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21 minutes ago, Eevika said:

So you know how there is no counter to prayers in AoS. What we truly need is a faction of super Atheists who deny the existance of gods even in these crazy times where gods roam the lands. They would have no buffs in the form of prayers and could not use magic but would have the best anti magic and anti prayer abilities they would use science and technology to fight.  

Battleline: French and German philosophers from 1850-1980.

Behemoth is a giant Dawkins-bot which shouts at everyone the Dracothian didn't create the mortal realms and beastmen are the result of natural selection.... 

More seriously, I think if you combine the ideas in the thread above to get flesh golem crafting mad scientist dwarves who essentially believe they are God because they can create life (sort of) and therefore counter prayers that could be interesting. On the other hand I don't think it's necessarily bad from a game design perspective to keep prayers undispellable because that is the main reason it's different to magic in gameplay. 

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Currently with the sheer number of Gods literally walking around being an Athiest in Age of Sigmar would be challenging.

Could approach it from the aspect of Nulls, those so rooted in reality that their presence stills the primal winds of magic around them, anchoring in what is and denying what could be. A vacuum that drains magic, light, belief from the area, a plague of disbelief that spreads throughout the realms threatening to tear reality apart as what could be bombards localities of what can not.

I'd then make them either aspects of destruction or an off coloured Order, as their very presence would unravel binding magics of daemons and death making their welcome in those factions unlikely. Could even look into them as an ancient society, those that secured realm centres as anti magic hubs, those who walked the realms BEFORE these would be gods arrived, after all to have seen the arrival of a so called god makes it far easier to deny their divinity.

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3 minutes ago, Melcavuk said:

Currently with the sheer number of Gods literally walking around being an Athiest in Age of Sigmar would be challenging.

Could approach it from the aspect of Nulls, those so rooted in reality that their presence stills the primal winds of magic around them, anchoring in what is and denying what could be. A vacuum that drains magic, light, belief from the area, a plague of disbelief that spreads throughout the realms threatening to tear reality apart as what could be bombards localities of what can not.

 I'd then make them either aspects of destruction or an off coloured Order, as their very presence would unravel binding magics of daemons and death making their welcome in those factions unlikely. Could even look into them as an ancient society, those that secured realm centres as anti magic hubs, those who walked the realms BEFORE these would be gods arrived, after all to have seen the arrival of a so called god makes it far easier to deny their divinity.

I would definitely put them in order. I love the idea of a super old and very strict society. Maybe they could have elite witch hunters that try to purge any evidence of magic and gods from the general public of their society

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Yeah you could have them as physical guardians of the natural order, those who saw life spring anew in the Realms before these would be gods came and peverted it to shape in their own image. To have stood on the side lines and bear witness to time and time again these outsiders, these arrogant fools who damned their own worlds breaching the Realms and claiming dominion over all that lived within, centuries watching as the petty egos of these impostors drove once bouyant societies to the very brink of destruction. 

To have witnessed the would-be-godking, and dark mirror in the trickster of death invade, to see the cascading halls of the long rest in Shyish reduced to cages for souls that should have been allowed to simply fade away. These invaders, imposters, outsiders could be no god, there is little divine in their act, instead they are simply tyrants who wear the mask of saviour though it fits them ill.

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I would throw Lion Rangers into the mix, after I basicly have made something fanmade with my Brotherhoods of Korhil in my Project here:

Basicly a monastery order with hunter background, where aelf and lion are building a pack, with monstrous manticorelike Lions as a centerpiece.

 

Even if they are more optical nature I can basicly throw my Maidenguard (a order of women following Allarielle that is completly in the design of Sisters of the Watch and Sisters of the Thorn) or my Tribesmen (tribal followers that are not chaos warshippers, in my case also Allarielle followers)

 

Edited by EMMachine
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1 hour ago, EccentricCircle said:

There is a canonical chaos god of atheism. Necoho only popped up a few times in old world lore but has been mentioned at least once to my knowledge in AoS during the auction short story where one of the other lots is the(un)holy text of his (anti)cult.

