The Rumour Thread

[MitGas]

5 minutes ago, Neverchosen said:

I actually feel a little odd about any of the Gods being locked to a specific faction, as I feel like they are representatives of their Grand Alliances with their armies being cults focused on their worship. This is only a real issue with Order at the moment as Kragonos and Nagash are useable across various armies within their Alliance. Alarielle leading a force of atheistic Kharadron in hopes of preserving life and showing that nature has more power than any machine feels like a cool narrative idea. 

I am fine if we never see this idea implemented but I just feel like the manner in which AOS follows many traditional polytheistic myths it would make sense for the Gods to become more involved in each others followers. Like how many Gods got involved in the Trojan War or the Kurukshetra War.

Those aren't proper gods anyways, they're just faction-specific superheroes.  The only true gods are those you will not see on the tabletop as minis!

[Luperci]

17 minutes ago, Neverchosen said:

I actually feel a little odd about any of the Gods being locked to a specific faction, as I feel like they are representatives of their Grand Alliances with their armies being cults focused on their worship. This is only a real issue with Order at the moment as Kragonos and Nagash are useable across various armies within their Alliance. Alarielle leading a force of atheistic Kharadron in hopes of preserving life and showing that nature has more power than any machine feels like a cool narrative idea. 

I am fine if we never see this idea implemented but I just feel like the manner in which AOS follows many traditional polytheistic myths it would make sense for the Gods to become more involved in each others followers. Like how many Gods got involved in the Trojan War or the Kurukshetra War.

the thing is with stuff like alarielle or teclis is that they realistically will not appear anywhere without a host of sylvaneth or lumineth. Nagash is just the lord of all death armies pretty much and kragnos is a solo agent currently. Imo it'd be more interesting to have different gods/avatars within death and destruction. Alarielle could lead a KO force in the lore but not under normal circumstances, it's interesting to me that the different species/races have their own pantheons, it isn't all just one order pantheon.

[Ejecutor]

New Old World Almanac: Old World Almanack – Designer Round Table on How the New Old Lore Was Written - Warhammer Community (warhammer-community.com)

[Lucentia]

There is also a more mechanical issue with cross-faction minis when it comes to game design/general balance.

(Granted, this is a bit if a personal bugbear of mine so do take my grumbling with a pinch of salt, if it were up to me even stuff like cross-faction allies would be heavily or restricted for matched play purposes!)

But having cross-faction centerpieces makes it a lot harder to hit a good internal balance point within a single battletome, cos now you have to write around this other suite of rules which also have to interact cleanly with X other tomes.  Eg.  Every time you write a lore spell in a Death battletome, you have to be careful that it isn't going to interact weirdly when Nagash gets his hands on it.  Or you have to find the right points cost for Kragnos when he could be taken to give an Ogor monsters list 3d6 mortal wound charges or just as a solo combat bruiser in a shooty Kruleboyz list, etc.  It's a tricky thing to get right, and it needs to be gotten right every time a relevant book, scroll, or spell is released or updated.

For what it's worth, my ideal solution would just be to write different, bespoke god scrolls for each book as required, so an OBR Nagash would be a little different to a SBGL Nagash, and could even then be modified for balance separately, but I recognise that's not as satisfying in terms of the narrative.

[Luperci]

15 minutes ago, Lucentia said:

There is also a more mechanical issue with cross-faction minis when it comes to game design/general balance.

(Granted, this is a bit if a personal bugbear of mine so do take my grumbling with a pinch of salt, if it were up to me even stuff like cross-faction allies would be heavily or restricted for matched play purposes!)

But having cross-faction centerpieces makes it a lot harder to hit a good internal balance point within a single battletome, cos now you have to write around this other suite of rules which also have to interact cleanly with X other tomes.  Eg.  Every time you write a lore spell in a Death battletome, you have to be careful that it isn't going to interact weirdly when Nagash gets his hands on it.  Or you have to find the right points cost for Kragnos when he could be taken to give an Ogor monsters list 3d6 mortal wound charges or just as a solo combat bruiser in a shooty Kruleboyz list, etc.  It's a tricky thing to get right, and it needs to be gotten right every time a relevant book, scroll, or spell is released or updated.

