The Rumour Thread

[Kramer]

Just now, Carnelian said:

That sounds so wholesome ! But yes

well you gotta sell your ideas  

[Sheriff]

23 minutes ago, Kramer said:

Really hope ogors, or grots with animal partners. Both have everything already just missing a book, and maybe AoS'ifying bits and bobs. An unique playstyle, options for battleline, elites, couple of heroes... Don't think it's likely but we'll see

 

 Yeah what grots are missing is rules that fit their cowardly style. They used to have this with Skarsnik (deal damage when retreating) but he was swatted. Easy to bring back and add more rules like this. 

I play them super cowardly so this is wishful thinking probably. 

GW might surprise us with a whole new monster buddy for grots to exploit. I kind of like them as they are though. Just need a tome with new cawardly abilities and a fix for the flinger warscroll. 

[SaJeel]

2 hours ago, Kramer said:

Really hope ogors, or grots with animal partners. Both have everything already just missing a book, and maybe AoS'ifying bits and bobs. An unique playstyle, options for battleline, elites, couple of heroes... Don't think it's likely but we'll see

 

A few people I 've spoken to have some thought on ogors. How nurgle's counter point was sylvaneth, the ogors line up nicely in a similar fashion, with their wanton excess and their disregard for outward beauty/vanity  

[Cerlin]

I dont see why they do not release mod kits for old armies. Armor, shoulderpads, heads, and weapons in the new style to glue on older model lines. 

I would buy this.

[hobgoblinclub]

17 hours ago, SaJeel said:

All speculation****

So i'd imagine that the Malign Portents is goingto have a major release for each faction indicated by the heroes, For death it will be Night Haunt with the Herlad of Shroud paving the way for them along with a sweet black coach, Chaos will get full DarkOath release, after Nurgle in Feb of course. Order I'm not sure, it might be Aleves, but i could see them pushing them out as the conclusion to the Event, before them, i could see us getting some updates to Freeguild with a new freeguild hero as per the rumor engine, Destruction i have no clue 

The implication at the Blood and Glory seminar was that each of the Grand Alliances were getting their hero model - but that was it. That's how I took it, anyway. 

[Moonlightwolf]

13 minutes ago, hobgoblinclub said:

The implication at the Blood and Glory seminar was that each of the Grand Alliances were getting their hero model - but that was it. That's how I took it, anyway. 

Also they said when designing the allegiance abilities for GH2017 that those were for factions unlikely to be getting battletomes in 2018 so a Nighthaunts release seems pretty unlikely.

[Rogue Explorator]

18 hours ago, SaJeel said:

All speculation****

So i'd imagine that the Malign Portents is goingto have a major release for each faction indicated by the heroes, For death it will be Night Haunt with the Herlad of Shroud paving the way for them along with a sweet black coach, Chaos will get full DarkOath release, after Nurgle in Feb of course. Order I'm not sure, it might be Aleves, but i could see them pushing them out as the conclusion to the Event, before them, i could see us getting some updates to Freeguild with a new freeguild hero as per the rumor engine, Destruction i have no clue 

I doubt the heralds will come with full army releases for their respective faction or subfaction, as we know the Generals Handbook 2017  only gave allegiance abilities for factions that won't get their own battletome anytime soon and both Nighthaunt and Slaves to Darkness where in it.

I think the Heralds will be like most of the Silver Tower heroes, a token representative of planned factions not to be released for some time, to show that GW plans to get to them eventually and preview what direction they are likely to take them.

I am curious to see the order representative, if he is really Free Peoples (likely, given fitting Rumor Mill pictures and Free Guild being in the GHB 2017), since I want to know if he is also Freeguild. We can see from the two Darkoath characters that GW seems to plan taking Slaves to Darkness towards "Chaos Barbarians without Marks", which is quite the departure from previous Slaves to Darkness units that can be "slotted" into any monogod army via marks, essentially meaning there are two very different subfactions within Slaves to Darkness that might not have much synergy with each other. Since I always wondered why Free Peoples are called that when obviously all members of the faction are Freeguild, I think Free People might get a similar treatment, with no future release for them being Freeguild, even though that is all there is to the faction right now.