How can you be a god of atheism 😂 isnt the whole point not believing in gods

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Had a few thoughts about this over the past few months. Mainly though I keep hitting dead ends when trying to create something genuinely original, not even sure it's possible (or even that desirable to be honest), but we've got most the fantasy tropes well covered from elves, dwarves, orcs and goblins to treemen, lizard creatures and beastmen etc etc.

First I thought something Realm based would be good, after all that's one of the defining features of AoS and they've done a pretty fine job with the Warcry models. But then they're each just a small unit within a specific faction, to do a whole army for each realm would involve a ridiculous amount of time and effort. Or be bland enough that they could work across multiple realms and totally defeating the point. Also kind of goes against the whole 'your dudes' philosophy.

Still did make me think that next time they do a big release of Endless Spells I'd love them to lean in that direction there. I know pretty much most the faction agnostic spells nod to one realm or another but I'd love them to release essentially a 'Super Spell' for each realm in the shape of an elemental that has been brought into being by the Arcanum Optimar and can now be conjured up. Not necessarily Greater Daemon sized but big enough to have that wow factor. My wallet aches when I think how good a unique looking avatar for each realm could look.

Anyway back on track... I think if I was creating something brand new it would have to be a Destruction faction, they're the most underserved right now both in ranges and lore. Order is overstuffed, Chaos is completely covered and Death is ticking along nicely with any new addition likely to be just refinements & developments of existing ideas.

So Destruction but nothing to do with Orks, Goblins or Ogres... The obvious one, that also fills a gap in AoS, would be some kind of insect race, like a magical horde of locusts and their kin that sweep across the realms erasing all traces of civilisation. Maybe they're a magical manifestation of the realms that has been unleashed by the Necroquake and are seeking to restore balance by purging the civilizations that seek to chain, bind and control the realms. It would fill an unexploited niche and if you went with some version of the backstory above would provide an explanation as to why a major new faction has just appeared out of nowhere.

Of course they would essentially just be Fantasy Tyranids. Depending on your point of view I guess that's either a good or bad thing. Would certainly make it easy to introduce them and possibly interest 'Nid players (and also sell a load of models to 40K players looking to kit bash and freshen up their army) but it's not particularly original. So... bit on the fence there.

Some kind of aquatic beastmen, Lovecraftian Deep One analogs could be cool, especially as a foil to the Idoneth. But then again if it stretches credulity having Deep Sea Aelves battling Orruks on the fire plains of Aqshy it'll just be much worse for actual fish men. One best saved for background fluff and Black Library novels perhaps.

Another dedicated airborne faction  would be great and I'm positive that something along those lines will arrive sooner rather than later but in this case I'd say it's probably best developed as an offshoot of existing forces like Grotz or Skaven, so best to leave that to them.

So how about... 

The Dismal Throng

The nightmarish truth behind the fairy tales that Azyrites scare unruly children with. The lords and ladies of foetid fens and miasmic swamps, the masters of the mist shrouded forests where even the children of Alarielle fear to tread, the creatures that inhabit the darkest caves that canny Grotz know to steer clear of.

As civilisation and chaos alike both seek to conquer nature, one to tame it the other to corrupt it, they've pushed further and further into the wilds and now the wilds are pushing back.

Cackling, insane, enraged hag like Baba Yaga's leading the charge from their houses mounted atop giant chicken's feet, will'o'the wips leading the unprepared into the rotten jaws of swamp beasts. Baleful black boginkas, brownies, barghests and bluecaps. Spiteful Bluds that lead men down dismal paths and grind the bones of children into paste. Rusalkas that will drag you to a watery grave.

Grimm Dark Stories come to horrible life.

Oh yes and a Gingerbread House as a terrain piece...

