The Rumour Thread

[Sheriff]

12 minutes ago, Killax said:

Well the Shadespire Sepulchral Guard Warband has 7 (new) unique models. It's the largest Warband  

Wow thats awesome. They are my favourite non-goblin army in Total War, so pleased to see skellingtons getting some love. Let's hope they don't get bundled into just 1 new unit. 

 

 

[chord]

15 minutes ago, Malin said:

It was Ben Johnson who confirmed on live stream, when talking about Blightwar, that there will be no new campaign books in Realmgate Wars style. There will be new, different style campaign books though as they want to experiment with those releases and try some new formats.

This is all IIRC though as it was some time ago. I am almost certain as this was in one of my biggest interest on this stream.

That makes me very sad.....  Man I loved those books so much great content, rules, battleplans, etc.

[chord]

34 minutes ago, Killax said:

I think GW is just really experimenting with campaigns as we speak. We've recieved several non-Army specific supplements and I do think Firestorm really adds to the game. Even more now it's clearified that it's use is there for any kind of play. 

What I am still very much looking forward to (desperatly trying to push the subject to rumours again) is the upcomming Grand Allegiance Heralds.

I agree I think this really is a hint that they are adding in new major characters in this settings. These will be the new Vandus, etc type of characters to help move the storyline along. 

[bsharitt]

38 minutes ago, Killax said:

I think GW is just really experimenting with campaigns as we speak. We've recieved several non-Army specific supplements and I do think Firestorm really adds to the game. Even more now it's clearified that it's use is there for any kind of play. 

What I am still very much looking forward to (desperatly trying to push the subject to rumours again) is the upcomming Grand Allegiance Heralds.
 

And what lead me to another interesting find is that this Icon from Shadespire is actually called/linked as the symbol for Deathrattle.

Link is: https://warhammerunderworlds.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/09/Shadespire_DeathrattleSymbolWeb .png

What this could lead to is Battletome Deathrattle not even being that far away from us. However I also deem it still very possible that it´s pushed back to January 2018. Rumour also has it that Shadespire´s official Organized Play launch will be around that time, which seems just in time to give Age of Sigmar another push aswell.

With this in mind though December 2017 is still a mistery to me. We know that 40K will continue to recieve their books but other than that and Astra Militarum releases the open past spoiler photo´s still seem to indicate something Death-ish to me.

Lastly Halloween is obviously around the corner and also the perfect day to annouce anything ghoulish, vampiric and thus Death related...

I completely forgot about the heralds. Didn't we get confirmation that the Death one will have the Nighthaunt keyword? Looking forward to kicking some cairn wraiths to the curb to make room for that guy in my Night haunt army.

[RuneBrush]

Just realised that nobody has posted up the rumour picture!

I'm thinking 40k Aledari - but could be Aelvish too (or provide basis for conversion).

[Sheriff]

9 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Just realised that nobody has posted up the rumour picture!

I'm thinking 40k Aledari - but could be Aelvish too (or provide basis for conversion).

[bsharitt]

12 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Just realised that nobody has posted up the rumour picture!

I'm thinking 40k Aledari - but could be Aelvish too (or provide basis for conversion).

It's clearly either Cthulu Elves or plastic Sisters of Battle depending on which group of fans believe the hardest.

[Killax]

21 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

It's clearly either Cthulu Elves or plastic Sisters of Battle depending on which group of fans believe the hardest.

Nahh

[Forgingengineer]

2 hours ago, Auticus said:

Oh good.

More stormcast.

 

Could be an Aelf in stormcast armour...

[Kramer]

39 minutes ago, Auticus said:

But that would still be stormcast.  

But that would also still be an Elf....

[SadGlad]

6 hours ago, Malin said:

It was Ben Johnson who confirmed on live stream, when talking about Blightwar, that there will be no new campaign books in Realmgate Wars style. There will be new, different style campaign books though as they want to experiment with those releases and try some new formats.

This is all IIRC though as it was some time ago. I am almost certain as this was in one of my biggest interest on this stream.

I heard that too. If they do another campaign they will probably do it in a different way. 

Thanks for pointing out the episode it was on ?

Edited October 11, 2017 by SadGlad

[Rogue Explorator]

While GW had a very full release schedule this year, there have been only 5 full army/wave releases of miniatures, of which the greater part of three was for AoS. While Primaris and DG each where arguably larger than any of the AoS ones and the Tzeentch daemons supported both systems, I would still say that put in relation and considering all the other stuff released for the AoS system and setting one can not say that AoS was treated badly this year.

