Current State of the Armies

[Overread]

Oh yeah I forgot about those soggy aelves! 

[Nuriel]

You albo forget Flying Duradins 🙂

[Overread]

32 minutes ago, Nuriel said:

You albo forget Flying Duradins 🙂

I don't believe in flying dwarves - its against my religion

 

Ok ok ok so 4 new armies but do skeletons with bedsheets over them really count?! That's the question we really should be asking

[PlasticCraic]

12 hours ago, Overread said:

 

@PlasticCraic I didn't add Gitmob mostly because they've nothing save for a name now. No models, no rules anywhere and nothing on the horizon. Far as I can tell they vanished into Gloomspite and that was it. Greenskins are mostly in the list because they were around when the list was made and they then vanished, but did oddly retain references in some forces - though I agree they are pretty much totally gone. 

Yeah I would have thought Gitmob and Greenskinz were in the same position, so I just thought it was strange that you included one and not the other.

What were the "references in some forces" you mentioned for Greenskinz - the only thing I can think of is that the FW Rogue Idol has the Greenskinz keyword?  But yeah, that's one more than Gitmob now has, so technically I guess there is still a Greenskinz product range of one unit available  Unless there's more that I've missed?

(FWIW Gitmob did not vanish into Gloomspite - they just vanished.  None of their units were wrapped up into the Gloomspite book, they were just silently deleted from the range at the same time Gloomspite dropped.  The closest thing to an exception being the Gitmob Shaman, which was briefly relabelled as a Madcap Shaman on the webstore, presumably to dump old stock because that is now gone too).

[Overread]

@PlasticCraic I believe Gloomspite lists Greenskins as allies in the battletome; also about a week before Greenskins were removed there was a spread in White Dwarf showing their Getting Started set advertised in the segment talking about the (I think) new Skirmish rules. So at that time it seemed that at least one portion of GW - or perhaps two - had at some point assumed or been told that Greenskins were remaining. 

Honestly I think that their removal and how it was conducted is one of the bad side effects of GW's heavily compartmentalized workteams. Another is the issue with base sizes where the rules team seems to say one thing; but then I think that a different message makes it to packaging who then box up dozens of models with a certain base size and then the community site gets laods of confused gamers messaging them and then the base size defaults back to what's in the box and the rules get updated. 

 

Some of this is clearly a communication breakdown somewhere in the system; I think also likely coupled to different departments operating on different priorities and timescales. Thankfully these tend to be rare, though they stick in the mind. AoS has also suffered because GW has never been up front early about hwat they will remove and sometimes I wonder if things get removed because they do get "forgotten" about. Or left on the back burner so long that to bring them back is too great an investment for GW to make. 

[PlasticCraic]

17 minutes ago, Overread said:

@PlasticCraic I believe Gloomspite lists Greenskins as allies in the battletome

FWIW the Gloomspite book lists both Greenskinz and Gitmob as Allies.  

Up to you though, I'm not desperate to see them listed!  Whether you list them on here or not, it looks like they're Legends-bound.

[123lac]

16 hours ago, michu said:

There are also Idoneth Deepkin.

Kharadron as well, right?

Plus Witch Elves got turned into Monster Girls: the faction.

I guess I just don't see the relevance for High Elves or Dark Elves once we have the Hysh and Ulgu Aelf factions. In my mind those are the AoS versions and will be thematic replacements to redundant 'old world' lines.

[michu]

Because they are not Hysh and Ulgu Aelves - they are Azyr Aelves. They represent factions that are not inherently tied to specific god and can worship whoever they want. You can't have DoK worshipping Alarielle, but you can have Swifthawk working for Sigmar or even Grungni.

[Thiagoma]

Lets go for few hard facts in here:

 

GW have yet to discard modern plastics.

There are a ton of Modern Elf plastics. Very very few are out of scale. A really small number are resin.

New/updated armies have adopted old models into their lines. See Gloomspite, Slaneesh, DoK and so on.

Current Elf line, except for Wanderers, have no "AoS name" and is still beeing sold on older boxes

 

Now the few Scraps of lore we got for Aelves so far:

- The Twins, Malerion and Morathi are trying to rescue Elvenkind

- The Twins were more sucessfull on their second Attempt.