For what it's worth, my ideal solution would just be to write different, bespoke god scrolls for each book as required, so an OBR Nagash would be a little different to a SBGL Nagash, and could even then be modified for balance separately, but I recognise that's not as satisfying in terms of the narrative.

Realistically I don't think GW cares enough about balance for this to affect them making cross faction minis. Anything other than a centerpiece they're avoiding making cross faction so that people can't buy something and use it in 2 different armies, they want you to buy that unit again for the other army. I do really like cool interactions with allies, playing chaos in 8th 40k was always fun because you just had so many options with the way they allowed the daemon and god keywords to interact between codexes maybe that had crazy competitive combos I'm not sure I've never played tournament games.

[EntMan]

1 hour ago, MitGas said:

Those aren't proper gods anyways, they're just faction-specific superheroes.  The only true gods are those you will not see on the tabletop as minis!

Sigmar?

[Neverchosen]

1 hour ago, MitGas said:

Those aren't proper gods anyways, they're just faction-specific superheroes.  The only true gods are those you will not see on the tabletop as minis!

I feel like the reacts to your post prove that others aren't ready to accept the truth about our faith:

[Flippy]

1 hour ago, Lucentia said:

For what it's worth, my ideal solution would just be to write different, bespoke god scrolls for each book as required, so an OBR Nagash would be a little different to a SBGL Nagash, and could even then be modified for balance separately, but I recognise that's not as satisfying in terms of the narrative.

It would be very satisfying. The god can be perceived (and appear/materialise) differently for different groups of followers. For the OBR, Nagash can be very unlike Nighthaunt Nagash. How cool it would be if Teclis could appear "in disguise" in other Order factions? Not a levitating deity but a regular-sized model of mysterious wandering elf mage who appears from time to time to aid the Lumineth's allies. 

[Luperci]

8 minutes ago, Neverchosen said:

I feel like the reacts to your post prove that others aren't ready to accept the truth about our faith:

 

[Gaz Taylor]

+++ Mod Hat On +++
 

Back to rumours please.

If you want to discuss other things, start a new topic please 😉

[CommissarRotke]

1 hour ago, Ejecutor said:

New Old World Almanac: Old World Almanack – Designer Round Table on How the New Old Lore Was Written - Warhammer Community (warhammer-community.com)

two very interesting things from this interview:

1. as a lot of us suspected, "From the moment we’d established what the Empire was and what Chaos was, we’d destined Archaon to ascend and destroy that setting." (they are also labeled Empire of Man on the factions sheet which is... Hmm)

2. TK are on the evil side because they explicitly are drawing Good/Evil lines for this time period, more like AOS is. (and tbh TK being more neutral by the end always felt like convenient faction balancing for narrative tourneys)

Tomb Kings are listed among the Forces of Evil – was that always the case?

Jonathan: That’s Tomb Kings down to a T. There was a period in later Warhammer Fantasy Battle where morality got a little more grey, but this isn’t the world of the End Times, or the World-that-Was. This is the World of Legends – it’s where they’re born and come to life. We’ve tried to draw a clearer divide between Good and Evil, and the armies of good are very much the protectors of order.

 Jonathan: It’s difficult to buy the idea that an undying empire of skeletons, ruled over by the ultimate tyrant who in his life wanted to cross every horizon and subjugate everything he discovered… wouldn’t be evil? The mortuary cults and the entire idea of undeath exist because of Settra’s vanity and refusal to die. Nagash wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Settra’s refusal to die. The aggrandisement of self through the grand statuary and hieroglyphic writings of Nehekhara – it’s so self-centred and so selfish and tells us so much about how little the rulers of Nehekhara cared about their subjects that it cannot be anything but evil.

Hoping this means AOS is keeping more of its own flavor... I'm still a bit nervous COS is going to be forced into the same Imperium-vibes instead of sticking to something new (and frankly more interesting!). I don't think we'll properly know where COS is being taken until Dawnbringers finishes and we find out the WHY of the successful campaign.

Edited January 2 by CommissarRotke

[Elbaf]

I heard a great rumor guys, when the Fyreslayers will get a new wave, they won't have a simple "coin of the month" in your local Warhammer Store.