But that still leaves the matter of the total number of armies supported with new miniatures being extremely thin by GWs standart. This was hardly even noticable in 40k, where there is a large amount of already very well supported armies, but I think this was not so great for AoS, that has a lot of very small factions, but only very few really collectible armies with a lot of choices. Hopefully this means that there has been a fair amount of miniature releases pushed back, that we might see in 2018 instead, and not that there is a big policy shift towards fewer army releases per year.

 

As for this weeks rumor egine, I am utterly lost, I can not place those embelishements at all. I want to think Death, but my brain tells me it is more likely to be Ynnari or Adeptus Ministorum.

Edited October 11, 2017 by Rogue Explorator

[Killax]

9 minutes ago, Rogue Explorator said:

This was hardly even noticable in 40k, where there is a large amount of already very well supported armies, but I think this was not so great for AoS, that has a lot of very small factions, but only very few really collectible armies with a lot of choices. Hopefully this means that there has been a fair amount of miniature releases pushed back, that we might see in 2018 instead, and not that there is a big policy shift towards fewer army releases per year.

As above (and offtopic still  ) The easiest route for this still would have been to merge at least some of the sub-sub-Factions, Factions that have no General for example, a single Battleline choice or other very limited options. 

The one thing that is typical and continues to be true is that the larger Factions/Allegiance are actually preforming well. Firestorm-like content also plays a large factor in doing this as it has been a great boost to Grand Allegiances.

Overall though the Warhammer Fantasy line had a lot of collectible armies with a lot of choices, however some of them have simply said been split up too much.

[bsharitt]

15 minutes ago, Killax said:

As above (and offtopic still  ) The easiest route for this still would have been to merge at least some of the sub-sub-Factions, Factions that have no General for example, a single Battleline choice or other very limited options.

I wouldn't mind the many tiny factions so much if they weren't all hampered by all the battleline-if stuff so you can't even put together a grand alliance mishmash of small factions due to lack of battleline. If you want to have all high elfs, I think your only option is Reavers, which are now only sold in Spire of Dawn. Allies don't help if you don't have the troop choices to build a core army to add allies too. I'm working on a Nighthaunt army, but it's going to be spamming a lot hexwraiths and spirit hosts for the 1600 point core of a 2000 point army before allies, so it might stay at 1000 points. Its quite annoying to look at an some units and say "These look neat and I would like to buy them to be the center of my army" only to realize that they're only battle line when taken in a not really viable army so you end up not buying the models. I just want some kind of unit I can add in for a little variety, like some kind of light infantry unit of ghosts. At this point I'd just be happy to get skeletons as an ally. Sorry I'm ranting, but I've really wanted to give GW some cash for a ghost army for a year now, but they're not making it easy.

[chord]

The factions are only an issue if you are only looking for matched play.

I can get the slowdown in releases, high quality art takes time (they are reusing a lot lately), model design takes time to get through the pipeline.  I wonder if they are focusing to much on shadespire,

[PJetski]

Here's how I see the next few months going down for releases:

October: Death Guard & Shadespire

November: Nurgle (AOS) & Necromunda, remaining 40k codexes

December: Chapter Approved, christmas bundle boxes

January+: Deathrattle, Nagash AOS campaign

[Gaz Taylor]

5 hours ago, PJetski said:

Here's how I see the next few months going down for releases:

October: Death Guard & Shadespire

November: Nurgle (AOS) & Necromunda, remaining 40k codexes

December: Chapter Approved, christmas bundle boxes

January+: Deathrattle, Nagash AOS campaign

I suspect November will just be Necromunda, 40K codexes (Craftworlds and Tyranids with new Starts collecting boxes), and the other two Warbands for Shadespire. Don't forget there are still some Death Guard releases to come as well so I think we will see those. So I don't think we will see anything else for AOS (apart from Shadespire) for rest of year  

[Lysandestolpe]

8 hours ago, chord said:

The factions are only an issue if you are only looking for matched play.

I can get the slowdown in releases, high quality art takes time (they are reusing a lot lately), model design takes time to get through the pipeline.  I wonder if they are focusing to much on shadespire,

Yes! The quality of the khadron overlords, stormcast, and tzeentch is just an example of the amazing artistic production GW has now. It takes time to develop. Id rather wait extra momths and get dope ass figures than half assed ones or too many reuse factions. 