- The second creation is "angelical"

- The current Elf line exists in the lore :Phoenix Temple  (Phoenicium), Swifthawks headquarters is in Hyish, the Eldritch Council is helping Idoneth to fix their soul issue.

- There are stronger and weaker souls among the rescued ones. Morathi DECIDED to create her Twisted ones (Khirenai/Melusai) in her form because she felt lonely and deformed and wanted her people to reflect it. She also decided to use the weak ones for males. The Witch Elves are elven girls that existed in the realms already.

 

Now for some speculation:

Lets say that the new Elvenkind matches the community Wildest dreams: Hyish Elves are Angels with light lasers attached to theyr heads riding light dragons who also have laser beens on their head and their mega prism loooking allies who, take a guess, also shoot infinite lasers.

What is stopping the current elf line from joining then?

 

-They are Elves

- Even with scrapped units such as the Spire of down ones, a couple new kits would make for a HUUUUUGE elven line of models.                    

-They live in their Gods Realm  (among other realms)                                                                                                             

-They represent ancient Elvens traditions that the Twins would apreciate (Since the Twins were pretty much the greastest representatives of Elvenkind by the end of times)

- No Lore reason to push the current Elves away from their Gods.

- Aesthetic:  Melusais are significant different elves but they "fit" into older models. So we know GW can pull those moves out.  Other than that, the current lines have a distinct and traditional elven look no piece look out of place.

 

My Conclusion:

Older Aelves are not repacked yet because the Uglu/Hyish elves still do not exist, so GW didnt repack the models just to repack again once their names/rules are  created (former High Elves have no Battleline for example. A unit would have to receive these stats or it would have to be one of the new models, so people would have to buy the new lines). Also people would buy then for beeing pretty cool , see Daughters of Khaine new models.

As a consequence,  elves (except for Wanderers) will have to wait for those factions to be released to see a repacking/regrouping

Same go for rules. Elven factions have no traits/tomes/artifacts.  What GW can do is to "separate" groups of elves on a unified BT until those lines do not come out.

The lines without current Battletomes are still very popular, the best example is the Dispossessed community. Those guys arent going anywhere. You can say the same for Wanderers, and on a smaller degree High/Dark elves, but you have to take in consideration the breakdown of those armies.

Heck even GW artists and employees have elven armies. Phoenix Temple and Eldritch Council ones already showed up on interviews and such as pet projects.

 

There is little to no indication that the current line is going away. Same goes to other traditional armies.

 

 

[Zanzou]

8 hours ago, Thiagoma said:

Lets go for few hard facts in here:

GW have yet to discard modern plastics.

Am I missing something with this?  GW discarded modern plastics with "Age of Sigmar: Spire of Dawn", modern new-looking molds  reboxed for Age of Sigmar and yet they totally removed the warscroll for the poisoned wind mortar weapon team sadly . The packmaster is completely gone, they reverted the new rat ogres they made with that box back to the ancient old and ugly rat ogres from a billion years ago.   I don't need to mention to you guys the elves that are gone from that box now either.

[dekay]

Starter set plastics on shared sprues have disappeared before - 40k orks use ancient metal deffkoptas despite having plastic ones in one of the previous two player starters. Same for heavy weapon cultists, and several others. What is unprecedented in this case is GW actually releasing island of blood models second time in Dawnspire. Luckily, they seem to have abandoned the shared sprues altogether in newer starter sets, making everything easy to sell separately later.

Only time when modern-ish plastics have disappeared is removal of Tomb Kings. While all the basic units were ancient, the fact that sphinxes, stalkers and tomb guard haven't joined Death models is, admittedly, worrying in this case.

[Zanzou]

Or they could literally just stop discontinuing things that they've released with "Age of Sigmar" literally on the box.  That would be greeeeeaaaaat.  It was their choice to release an AoS product with shared sprues, a reasonable customer expectation is that they will continue to support anything "AoS" throughout, you know, AoS!!

EDIT: Specifically talking about the removal of their warscrolls at LEAST, if not the models.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Zanzou

[Overread]

Important note - the twitch channel interview just confirmed that the lord on food and lord on mount (boobsnake) are NOT included in the new Battletome. It is thus HIGHLY likely that both of these models will be retired alongside the Keeper of Secrets in resin. So if you want those models get them now if you can (I'm aware some countries already have them listed out of sale online from the GW store). 

