The official AoS Website, 2.0 Previews, and GHB Allegiances, what does it really mean?

[Shankelton]

8 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

GW is the worst at marketing, have you seen the backlash they‘ve got for Shadowspear? ^^

Wait, Backlash?

All I've seen are stellar reviews! Those Black legion sculpts are fantastic.

[MitGas]

My personal predictions:

Vanilla Aelves, Vanilla Duardin and Vanilla Humans will all be folded into a Freepeople army, with most kits getting a new look, even the newer ones. I think it's gonna feel more like 40k's Imperial Guard than the current Empire. I think this would also be smart as new troops with specialized roles and looks would give this army a big draw. either way, I think that they're gonna get a very mixed armor design that draws inspiration not just from the old empire but rather from various epoches and origins to give it a unique look, e.g. mixing more asian and western armor designs. I could imagine them to look more like the soldiers of Asgard from the Thor movies (with open helmets, as those helmets shown below look more like Tzeentch Chaos Warriors than good guys) 

Shadow and Light Aelves will be at least just as unique as Idoneth Deepkin, probably even less Aelvish in general. Light Aelves could become some kind of Fantasy Protoss, while Dark/Shadow Aelves might really go heavy on the Dragon/Demon/Gargoyle theme.

Chaos/Darkoath/Undivided: Outside of Archaon's ultra-elite troops, they'll be more of a horde army. Chaos Warriors and other kits they already got in plastic will be be in there but outside of MAYBE the Warrior kit will see no update. Varanguard on foot as Chosen seem most likely and also would be what people expect from Chaos Warriors: gigantic hulking brutes that are tough as nails.

Well, will be fun to see if I got anything right. XD

[Skreech Verminking]

18 hours ago, pseudonyme said:

If so, why would they put a vampire in the core front instead of Nagash, Olynder or the FEC Archregeant?

Vampires being in the odd state of having 2 out of 4 allegiances in LON, and also having specific Soulblight allegiances. 

 I could ask the same question for khorne.

we all know by now that the third battletome for this faction is coming and still we have nothing really showing of a khorne hero Model etc. At the front but instead 4-5chaotic manifestations representing each chaotic force (or god)

[pseudonyme]

I guess my english is not that good because I don't understand the comparison between Khorne who will have à third battletome next week and Soulblight.

But anyway, that is not that important.

[Nuriel]

Games Workshop doesn't have to soup vanilla Aelves , Duradin and Humans into one big family. or maintain their racial diversity altogether. 

They can for example, add Lion Rangers into new Light Aelves faction and Shadowblades  to  new Shadow Aelves, or mix Order Serpentis, Order Draconis and Darkling Covens into one faction, and  Collegiate Arcane, Eldtritch Council and Phoenix Temple into another. 

[Jagd]

They need to be careful with those old armies in keeping their new lore and flavour intact while selling the models they obviously need to make money from. The whole point of AoS was to reboot the fantasy of the factions, I find it dangerous to start making battletomes for things like high elves and wood elves and having them take a primary place on the front stage without diminishing the very new things they nuked the old world to create. Does the new world have a place for an Aelf tome? Weren't they pretty much extinct after the age of myth? Should they just leave the models as long as possible, then retire them once the new Light and Shadow elf factions arrive? Hard to say.

As a former Tomb Kings player, I initially hated they squatted my army away. Now I hope they one day reinvent my beloved army with all new concepts and ideas that draw inspiration from the army I loved. I might hate where it ends up, or I could fall in love all anew. Either way, I have moved on to the future.

As to are they making tomes, I think it's highly likely we get a Gutbusters tome of some description. I also wouldn't be surprised at a Wanderers tome. Those 2 have sculpts that fit within the world of sigmar.

[syph0n]

2 hours ago, Nuriel said:

Games Workshop doesn't have to soup vanilla Aelves , Duradin and Humans into one big family. or maintain their racial diversity altogether. 

They can for example, add Lion Rangers into new Light Aelves faction and Shadowblades  to  new Shadow Aelves, or mix Order Serpentis, Order Draconis and Darkling Covens into one faction, and  Collegiate Arcane, Eldtritch Council and Phoenix Temple into another. 

