you want an Order Faction that plays like Death, but stronger (no anti-sniping for Death), build around a feature (magical Constructs) that was previously unique to an Undead faction?

I would really rather see that stay in (or combe back to) GA Death. Particularly as I really do not see any feature AoS humans already particularly represent to be turned up to 11 in that.

 

On a less sour note, there some things about humans that I could see dialed up:

 

-Their faith in Sigmar. Let us see that Sigmar is a god that is truly worshipped.

The faithful are totally a faction I could see expanded. For one, Warpriests and Flaggelants are old icons of WHFB (always a good sign for faction in AoS). Also, small as the faction is, it is already composed of three components all ripe for expansion into full sub-factions composed of multiple units (Witch hunters, Flagellants and Warpriests of organized religion). The Hammerhall artwork shows a far more diverse image of flagellants from the current kit, I could well imagine them comming in many variants beyong the battleline version. And it is easy to imagine even more compound elements added, for example, a spiritual inheritor for the Knight Orders of Old could easily find its place here. I think there are many people still waiting for the the AoS version of classical Knight, which would be amazing even if they just ride on boring old horses.

As an additional bonus, many of them are completely of their rocker, meaning they can spell just as much trouble as help for the other order factions. And they can well pop up anywhere even far from the great cities, offering, among other things, many ways for collector to theme them, including theming by Realm.

 

-The poor regular sod facing against horror uncountable horror thing humans have in every version of Warhammer. I really do not feel Freeguild are the way forward for this. Fancy hats and poofy sleeves may never go fully out of style, but they are just to representative of the old world. Slayers, Chaos Warriors, Witch Elves and fanatics may be bigger icons, but the humble imperial soldier was always the posterboy of the settings style to me.

As the models that today form the freeguild represent the world that was more than any others, so do they represent what was faulty and outdated in the Old World. A bunch of soddy frail aging men might have been an acceptable representative for all of humanity to hobbyists when Warhammer was created, but it does not hold up anymore.

The pathetic human fighting the odds absolutely needs a comeback if AoS is to give the full Warhammer experience, but this has to happen with a new line. I still think Free People is the place to do this (if Freeguild was to be all there is to the faction, they would have called the faction Freeguild). Faithful of Sigmar would be the wrong place for this, since they will always be about placing trust in a higher power and have the prayers to show for it.

We also need humans who have only themselves, some failing steel and gritt. They can still be soddy and pathetic, just in different way.

[Timothy]

As someone who still whinges about the mortal realms and how I think the old world was a better setting I LOVE empire state troops. That said they are out of place in the mortal realms and persist as a reminder of the world that was. As more factions are getting their "Sigmarfication" ie, daughters of Khaine, Kharadrons Overlords, Idoneth Deepkin, ect I am beginning to enjoy AOS for what it is and not what it was and realizing much of what I don't like about the mortal realms is a direct result of the hybridization of oldhammer into aos. I am conflicted on whether things like freeguild should be squatted but I think that a human faction should definetly be "Sigmarified". 

[TheDayman]

I would love to see a free cities faction, would be awesome! I feel like in order to do humans properly in AoS model wise they would have to keep the kits quite generic looking, but flesh them out with upgrade packs. I feel like that would allow people to create many unique looking human armies  

[Skabnoze]

4 hours ago, Timothy said:

As someone who still whinges about the mortal realms and how I think the old world was a better setting I LOVE empire state troops. That said they are out of place in the mortal realms and persist as a reminder of the world that was. As more factions are getting their "Sigmarfication" ie, daughters of Khaine, Kharadrons Overlords, Idoneth Deepkin, ect I am beginning to enjoy AOS for what it is and not what it was and realizing much of what I don't like about the mortal realms is a direct result of the hybridization of oldhammer into aos. I am conflicted on whether things like freeguild should be squatted but I think that a human faction should definetly be "Sigmarified". 

I feel that the allegiances we will probably see expanded will be the ones that have fairly recent plastic kits that adhere to whatever new direction/aesthetic they may want to do for that Allegiance/Race.  For example, the Dispossessed have a pretty recent set of plastic kits with just the  olderThunderers/Quarrelers & Clan Warriors kits not fitting in with the rest of the range.  It would not take much for them to expand that range to a full Allegiance. 

I think over time we will see some of these expanded and the allegiances that do not have much to keep (either outdated plastics or tons of resin/metals) will probably just get superseded by something wholly new and slowly be phased out over time.  Although that said, the Moonclan Grots allegiance is mainly made up of old metal & resin models and it seems likely that GW will rework that range into a full allegiance with battletome - especially after they added the Fungoid Shaman model.

[Barkanaut]

18 minutes ago, Skabnoze said:

I feel that the allegiances we will probably see expanded will be the ones that have fairly recent plastic kits that adhere to whatever new direction/aesthetic they may want to do for that Allegiance/Race.  For example, the Dispossessed have a pretty recent set of plastic kits with just the  olderThunderers/Quarrelers & Clan Warriors kits not fitting in with the rest of the range.  It would not take much for them to expand that range to a full Allegiance. 

I think over time we will see some of these expanded and the allegiances that do not have much to keep (either outdated plastics or tons of resin/metals) will probably just get superseded by something wholly new and slowly be phased out over time.  Although that said, the Moonclan Grots allegiance is mainly made up of old metal & resin models and it seems likely that GW will rework that range into a full allegiance with battletome - especially after they added the Fungoid Shaman model.

The dispossessed don’t fit AoS theme even slightly though. They look extremely out of place in my opinion. I say this as a fan of them too as I tend to like all things dwarven in fantasy but if we ever see another ground based dwarves I think it will be another really high fantasy take on them that fits. I do realize their kits aren’t that old,  even with that factored in they stick out like a sore thumb. I want as much new factions or completely revamped ones (DoK is a good example) as possible. 

[Skabnoze]

1 minute ago, Barkanaut said:

The dispossessed don’t fit AoS theme even slightly though. They look extremely out of place in my opinion. I say this as a fan of them too as I tend to like all things dwarven in fantasy but if we ever see another ground based dwarves I think it will be another really high fantasy take on them that fits. I do realize their kits aren’t that old,  even with that factored in they stick out like a sore thumb. I want as much new factions or completely revamped ones (DoK is a good example) as possible. 

That may be true, although it is fairly subjective.  I think the most recent plastics for the Dispossessed do not look overly different from the Khardaron Overlord infantry.  A lot of the design elements they share are similar.  It really depends on what the design team wants to do.  But they could retire the oldest plastic kits (warriors & quarrelers), keep the rest, and then only have to add a couple new kits to flesh out a full Battletome similar to what they did with Daughters of Khaine.  I mentioned Dispossessed mainly because that range seems to have the most stuff to retain compared to other ranges across the Grand Alliances.

But the point I was trying to get is that it seems likely that the things they expand are the things that do not require major replacement to do.  The stuff that does require major replacement will probably simply be replaced by something new - rather than retained.  But, I do think there will be a few exceptions.  There are some things that require a lot of work in terms of new models to be expanded with full battletomes but will most likely happen.  I get a feeling that Moonclan is one of those things.  Some of the Skaven clans seem like fitting candidates for that also.