 

Note they did say that you could easily proxy both those models for a Slaves to Darkness lord/lord on mount with a mark of slaanesh, so if you do get the models you can still put them to great use in your armies! There's even the chance that mortals like them will return in time* (the twitch suggested offering sacrifices to the miniatures design team for such blessings). 

 

 

*All hints suggest a LONG way off so don't start waiting for them any time soon. 

[dekay]

50 minutes ago, Zanzou said:

Am I missing something with this?  GW discarded modern plastics with "Age of Sigmar: Spire of Dawn", modern new-looking molds  reboxed for Age of Sigmar and yet they totally removed the warscroll for the poisoned wind mortar weapon team sadly . The packmaster is completely gone, they reverted the new rat ogres they made with that box back to the ancient old and ugly rat ogres from a billion years ago.   I don't need to mention to you guys the elves that are gone from that box now either.

Yeah that was an objectively terrible idea, coming from someone with Swifthawk army. But it seems that it's unlikely to repeat.

[novakai]

16 minutes ago, dekay said:

Yeah that was an objectively terrible idea, coming from someone with Swifthawk army. But it seems that it's unlikely to repeat.

Well there was the silver tower hostile spures where all the enemies where on one single spures. So that why we can’t get the deathrunner or Scuttlers as individual releases.

[dekay]

Yeah their boxed games are still vulnerable to this - blackstone fortress is very much new and most sprues are still bundled together in most cases. Let's hope they don't intend to return to this idea with their main product lines. I'm still sour about dawnspire.

[Overread]

1 minute ago, dekay said:

Yeah their boxed games are still vulnerable to this - blackstone fortress is very much new and most sprues are still bundled together in most cases. Let's hope they don't intend to return to this idea with their main product lines. I'm still sour about dawnspire.

Thing its its really only an issue when they give the side game models specific core game rules. 

Once they do that they take a short term product and give it a long term product attachment in such a way that players want to keep using that product long term even when the short term product ends its life cycle. Whilst I get that people want to use the cool models, GW can encourage you to use them as unique models, leaders etc.... within existing rules rather than give them tehir own named rule which then means that once that short term model vanishes so to do the rules. 

 

In addition its a right pain when its something like Blackstone where the only way to get 1 model is through ebay prices and trying to nab one that way. Otherwise you have to get the whole set. 

 

 

I hope that GW has moved on from that; I agree it was poor planning. Then again I think that when it came to Spire of Blood the duel setup was done only for that set and GW would have released all those models on their own; but at that time Fantasy was on very rocky ground. 

[Riavan]

9 hours ago, Thiagoma said:

Lets go for few hard facts in here:

 

GW have yet to discard modern plastics.

There are a ton of Modern Elf plastics. Very very few are out of scale. A really small number are resin.

New/updated armies have adopted old models into their lines. See Gloomspite, Slaneesh, DoK and so on.

Current Elf line, except for Wanderers, have no "AoS name" and is still beeing sold on older boxes

 

Now the few Scraps of lore we got for Aelves so far:

- The Twins, Malerion and Morathi are trying to rescue Elvenkind

- The Twins were more sucessfull on their second Attempt.

- The second creation is "angelical"

- The current Elf line exists in the lore :Phoenix Temple  (Phoenicium), Swifthawks headquarters is in Hyish, the Eldritch Council is helping Idoneth to fix their soul issue.

- There are stronger and weaker souls among the rescued ones. Morathi DECIDED to create her Twisted ones (Khirenai/Melusai) in her form because she felt lonely and deformed and wanted her people to reflect it. She also decided to use the weak ones for males. The Witch Elves are elven girls that existed in the realms already.

 

Now for some speculation:

Lets say that the new Elvenkind matches the community Wildest dreams: Hyish Elves are Angels with light lasers attached to theyr heads riding light dragons who also have laser beens on their head and their mega prism loooking allies who, take a guess, also shoot infinite lasers.

What is stopping the current elf line from joining then?

 

-They are Elves

- Even with scrapped units such as the Spire of down ones, a couple new kits would make for a HUUUUUGE elven line of models.                    

-They live in their Gods Realm  (among other realms)                                                                                                             

-They represent ancient Elvens traditions that the Twins would apreciate (Since the Twins were pretty much the greastest representatives of Elvenkind by the end of times)

- No Lore reason to push the current Elves away from their Gods.