This would be lovely, but I don't think they will. 

1 hour ago, Jagd said:

They need to be careful with those old armies in keeping their new lore and flavour intact while selling the models they obviously need to make money from. The whole point of AoS was to reboot the fantasy of the factions, I find it dangerous to start making battletomes for things like high elves and wood elves and having them take a primary place on the front stage without diminishing the very new things they nuked the old world to create. Does the new world have a place for an Aelf tome? Weren't they pretty much extinct after the age of myth? Should they just leave the models as long as possible, then retire them once the new Light and Shadow elf factions arrive? Hard to say.

As a former Tomb Kings player, I initially hated they squatted my army away. Now I hope they one day reinvent my beloved army with all new concepts and ideas that draw inspiration from the army I loved. I might hate where it ends up, or I could fall in love all anew. Either way, I have moved on to the future.

As to are they making tomes, I think it's highly likely we get a Gutbusters tome of some description. I also wouldn't be surprised at a Wanderers tome. Those 2 have sculpts that fit within the world of sigmar.

Listening to Pete Foley, the long term roadmap will be to move them over to Legends, of that I'm fairly sure. If you look at the Dark Elf line, of which quite a chunk of it was "new", they got put into Legends first despite there being much older kits. I would have loved for them to have proper AoS2 rules for Dreadlords and their variants on Drakespawn, but instead they got the Legends treatment. This obviously relates to the relaunch of the DoK, but they clearly knew Deepkin were well on the way. 

With the release of two Aelven factions, I sort of agree that the space for all of these Aelves might be running short in the new world. However, I really hope that isn't the case, and that we get an Aelf Battletome, which I'd much prefer to Free Cities tome the more I think about it. 

On 3/10/2019 at 10:41 AM, Overread said:

I think Aelves will possibly the the biggest mess that GW leaves AoS with for a while. The fragmenting and story attachment to so many subfactions was a mess that original AoS left GW with. They can't get rid of them - there's way too many modern plastic kits and quality models in there - and they can't make each into an army of its own. 

That said we really don't know what they will do, though a combined army might be on the cards. The biggest downside being that the old dark, light and wood elves all had very unique appearances and styles - heck the high elves were all with those big pointy cone hats. So it might look odd until such time as GW might udpate the listings. 

 

 

What will happen will happen but we are stuck with a waiting game. My greatest hope is that we don't lose too many kits over that period - though we've already lost the glade archers. 

As I said to @Jagd, we might find that they don't actually do anything with them, and Legends becomes a thing. I hope not, it was just the impression I got from Pete Foley's interview.

I don't know - maybe the Shadow and Light Aelves are a couple of years away. If it's not a huge resource drain, we might well see an Aelf Battletome that tides us over until they are all released. If you look at it like that, we'd have Idoneth Deepkin, DoK, Shadow and Light. Is there really the room for the rest of the Aelves? 

I wouldn't like to be the Design Studio, because my impression is a lot of the Aelf line is popular, still modern for the most part. The Dark Aelf line is fantastic - Corsairs are a brilliant kit, the Hydra is awesome, the Black Dragon is a notch above the High Aelf version and so are the Black Guard/Executioner kits. I wonder how it all sells, and does it not sell because they're underpowered relatively? 

Do you go Legends? Free People / Cities? Aelf soup? Merge with the new lines (didn't happen with SP and Deepkin, don't see it now with the exception of maybe Dark Riders). 

[Turin Turambar]

 

7 hours ago, MitGas said:

My personal predictions:

Vanilla Aelves, Vanilla Duardin and Vanilla Humans will all be folded into a Freepeople army, with most kits getting a new look, even the newer ones. I think it's gonna feel more like 40k's Imperial Guard than the current Empire. I think this would also be smart as new troops with specialized roles and looks would give this army a big draw. either way, I think that they're gonna get a very mixed armor design that draws inspiration not just from the old empire but rather from various epoches and origins to give it a unique look, e.g. mixing more asian and western armor designs. I could imagine them to look more like the soldiers of Asgard from the Thor movies (with open helmets, as those helmets shown below look more like Tzeentch Chaos Warriors than good guys) 

Shadow and Light Aelves will be at least just as unique as Idoneth Deepkin, probably even less Aelvish in general. Light Aelves could become some kind of Fantasy Protoss, while Dark/Shadow Aelves might really go heavy on the Dragon/Demon/Gargoyle theme.