 

[bsharitt]

48 minutes ago, Gaz Taylor said:

I suspect November will just be Necromunda, 40K codexes (Craftworlds and Tyranids with new Starts collecting boxes), and the other two Warbands for Shadespire. Don't forget there are still some Death Guard releases to come as well so I think we will see those. So I don't think we will see anything else for AOS (apart from Shadespire) for rest of year  

Isn't the current batch of Death Guard up for preorder the last? Did the Tzeentch stuff for AoS come out along side or right after the Thousand Sons release, or was there a break?

[James McPherson]

I hope a huge Nurgle release is coming with a new Great Unclean one and unified army book for rotbringers, demons and slaves 2 d. Pestigors too ideally. That would be just purrty.

 

[Killax]

12 hours ago, bsharitt said:

I wouldn't mind the many tiny factions so much if they weren't all hampered by all the battleline-if stuff so you can't even put together a grand alliance mishmash of small factions due to lack of battleline. If you want to have all high elfs, I think your only option is Reavers, which are now only sold in Spire of Dawn. Allies don't help if you don't have the troop choices to build a core army to add allies too. I'm working on a Nighthaunt army, but it's going to be spamming a lot hexwraiths and spirit hosts for the 1600 point core of a 2000 point army before allies, so it might stay at 1000 points. Its quite annoying to look at an some units and say "These look neat and I would like to buy them to be the center of my army" only to realize that they're only battle line when taken in a not really viable army so you end up not buying the models. I just want some kind of unit I can add in for a little variety, like some kind of light infantry unit of ghosts. At this point I'd just be happy to get skeletons as an ally. Sorry I'm ranting, but I've really wanted to give GW some cash for a ghost army for a year now, but they're not making it easy.

I largely agree with you there on the Battleline part. I don't know why the rule excists either simply because Horde units are now allready a great deal and you are always likely to include two blocks of Infantry regardless of what army your playing. Offcourse there are exceptions, such as using a lot of Knights with a Knight Hero but the fun fact remains that GH2017 too has accounted for this. What I'm saying is that we indeed are allready capable of running most forces when there is a logical design for it.

In my opinion Death should have become the 4 Sub-Factions they have created in the past as a functional Sub-Faction strategy (up until End Times).
The 4 Sub-Factions I would continue to go for (and thus merge others into) are: 
1. Deathrattle + Deadwalkers, Undead of the "un-altered" variaty (Deadwalkers gain the Deathrattle Keyword)
2. Flesh-Eater Courts, Ghouls
3. Nighthaunt + Deathmages, Spirits (the latter gains the Nighthaunt Keyword)
4. Soulblight, Vampires and vampiric beasts

5. To boost Death in general and give a cool reason to have special characters excist in Death I would then proceed to add Keywords to the Deathlords sub-Faction in the following manner:
A. Arkhan gains the Nighthaunt Keyword (visually this makes sence too)
B. Neferata gains the Flesh-Eater Courts Keyword (visually less obvious except that the Flesh-Eaters in lore very Monarchy inspired...)
C. Mannfred gains the Soulblight Keyword (visually this makes sence too)
D. Morghast gain the Deathrattle Keyword (visually this can work and Deathrattle doesn't have Monsters yet)
E. Nagash obtains the extra rule, Supreme Lord of Death that allows him to be part of any of "Death Allegiances"  without thaking up any Ally points and he can be the General

Without changing a single rule, I believe the above "fix" would directly lead Death into the same competative design found in Order, Chaos and Destruction. In addition, because it visually works out, the narrative has the room for this to work out aswell.
 

9 hours ago, chord said:

The factions are only an issue if you are only looking for matched play.

I can get the slowdown in releases, high quality art takes time (they are reusing a lot lately), model design takes time to get through the pipeline.  I wonder if they are focusing to much on shadespire,

The largest misconception in my opinion is assuming Factions are only an issue for Matched play. In fact, Factions "making sence" has much more to do with the narrative and thus Narrative play aswell. The issue that Death has is that narrative now directly is contracted by the sub-Factions they have recieved.

E.g.
- Nagash cannot lead any Death army that isn't Grand Allegiance Death or Deathlords.
- Manfred is litterly unable to lead a Soulblight army.
- The Mortis Engine is protected by Spectral Hosts and attacks with Tomb Banshees, both of these are Nighthaunt units in narrative, yet the Engine does not have the Nighthaunt Keyword.

If releases are slowed down, I have no issue with that. It leaves time for improving the game in it's consistancy. When this is done the game starts to make more sence and internally improves. Having a great game has very little to do with constant releases of new models  

[Captain Marius]

Something else weird with Death is the Malignant keyword and start collecting set. Did they consider doing a mixed faction and change their minds, or are Malignants what this new Herald bloke will be leading?