On the other hand, I have noticed the Darkoath Chieftain is not listed as a Slaves to Darkness unit in the Webstore even though that is his faction, so maybe him being Slaves to Darkness is just a placeholder until Darkoath becomes its own faction, just as "Aelf" propably won't stay the Mistweaver and Shards faction forever. Or its just and oversight.

 

Since we are speculating on next year and Malign Portents, I'll throw my speculation on Death in:

 

I think the next year will see two Death releases, not directly part of Malign Portents, but as part of the likely story developements around the event.

One, and I think the first release for Death will be Deathrattle, propably after the 40k daemons release, but I think even before a possible AoS Nurgle release, so quite early in the year. I think Deathrattle being the first Shadespire release for an unupdated faction is a pretty strong indicator towards this. It also really makes sense that Deathrattle would be strong contender for the first Death release, most GA:Death players are likely to already have a bunch of them already and are likely to pick up more even if they don't plan on playing pure Deathrattle. Judging by Shadespire, GW seems to want Deathrattle to stay rather generic in style and appearance. I've speculated before that we will propably see reinterpretations or redesigns of many of the skeletal units that where removed with Tomb Kings (namely, marksmen both mounted and on foot, the screaming skull catapult, skeleton chariots) since those units are classics of Warhammer and predate Tomb Kings by many years and revitalising and reimagining their classics seems to be something GW really likes to do with AoS. This would make Deathrattle actually the most conventional army with releases for AoS, consisting of large blocks of infantry, supported by traditional cavalry, marksmen and artillery (and maybe some sort of skeletal warbeast). This seems fitting, when we consider Deathrattle being the reanimated remnants of a bygone age.

I also think Deathrattle represent the force Nagash can most reliably and numerously mobilise as per the status quo Malign Portents will start at, so it makes sense to release them on the initial steps of a Storyarc, that is likely Death fokused initially. Which brings us to why I think there will be a second Death release and what it might be.

For all their charm and appeal, a horde of Skeletons just doesn't have that "Wow-Factor" GW tends to go for with AoS. We also know from what little Lore we got on Death in AoS that Nagash is planning something major and this being a Warhammer setting it would be odd if that didn't turn out to be an army. Sekeletons are great for rank and file, but If Nagash wants to get back to being a major player, he needs a force that can go toe to toe with the likes of Stormcast, Ironjaws or the Monogod armies. Morghast are neither numerous, nor varied enough to fill that spot, while we know that Nagash finds Vampires just to unreliable to serve as his spearhead elites.

So it seems likely that at the high point of the Death part of the Malign Portent Storyarc, Nagash releases his big ploy. Determining what exactly that will be, apart from being bigger and more fantasic is hard to say. It could be the literal "Corrupted Death Stormcast" many seem to speculate on, though I think that would be the worst (since least inspired) possible variant. Whatever it is, it will propably involve a corruption or copy of the Stormcast creation process and Nagashs syphoning of Stormacast Souls, but the important question is in what form will he bind and incorporate that power? This could an improved version of previously known Undead, maybe a better kind of Vampire over the old Soulblight Bloodlines or some kind of very fancy Mummy.  But of course, I have my own pet theory: What better use is there for stolen and empowered Soulstuff than sticking it into an undying body of nekromantic infused Stone?

Nagash propably still knows the old tricks of Golem creation from Khemri and the Ushabti, Sphynxes and company where propably the most unique aspect of the old Tomb Kings. What those things lacked was smarts, personality and independent though, but all Nagash is shown to be doing (syphoning Stormcast Souls, meddling with Shardglass) seems perfectly suited to solving that issue. We know from Firestorm that Age of Myth era civilisation had some pretty advanced golems and war collossi. While the undefeatable colossi from Firestorm seem to be almost Godbeast level (i.e. out of tabletop scope), this is a nice setup for armies of unused vessels for the creation of Ushabti like constructs sitting in the crypts and ruins from the age of myth.

It all going down somewhat like this would tick a number of boxes I would expect GW to tick in an initial update for GA:Death. It would explain and soften the full removal of the Tomb Kings range, since the two biggest components of that range (hordes of skeletons and constructs) would be the first Death units to be redesigned and released, leaving only the small lead element of Tomb Kings (Mummies) in limbo. It would implement a larger than life, easily trademarkable and unique to AoS faction that is still anchored in old lore and models. It would give Death players two very different directions to choose from (one a very classical army of wide but generic appeal and one more out there and spectacular, but also of a more narrow appeal, as well as one horde and one elite army). It would also allow GW to pick up some oldies of the genre and their own range and give them on the other side an almost entirely clean slate of a faction to experiment and freewheel on.