Edited by JPjr
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     Loving @JPjr‘s Dismal Throng idea of nature pushing back but personally I’d  replace (most of) Baba Yaga & Co with Warhammer’s other true original race: Fimir. It could also go hand in hand with my (never gonna get it) wishlist item of Dual GA factions. They’re destruction and can play organically or in soup armies but could also ally into Sylvaneth armies just like wanderers. I always loved the originality of the fimir even when their fluff was seriously disturbing, they deserve a comeback with. 

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The other week my friend and I came up with an idea for a new Death faction, largely at random.

We were speculating on what the next death army might be, now that they've battletomed all the current ones. I pointed out that it would likely be something based around an existing aspect of the death range, since the grand alliance didn't have much space for ideas that weren't routed in halloween iconography and universal horror tropes. I randomly suggested an idea for a new faction not based on that kind of lore, which would be unique to warhammer, sugesting that it wouldn't resonate in the same way that nighthaunt of ghouls do. However after about five minutes of brainstorming we thought that the concept might actually be cool:

So I present:
The Dreaded Barogoths

A Shrieking wail echoes through the Shyishan night. There is a clattering of bone and a gnashing of uncounted teeth. Blood warriors grip their axes tighter, and try not to show any fear in the sight of their fellows, but it is no use, for they know that not even the blessings of their gods can save them now. The Barogoths come.

Nagash is a jealous god, and can abide no stealer of souls. His wars against Sigmar and the Aelven soul thieves are justly famous, but few in the free cities know of the terrible powers which he has set against his oldest and direst of foes; the Ruinous Powers themselves.
The Barogoths are terrible spirits, spawned at the height of the age of chaos to steal back those souls which are bound for the Skull Throne of Khorne. From a distance they resemble massive floating skulls, with blazing eyes of amethyst fire, and gnashing teeth. Those few who have passed close to one and survived report that each giant skull is made up of a swarm of normal sized skulls, all wailing and gnashing as they fly across the skies of the realms in grisly murmurations.

The countless eyes of a Barogoth are ever on the look out for the followers of the Blood God, and descend upon the warriors and daemons of Khorne with brutal savagery. Blood Warriors are torn limb from limb, while the largest Barogoth titans are able to send a bloodthirster back to the realm of chaos. When the dust settles every skull and bone is swept up in the tide of amethyst energy, and becomes a part of the Barogoth swarm, swelling its size as it seeks out the next foolish band to have sold their souls to Khorne.

Units:
Barogoths: Giant skulls made of skulls which fly around in packs of three.

Barogoth Titan: Huge centrepiece model

Bone Swarms: Smaller undead elementals with razor sharp shards to tear their enemies limb from limb.

Howling Skulls: Have some sort of ranged attack or scream.

Bone Bailiffs: Collect the souls and someone strip the mark of Khorne from them before sending them back to Nagash's jailers.

 

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I think Death and Destruction could do with some armies which don’t connect  With their main god. Gloomspite proved this. Would liketo see some Vampire Aristocats, Counts and Nobles return .

 

Death Knights

I always liked the hidden Vampires which held sway over a number of peasents and knights. Give them an AoS twist by dotting them amongst the Realms and see what Vampires from the Realm of Shadows and the Realm of Life might look like.  Maybe their could be Knightly orders (a la Brettonia and Blood Knights) that travel between the Realms in a Garish crusade.

Vampire Knight Heroes 

Vampire Dragon Lord

Vampire Knights Blood Dragons and alternate Build (Von Carstein styled Zlight cav?)

Heavy Cavalry mounted on Constructs or even Zombie Gryph’s

Black Knights.

Peasents, somewhere inbetween the zUnmade Warband and Necromunda Cawdor

 

Terrain could be  reliquary of sorts with Chalices, gold and a big old Banner (of Drachenhoff of course) 

 

 

Void Watchers

I’d also like see the Old Ones Return  trying to press a big old Reset button. Might be one or two Rogue Old Ones and now completely mad from aeons of traveling in the Dark Abyss. They no longer care for their plans and see all their designs as failures. Theirs armies are automatons of stone and of flesh and they have with them younger, and Cruel Slann that fill the role of Mages and of Haemonculus. The Goal of the Void Watchers  is to wipe out life in all it forms. 