Id like to see Allegiance abilities for races like Orruks, Humans and Daemons, and a general increase in units that can be taken in several different factions. I also hope Firestorm has set a precedent for creating Allegiances for a bunch of factions within a Grand Alliance.

[Killax]

8 minutes ago, Captain Marius said:

Something else weird with Death is the Malignant keyword and start collecting set. Did they consider doing a mixed faction and change their minds, or are Malignants what this new Herald bloke will be leading?

Id like to see Allegiance abilities for races like Orruks, Humans and Daemons, and a general increase in units that can be taken in several different factions. I also hope Firestorm has set a precedent for creating Allegiances for a bunch of factions within a Grand Alliance.

I believe that several non-designers too would assume that the Mortis Engine would have had the Nighthaunt Keyword. There really is no ill-will. If you'd ask a 8 year old if that floating chariot was part of the "Spirit Faction" I am certain they would assume so . Small oversights or mistakes happen. It's important to ask GW about it.

The thing really is that AoS is designed generally very well but there are some Warscrolls that seem to lack logical Keywords. In principle this is an issue that could easily be fixed with a small Errata. They are doing it for 40K aswell, all the time really. 

I think that generally speaking the Grand Allegiances cover a lot of those options for the Keyword build armies. In my honest opinion I don't mind this either. I think there is a good sub-Faction creation going on in Age of Sigmar overall. It's interesting to mix all Daemons but at the same time I love how narratively speaking correct most Allegiances are. It's the odd Warscroll out where I'm pointing at.

A mix of just Orruks, Humans or Daemons doesn't really make all too much sence from a narrative standpoint. The fact that Orruks are split up into Bonesplittaz and Ironjawz actually means that they do not have to be a mix visually anymore, this was the case in WFB and leads to vanilla design. With every unit in what is essentially a sub-Faction looking the same. Since WFB's inception we had narrative confirmation that the Armies where split up into Factions, this never visually was recreated up until Age of Sigmar. This is great because it adds logical character.
However going for sub-sub-Factions while narratively speaking and visually speaking the model looks like it should belong in another Faction is less logical, to me at least. This is the case for say the Mortis Engine and many of the Deathlords.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Killax

[Twitch of Izalith]

I wonder if the idea behind the tiny subfactions was to give them lots more options for places to go in the future? Because at the moment it is certainly having an effect on the variety of armies out there. 

e.g. If warherds and brayherds were the same faction I can imagine we would be seeing a lot more brayherd armies - Ambushing ghorgons would be sweeeet 

[Killax]

53 minutes ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

I wonder if the idea behind the tiny subfactions was to give them lots more options for places to go in the future? Because at the moment it is certainly having an effect on the variety of armies out there. 

e.g. If warherds and brayherds were the same faction I can imagine we would be seeing a lot more brayherd armies - Ambushing ghorgons would be sweeeet 

In terms of Brayherds, Warherds and Monsters of Chaos this is also exactly what I was hinting at!

What I believe to date is that Age of Sigmar was a check to see if the Warhammer Fantasy line if at all could generate the same sales numbers as Warhammer 40.000. Since the succes of GH2016 I believe the creators have archieved what they wanted to with Age of Sigmar, however the initial design of Age of Sigmar really incorporated the idea of 4 massive Factions, being the Grand Allegiances (in order to have the possible player give an extreme wide ammount of buyers choice).

Since that inception Age of Sigmar has catched on enough to have several lines carry themselves as sub-Factions, e.g. Stormcast and Blades of Khorne and in my opinion one of the reasons as to why Desciples of Tzeentch was perhaps pushed in competitive design might also have something to do with making them as interesting as possible as a sub-Faction. To the point, where if I recall correctly, they where the first Battletome that contained their own Battle Trait, Command Traits, Artefacts and double Spell Lores.

That was then, now is now however and I hope that GW too sees the potential that is gained in more players catching on the game. I absolutely wouldn't want the Grand Allegiances to dissapear but I do believe that more functional Allegiances (by incorporating more models into them) is another push for the game leading to a great game.

As someone who's played WFB and initially found Age of Sigmar lacking in some of the more "creational aspects" of the game I have been finally able to come back on that due to the excistance of multiple Allegiances. To the point where Age of Sigmar has now actually surpassed Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition in it's competative and creational diversity. With this I mean that Age of Sigmar shows more diverse Tournament results and shows more diverse army builds per 'Faction'.

I'll try to push the topic back onto track though, Death and general Age of Sigmar discussion again has little to nothing to do with Rumours. My apologies.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Killax