 

This is all very unlike to go down exactly like this, but I am pretty confident in these parts of my speculation:

-Deathrattle are first for Death

-They will be quite conventional by AoS standart

-Nagashs big masterplan results in an entirely new faction

-We will see a return of Nekro Constucts at some point, though not necessarily next year or as a standalone faction

4 hours ago, Cerlin said:

I dont see why they do not release mod kits for old armies. Armor, shoulderpads, heads, and weapons in the new style to glue on older model lines. 

I would buy this.

AoS upgrade kits for older kits would be great and I see a lot of space for such kits: Monogod themed Upgrades for Slaves to Darkness, Free City kits for Order, Upgrade sprues for the kitbash units in Flesheater Courts, Bonesplittaz and Beastclaw Raiders. Personally, I would buy a kit to make Skeletons less Vampire Counts looking in a heartbeat, I'm sure there is much more. GW does seem to currently favor Upgrade sprues for wh40k, so there is hoping, though I am afraid the reason they have not done such kits is that they don't expect sufficient demand.

[Skarloc]

From past years experience, is GW releasing new miniatures/products during the second half of December? If not, when is the next pre-order supposed to take place? 6th January 2018?

[Uveron]

2 minutes ago, Skarloc said:

From past years experience, is GW releasing new miniatures/products during the second half of December? If not, when is the next pre-order supposed to take place? 6th January 2018?

Pre-orders 30th Dec, out 6th Jan is what I expect the next set of releases will be.

I expect them on the community site 24th/25th of Dec

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

10 minutes ago, Uveron said:

Pre-orders 30th Dec, out 6th Jan is what I expect the next set of releases will be.

I expect them on the community site 24th/25th of Dec

Nah, doubt it.

Pre-order 9th will be DA (this we know)

Pre-order 16th will be ETB Nurgle/Primaris

Pre-order 23th will be ETP Primaris/Nurgle (basically I HIGHLY doubt they will be released together).

Pre-order 30th will be Orlocks and LC.

 

In the case of them merging the ETBs together (which I don't entirely discard, it makes quite a lot of sense to have them together so kids can buy them for christmas) then the most likely chance is that we see the orlocks and the LC be a separate release with Gee-Dubs making a big announcement around the week of the LC's release along the lines of:  we end the year with AoS, we begin it with MOAR AoS!

[Uveron]

7 minutes ago, KillagoreFaceslasha said:

Nah, doubt it.

Pre-order 9th will be DA (this we know)

Pre-order 16th will be ETB Nurgle/Primaris

Pre-order 23th will be ETP Primaris/Nurgle (basically I HIGHLY doubt they will be released together).

Pre-order 30th will be Orlocks and LC.

 

In the case of them merging the ETBs together (which I don't entirely discard, it makes quite a lot of sense to have them together so kids can buy them for christmas) then the most likely chance is that we see the orlocks and the LC be a separate release with Gee-Dubs making a big announcement around the week of the LC's release along the lines of:  we end the year with AoS, we begin it with MOAR AoS!

Oh Iam not saying it will be anything major. 

But they will want something for the 'Boxing Day' Sales push... 

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

http://cubicle7.co.uk/dom-talks-warhammer-fantasy-roleplay-to-tabletop-gaming-magazine/

 

On the pen and paper news... I can't read almost anything! Is someone subscribed to the magazine? Can someone please give me a summary?

 

EDIT: Actually, they have a legible version on their facebook page. 

Edited December 8, 2017 by KillagoreFaceslasha

[AthlorianStoners]

"The old world means such a lot to so many people..."

they published that?

[Majorkill18]

6 hours ago, AthlorianStoners said:

"The old world means such a lot to so many people..."

they published that?

Why wouldn't they? 

[AthlorianStoners]

1 hour ago, Majorkill18 said:

Why wouldn't they? 

That's some pretty terrible English haha 

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

50 minutes ago, AthlorianStoners said:

That's some pretty terrible English haha 

Well, he's a scotsman,  he doesn't know any better. (just kidding, that's some pretty mediocre editorial there)

[NurglesFirstChosen]

@AthlorianStoners don’t you justs love it when people correct others grammar on the tinternet.....