12

free peoples will likely get the guard treatment of haveing many different looks (each based on multiple armies) but only have 2-3 actually represented with plastic kits (guard have cadians and catachans, and scions), the kitts themselves may also allow for a certain amount of customisation, alongside forgeworld upgrade kitts.

As for aelves we already have shadow aelf models, there are those two shadow aelf models.

..

these are still basically regular elves, even if the clothes are different. the lore also speaks of shadow deamons in their army. 

also the AOS lore for shadowblades assassins are they are shadow aelves of malerion working for sigmar. So expect shadow aelven range to inlcude alot of 'normal' aelves and shadow deamons (likely deamons of malerion), we also know however that some of malerions aelves atleast were twisted (although this could just be their nature rather then physical apearance) which could be dragon-aelves. 

As for light Aelves, I doubt they will vier too far away from regular aelves as their desriptions so far are angelic aelves that glow. besides protoss are just eldar ripoffs anyway (so there is no way GW will make anything like them in my opinion). Also the way Tyrion and Teclis are acting they will likely have made aelves as close as possible to idealised aelves (teclis partilly succeeded as the indoneth thatt aren't blind look like classic aelves with new style). So while expect new beasts, new clothes and perhapps winged aelves, don't expect anything radically different for light aelves. 

2 hours ago, syph0n said:

Listening to Pete Foley, the long term roadmap will be to move them over to Legends, of that I'm fairly sure. If you look at the Dark Elf line, of which quite a chunk of it was "new", they got put into Legends first despite there being much older kits. I would have loved for them to have proper AoS2 rules for Dreadlords and their variants on Drakespawn, but instead they got the Legends treatment. This obviously relates to the relaunch of the DoK, but they clearly knew Deepkin were well on the way. 

With the release of two Aelven factions, I sort of agree that the space for all of these Aelves might be running short in the new world. However, I really hope that isn't the case, and that we get an Aelf Battletome, which I'd much prefer to Free Cities tome the more I think about it. 

As I said to @Jagd, we might find that they don't actually do anything with them, and Legends becomes a thing. I hope not, it was just the impression I got from Pete Foley's interview.

I don't know - maybe the Shadow and Light Aelves are a couple of years away. If it's not a huge resource drain, we might well see an Aelf Battletome that tides us over until they are all released. If you look at it like that, we'd have Idoneth Deepkin, DoK, Shadow and Light. Is there really the room for the rest of the Aelves? 

I wouldn't like to be the Design Studio, because my impression is a lot of the Aelf line is popular, still modern for the most part. The Dark Aelf line is fantastic - Corsairs are a brilliant kit, the Hydra is awesome, the Black Dragon is a notch above the High Aelf version and so are the Black Guard/Executioner kits. I wonder how it all sells, and does it not sell because they're underpowered relatively? 

Do you go Legends? Free People / Cities? Aelf soup? Merge with the new lines (didn't happen with SP and Deepkin, don't see it now with the exception of maybe Dark Riders). 

9

Personally I think we will end up with 5 aelven factions, atleast for AOS version 2.

combined 'old' aelves will be a thing, they got a mega faction focus, they are listed as 1 thing on the online store, and they have their own representative art.

Also 5 aelf factions isn't so bad (when you consider howmany human factions there are in 40k and even AOS), that being said they may squat them for version 3, or partly squat them and absorb some of their units into the light and shadow aelf ranges. 

shadowblades are already shadow aelves, order serpentis has that mist and dragon aethsetic that they seem to be going for (to some degree) with malerion's aelves. while can easily imagine many of the old high aelf and even darkling coverns (with a new paint job) in a light aelf tome. 

I guess we will see, but my money is on 5 aelf factions, as WoW proves that aelves are supper popular (they are the most played race-group, with blood elves alone being the 2nd most played individual race), plus multiple factions of 1 race is not bad especially when they have different aesthetics.