- Aesthetic:  Melusais are significant different elves but they "fit" into older models. So we know GW can pull those moves out.  Other than that, the current lines have a distinct and traditional elven look no piece look out of place.

 

My Conclusion:

Older Aelves are not repacked yet because the Uglu/Hyish elves still do not exist, so GW didnt repack the models just to repack again once their names/rules are  created (former High Elves have no Battleline for example. A unit would have to receive these stats or it would have to be one of the new models, so people would have to buy the new lines). Also people would buy then for beeing pretty cool , see Daughters of Khaine new models.

As a consequence,  elves (except for Wanderers) will have to wait for those factions to be released to see a repacking/regrouping

Same go for rules. Elven factions have no traits/tomes/artifacts.  What GW can do is to "separate" groups of elves on a unified BT until those lines do not come out.

The lines without current Battletomes are still very popular, the best example is the Dispossessed community. Those guys arent going anywhere. You can say the same for Wanderers, and on a smaller degree High/Dark elves, but you have to take in consideration the breakdown of those armies.

Heck even GW artists and employees have elven armies. Phoenix Temple and Eldritch Council ones already showed up on interviews and such as pet projects.

 

There is little to no indication that the current line is going away. Same goes to other traditional armies.

 

 

Yeah I'd be pretty worried if I had any of the old elves, even in plastic. Or the old dwarves. Likely to sit around and never get a release, then eventually be removed imo.

[michu]

@Riavan As Jes Bickham said in his StormCast episode, they are going to make battletomes for all current armies.

[Overread]

5 minutes ago, michu said:

@Riavan As Jes Bickham said in his StormCast episode, they are going to make battletomes for all current armies.

I think the real question is what army are teh remaining Aelves. Are they a single united force; will they be split into the light/dark aelf armies and also a third remaining force ;does gw even see them as an army at all and thus might retire many of the models etc.... 

 

Most of the other armies in the game we can see how they might go - either on their own or combined. Aelves are the biggest questionmark as to what GW plans to do with them as there are so many things and it might be multiple options.

[EccentricCircle]

2 hours ago, michu said:

@Riavan As Jes Bickham said in his StormCast episode, they are going to make battletomes for all current armies.

Its just a case of what they actually consider to be "armies". Its always worth taking stuff which is said in interviews with a pinch of salt. Clearly he will have planned what he could and couldn't say, but it didn't strike me as a scripted statement of the sort you get in a press release or preview. It was just him saying that his intention was to get to all of the factions eventually.

Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. Directions can change, current factions could be merged or split, and things do sometimes get discontinued. We'll have to wait and see.

[Riavan]

4 hours ago, michu said:

@Riavan As Jes Bickham said in his StormCast episode, they are going to make battletomes for all current armies.

What they consider to be a current army is very up for debate lol.

[Unit1126PLL]

What exactly is an "army" in this case?

Now that we have battleline Terrorgheists and the BCR behemoths as battleline, can Ironweld Arsenal get battleline steamtanks?

Or will they be folded into Free Peoples?

Or will they just be dropped with Free Peoples getting a book full of their stuff, excluding cannons and steam tanks etc.

[King Taloren]

A pretty good point. 

I would say the only certainty at tre moment we. Have regarding armies is anything that has a battletome after Moggotkin of Nurgle since that is heralded as the first 2.0 books

[Barbossal]

I actually have a theory about this whole Aelf thing: the Light and Shadow Aelves are gonig to be the same army.

Think about it - Hysh and Ulgu are thematically opposite so the army ability powers up a certain alignment of the army based on the tide of the Sun and Moon. It focuses on balance and harmony between the sides and how they challenge each other - OR - build a list that focuses on a specific side and embrace the Light/Dark. Meanwhile there's a neutral alignment that is in the twilight between both sides.

Light Aelfs: Eldritch Council, Order Draconis, Phoenix Temple

Dark Aelfs: Darkling Covens, Order Serpentis,  Shadowblades

Twilight/Neutral Aelfs: Wanderers, Scourge Privateers, Swifthawk Agents

 

Light gets a new dual build kit with Angelic Aelfs in two types and Teclic & Tyron kit.

Dark gets a new dual build kit with Shadow Aelfs in two types along with Malerion.

Twilight Elf get a new Wanderers behemoth.

 

Revamp the entire Aelf line in only 5 kits ❤️