[Kramer]

12 minutes ago, NurglesFirstChosen said:

tinternet

trolololol

[Riavan]

21 hours ago, hobgoblinclub said:

The implication at the Blood and Glory seminar was that each of the Grand Alliances were getting their hero model - but that was it. That's how I took it, anyway. 

And we have seen 3. Saw the death one at the start. The reaper thing. Saw the darkoath chaos woman and in the newest white dwarf is a new Lord celestant for order. Only destruction is missing. I'm personally hoping for ironjawz.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Riavan

[stato]

1 hour ago, Riavan said:

And we have seen 3. Saw the death one at the start. The reaper thing. Saw the darkoath chaos woman and in the newest white dwarf is a new Lord celestant for order. Only destruction is missing. I'm personally hoping for ironjawz.

Does WD connect the Lord Celestant to Malign Portents?  They didnt on the community release so we've assumed so far he is not connected, ive not got the new WD to check.

[KillagoreFaceslasha]

30 minutes ago, stato said:

Does WD connect the Lord Celestant to Malign Portents?  They didnt on the community release so we've assumed so far he is not connected, ive not got the new WD to check.

No he isn't connected according to WD. He is also for december, when Malign portents is for, at the very soonest, january.

[Sleboda]

6 hours ago, NurglesFirstChosen said:

@AthlorianStoners don’t you justs love it when people correct others grammar on the tinternet.....

Actually, yes I do.

[HorticulusTGA]

On 08/12/2017 at 3:47 PM, Cerlin said:

I dont see why they do not release mod kits for old armies. Armor, shoulderpads, heads, and weapons in the new style to glue on older model lines. 

I would buy this.

Upgrade sprues for Freeguild, Disspossessed, Ironweld Arsenal, etc., or City-themed (with an heraldic book ? Like Firestorm 2.0) would be awesome, and would come along nicely with reboxing (like the new Blood / Dark Angels Primaris kit + sprue). 

Some new heroes sculpts*, some upgrade sprues, round bases, new paint schemes and there you have it:  an AOS themed armies** without too much efforts !

*Like the ones coming in WHQ : Silver tower. (BTW I read somewhere, DakkaDakka (?) some speculation (!) about a new Death themed Warhammer quest, "Black Pyramid", that would be awesome too, also a way to add diversity and new heroes to the Death range, oh well, one can dream ...).

**I really hope the Cubicle7 AOS RPG will bring such details to the Mortal Realms. I am really looking forward to it (and to the WFB one too ofc !)

On 08/12/2017 at 8:14 PM, Rogue Explorator said:

-Deathrattle are first for Death

-They will be quite conventional by AoS standart

-Nagashs big masterplan results in an entirely new faction

-We will see a return of Nekro Constucts at some point, though not necessarily next year or as a standalone faction

Excellent post Rogue Explorator ! I would love to see 2018 going that way. The Malign Portents "banner" could totally be Deathrattle related too, and the "re imagination" of catapults, etc. would be a good way to mix "low" and "high fantasy" esthetics ! As for the second faction you imagine, don't forget the "Reanimant" keyword, only present in Morghasts and all the Tomb King constructs : GW surely has to do something with it...

ANYWAY, I wish December would go faster ; as soon as the ETB Nurgle and Primaris and the Lord Celestant (16/23 dec) are out, I'm sure GW will start teasing Malign Portents and Nurgle properly    Good times ahead !

Edited December 9, 2017 by HorticulusTGA

[Carnelian]

If deathrattle get a full release then i see the skeletons becoming like the dryads are for Sylvaneth - i.e. a link to the old world but massively surpassed by awesome new models that push forwards.

 

[Riavan]

8 hours ago, stato said:

Does WD connect the Lord Celestant to Malign Portents?  They didnt on the community release so we've assumed so far he is not connected, ive not got the new WD to check.

I don't think they said the releases were for malign portents. It just said four hero characters. It's much safer to assume he is one rather than not at the moment. Regardless you are reading into it wayyyy too much for gw.

I feel like if ur hoping for a diff order hero ur in for a bad time guy.

Edited December 10, 2017 by Riavan