 

Old Ones Multi build kit, I always fancied the Old Ones of looking like Axolotols or even Giant Salamnders and given the same features. I’d say around Treeman sized with plents of dwirly bits to make it look floating, No Palanquin but does have Plaques and Floating masonry, because... I’d imagine them heavily scarred and with plenty of Alien stone weaponry.

Slann Hunter, Thinner and walking, plenty of barbed guns and other strange eldar looking weapons, no where near as strong  as Seraphon Slann but do have some psychic and magical abilities.

Void Guardians, Crystal/stone Ushabti styled creatures, some made offensive, some made defensive, Monstrous unit.

Star Horror, a hidious creature made from Stone and left over Seraphon, like a walking Talos engine with many stone legs, scales and enough black mayan style stone as you can fit intot he design. 

Edited by Kronos
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1 hour ago, Kirjava13 said:

Skulls made of skulls? Peak Warhammer.

That was the idea!

Ultimately the line would expand to have specific undead counters to each of the Chaos Gods, so a sterilizer, which eradicates Nurgles rot, but other life in the process; and an anti magic unit to take down Tzeetchian horrors etc. Not quite figured out what each thing should be, but I'm going to keep tinkering with it!

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Back in Warhammer Fantasy, I always wanted to see an eastern/samurai type army. 

Now that we are into AoS, they would maybe be from Ghyr? They harness the elements,  so their playstyle could be really depend / be buffed by their environments aka what realm they are in. ( not just magic ) fight alongside crazy beasts and Oni-like creatures and although not super strong themselves, they are discipled with martial prowess. They are part of different clans that signify different principles ( with designated colours and symbol ) but work harmoniously to acheive goals. Not sure what to call them yet but here are some thoughts...

Heros:

Jade Priestess standing a top a Jade Dragon ( think like cloud serpent ) 

Master Elementalist atop a Beast of Ago ( 47 Ronin reference ) give some antlers or something crazy

Simple Elementalist 

Monk type heros (glass cannons essentially) 

Elites:

Oni type beasts - bit bigger than an ogor, 3 to a unit. Heavy hitters

Samurai Cavalry - riding tigers...? Two headed tigers...( land of lore 3 reference ) or Battlecats... 

Heavy armored samurai - think of the movie suckerpunch

Battleline: 

Longbowman

Female warriors - kinda what they have just done with the cypher lords... Just but look more like nobushi from For Honor game

Monks

Ninjas... Obviously. Cool to set them up in Ambush or like wise rules

That's what I have so far. Maybe a bit stereotypical in some areas but I haven't thought about this in a while and ideas are flooding back to me. Some things I have not explained in as grandeur detail as I feel I should but I always thought this has been an area unexplored by GW and would love to see their take on it. 


Cheers! 

 

 

 

Edited by Heer_Wolffgang
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Man, I know this is going to sound underwhelming......but just plain Order humans (maybe with allied normal dwarfs). I mean, given them a cool AoS spin, but I want to see the normal folk who do the majority of the fighting across the realms against the incursions of Chaos, Death, and Destruction.

I would really like if they went for the cool gold armored gladiator aesthetic shown the big Order vs. Chaos art piece that functions as the banner of Warscroll Builder, but In the end I'm just really curious to see what these folks look like.

My personal take on the faction would be a well armored and armored faction of humans with some dwarf support.

Unit wise:

Battleline infantry (Human heavy infantry unit, Sword or spear and shield)

Battleline militia (poorly armored and equipped humans that are very cheap)

Battleline riflemen (Armored humans with dwarf built rifles)

Elite Infantry (Human infantry with a focus on being defensive and being hard to move, maybe some sort of bodyguard rule for characters near by. Two handed weapon or Sword and Shield options)

A new dual build artillery kit
A dual build golem/robot kit (dwarf engineering of course)

A dual build walker kit with human and dwarf crew

A spattering of characters

Add in the old Dispossessed and dwarf Ironweld stuff and I'd call it a Battletome.