You will have a "Ur-gold rune of the month" that you can hammered into your flesh. Trust me guys, my uncle is a Fyreslayer

 

[Ogregut]

59 minutes ago, Elbaf said:

I heard a great rumor guys, when the Fyreslayers will get a new wave, they won't have a simple "coin of the month" in your local Warhammer Store.

You will have a "Ur-gold rune of the month" that you can hammered into your flesh. Trust me guys, my uncle is a Fyreslayer

 

Wait, you mean people haven't been doing that with the coins already???? 

[DinoJon]

Did we not get a new Rumor Engine today? Was this stated before or it just didn't show up? 

[Ejecutor]

8 minutes ago, DinoJon said:

Did we not get a new Rumor Engine today? Was this stated before or it just didn't show up? 

Since 2016 some weeks have been missed, especially since 2022.

[Ogregut]

3 hours ago, DinoJon said:

Did we not get a new Rumor Engine today? Was this stated before or it just didn't show up? 

They stated at the end of the advent calendar the rumour engine will return the 2nd week of January 

[Boytoy]

@Neverchosen do you know who the artist is for that chaos gods piece? its beautiful

[Neverchosen]

1 hour ago, Boytoy said:

@Neverchosen do you know who the artist is for that chaos gods piece? its beautiful

Unfortunately I am having trouble finding the original artist, but it appears that it was a meme using an Art Nouveau Tarot Card deck unrelated to Warhammer originally. Still it ties to my own fascination in the idea of the way the Chaos Gods are perceived from their own followers as opposed to the perspectives of Order, the Imperium, the Empire or biased Blood Bowl Referees. 

Edited January 3 by Neverchosen

[Ejecutor]

Joy Toy is producing new 40k-based items like crazy lately. Is there any rumour about them giving a go to anything from AoS or WHF/TOW?

[Ogregut]

46 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

Joy Toy is producing new 40k-based items like crazy lately. Is there any rumour about them giving a go to anything from AoS or WHF/TOW?

I hope so, would love a bretonnian Knight! 

Speaking of the large scale figures, dark sphere have a load of the Mcfarlen figures on sale including artist proofs. Picked up a traitor guardsman myself. 

https://www.darksphere.co.uk/c.php?c=2197#142436

[Garrac]

20 hours ago, Ejecutor said:

Btw, the rumour engines site is up with all the data set: Rumour Engines (rumour-engines.netlify.app)

I now need to work on the filtering options. Hope once it is ready would be handy (or even on its current state)

Sadly, none of these looks very skaven-related...

 

Alltho, granted, there werent any REs pointing to Leviathan, so that works as a precedent, I guess

Edited January 3 by Garrac

[Draznak]

8 minutes ago, Garrac said:

Alltho, granted, there werent any REs pointing to Leviathan, so that works as a precedent, I guess

Rumour engines aren't necessarily concentrated on big releases like a new AoS/40k edition (excluding special REs with the pre-Dominion countdown for exemple). These are often ancillary releases.

 

They should not be taken as a reliable indicator of what will be released in the future.

[Garrac]

8 minutes ago, Draznak said:

Rumour engines aren't necessarily concentrated on big releases like a new AoS/40k edition (excluding special REs with the pre-Dominion countdown for exemple). These are often ancillary releases.

 

They should not be taken as a reliable indicator of what will be released in the future.

I was still surprised to not see anything since Dawnbringers, an ancillary release, still has some factions left for "the dozen", so I guess this means we shouldnt expect nothing very big being cooked for skavens in the campaign.

Edited January 3 by Garrac

[Ejecutor]

4 minutes ago, Garrac said:

I was still surprised to not see anything since Dawnbringers, an ancillary release, still has some factions left for "the dozen", so I guess this means we shouldnt expect nothing very big being cooked for skavens in the campaign.

The next book is supposed to be the Chaos one, so maybe a new hero in anticipation for the next ed box as this has happened before with other factions like Nids.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

31 minutes ago, Garrac said:

Sadly, none of these looks very skaven-related...

 

Alltho, granted, there werent any REs pointing to Leviathan, so that works as a precedent, I guess

The Cities release also had 0 rumour engines. It doesn't necessarily mean anything if a faction doesn't appear in them.