But that's just off the cuff. I'd really just be happy to see what the average fighting force of the realms looks like. As much as I like the old Empire stuff, 16th century Germans just look out of place next to all the craziness that come with the new AoS factions.

 

 

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Pretty simple idea from me. I'd like to see a human mercenary race with a greek/hoplite aesthetic, which can be marked either chaos, order, death or destruction with different allegiance abilities for each. I cant really elaborate more because i'm not creative enough :P 

Edited by Olincay
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there's also a part of me that if I could run the universe as a simulation and then ctrl+z and roll it back would like to see GW release a faction with a name not so subtly insulting whoever owns them, is made up of models that literally look like bits of Play-Doh crudely sculpted by a child into rudimentary piles of 💩 and is released at a premium price BUT with game breakingly powerful stats and abilities and who are effectively an auto-win at tournaments.

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On 7/15/2019 at 1:32 PM, Kirjava13 said:

Atheists in Discworld tend to attract a disproportionate amount of thunderbolts. I can imagine it being quite similar in the Mortal Realms...

Haha and depending on your choice of words an ape would also be sure to appear. Curious what that equivalent is 😂 

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Since there's a big push for a Flying/ship battle game, and Order has Overlords, Chaos has Tzeentch skysharks and Discs, and Destruction has Gitz of some sort, there has to be a Death faction, and why not Flying Pirate Undead?

Playstyle: Like to get in your face and cause damage, but are very weak and thus, have a suicidal playstyle. Lucky they're undead, so there's a chance they'll just pop up after death

Ability Gimmick: Whenever a model dies on the board, gain 1 Dead Point. At the end of your turn, you may respawn a unit you have based on the number of DP earned. Since the captain will only respawn loyal crew,  it has to be units that were previously a part of the battle (Dead Points generate in such a way that a unit has to kill it's worth in models before it has a chance to respawn) 

Units include:

  • Dreadsoul Airship. The bread and butter of the army. Think ship lifted by souls like the Mortis Engine, but Piratey. It's designed not as a standalone vehicle, but to hold any number of crew, heroes, or Artillery pieces which can fire from inside it. Think less of a one big model that does X,Y,Z, but a open container of hitpoints who's damage is done by whatever is inside and offer it a good save (3+, vs a standard 6+ for the whole army). Since everything inside is dead, when it crashes, things just get out, reassemble themselves, and start fighting again.
  • Undead Scavengers - A battleline troop with pirate swords, old fashioned flintlock pistols, and pirate style grenades. Designed to be mediocre in CC, but with dangerous shooting in the 8"-12" range.
  • Grenadiers - A five man unit who specialize in taking down other airships and high armor targets.
  • Snipers - Long Ranged shooters that set up on one end of the battle field and pick off a model at a time.
  • Booty Haulers - A small collection of treasure carried by six to eight skeletons. It lures mercenaries and battleline toward it causing those units to squabble amongst themselves in trying to grab the treasure, while not realizing they're being stabbed by the crew hauling it.
  • Medium sized Undead Vulture two-pack. One carries Zombies Plague Bombs, while the other is ridden by Skeletons throwing  Fire Bombs.
  • Artillery! A two pack kit that builds either a monster-downing cannon, or a volley of shotgun spray.
  • The Zomblimp. What happens when things die? They start to expand with gasses? What happens if those gasses don't rupture? You tie a basket at the bottom and crew it with more zombies. Unlike something smaller, this one is designed to be a suicide bomb for big models and 40 man squads alike
  • Duelist: A Combat fighter that can go toe to toe with most other foot heroes
  • Gunnery Chief: Hero that buffs Artillery and Shooting. 
  • Captain: One who's experience helps rule the skies. Movement Buffs for self and other models.
  • The Black Terror. A Large Skeletal Vulture ridden by Captain Nobeard, fiercest undead pirate in the mortal realms.
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