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Squatting Watch: Alerts for Discontinued Models


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10 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Pretty close to all the discontinued models will “count as” as units that are staying which will make them work as part of the Cities of Sigmar book which means people will still be able to use those models. Of course that assuming keyword changes  which means that they no longer work in their current factions. 

There is precedent for discontinued models/faction to remain in the rules system.  In fact most of them have the only ones who seem to have totally vanished are the Gitmob. The Greenskins are still a full faction and the GH19 was released after they were discontinued. 

There’s plenty of precedent for these models to remain usable as themselves for at least another year and for longer as “counts as” 

GW does not even allow Empire cannons as Ironweld cannons. Officially there is no counts as.

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Just now, zilberfrid said:

GW does not even allow Empire cannons as Ironweld cannons. Officially there is no counts as.

Most people don't adhere to this standard. In their own branded stores they can enforce this sort of rule, but in any FLGS or home game you are free to do whatever you as players agree to do. Unless you can only play at an official GW store in your area, there's no real compelling force to do this, especially if it quashes the enjoyment of the game and prevents people from playing.

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In some ways this makes a lot of nice design space for new armies. And if we are all real with ourselves we have to understand that they can't keep things forever. And some of the models really ought to go...

I'm just sad on the implementation. For example, the skycutter as a single model would have made an awesome mercenary with the +1 to wound changed to all allies, and would let them keep a few of the newest model kits.

I also fully expect them to endorse using all the different elf spearmen as soon sort of generic speamen. Ditto swordmasters. I expect black guard to get the axe and be folded into the more popular pheonix guard for example.

I'm surprised they didn't drop that random foot general though.

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2 minutes ago, overtninja said:

Most of the old armies, including the ones being discontinued, got updates to their model ranges in 8th edition - and tellingly, those are the very same models that are staying. HE got the shaft because the new stuff they received went to other factions (SotW went to Wanderers, for instance, and they are a dual kit with Shadow Warriors, who are also staying, and Dark Riders share a kit with Doomfire Warlocks - Wood, Dark and High Elves were allied in the End Times). Goblins kept all their 8th edition kits and got all new squigs and - I'd say they are roughly 2/3 new models.

It is perhaps more useful to look at what models are being kept and how they form the basis of what might be made in the future rather than look at what is entirely new, because as you said, most armies are based on 8th edition WHFB minis rather than completely new. I suspect that at the time they were being sculpted AoS was already known to be a thing internally, and they were producing dynamically-posed kits with the intention of making the transition into rounded bases - but this is speculation on my part.

I think the general they kept is older than the general we lost.

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10 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

GW does not even allow Empire cannons as Ironweld cannons. Officially there is no counts as.

Yeah there is, there was even a list of suggested count as units. I’ve used (appropriately modelled, based, and painted) counts as in WHW tournaments, independent events and on Warhammer Tv.

 

Edited by Ollie Grimwood
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1 minute ago, zilberfrid said:

I think the general they kept is older than the general we lost.

It might be that the general they kept is the Greatsword dude - perhaps they have plans for a greatsword-specific hero. Most likely, he was the only non-Old-World-Empire-branded general in the range. Hopefully they'll make a few clampack characters to replace the ones that have been retired, it's quite a large number.

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7 minutes ago, overtninja said:

and tellingly, those are the very same models that are staying.

White lions, skycutter, war altar, loremaster, freeguild archers? All newer than things that formed the core of most of AoS factions.

 

10 minutes ago, overtninja said:

It is perhaps more useful to look at what models are being kept and how they form the basis of what might be made in the future rather than look at what is entirely new, because as you said, most armies are based on 8th edition WHFB minis rather than completely new. I suspect that at the time they were being sculpted AoS was already known to be a thing internally, and they were producing dynamically-posed kits with the intention of making the transition into rounded bases - but this is speculation on my part.

I mean, that would make a lot of sense, but makes skycutter's removal even weirder. People were complaining it doesn't fit WFB aestethic, it *did* fit AoS, had a place in lore, together with shadow warriors, formed basically a core of a minor faction being a dual kit, and the model was one of the last ones made for WFB.

I mean, I was weary of potential unit removal and it was literally only old WFB unit I bought as is and without plans of using it as counts-as something else because it was so reasonable to assume this one stays.

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2 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Yeah there is, there was even a list of suggested count as units. I’ve used (appropriately modelled, based, and painted) counts as in WHW tournaments, independent events and on Warhammer Tv.

 

Could you point me to the list? I am a serial converter, and don't want to be at the whim of a store manager.

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3 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Could you point me to the list? I am a serial converter, and don't want to be at the whim of a store manager.

I'm looking for it myself, but in general, as long as you use mostly GW bits (and not, say, other model ranges for the base of your model), you make it easy to tell what your model is supposed to be, you keep it basically the same size (certainly the same base size, but also not too tall or stretching too far or whatever), it shouldn't be a problem. I do a lot of conversions myself - if you are in doubt, ask your store manager what is appropriate and show them examples of what you intend to do and get their feedback. I've had no problems in any store with my dudes - though I mostly do kitbashing and greenstuff modifications, rather than custom-building anything.

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8 minutes ago, dekay said:

White lions, skycutter, war altar, loremaster, freeguild archers? All newer than things that formed the core of most of AoS factions.

 

I mean, that would make a lot of sense, but makes skycutter's removal even weirder. People were complaining it doesn't fit WFB aestethic, it *did* fit AoS, had a place in lore, together with shadow warriors, formed basically a core of a minor faction being a dual kit, and the model was one of the last ones made for WFB.

I mean, I was weary of potential unit removal and it was literally only old WFB unit I bought as is and without plans of using it as counts-as something else because it was so reasonable to assume this one stays.

For the ones you list above, outside the Skycutter, which is indeed a strange thing to cut, the rest have very significant overlap rules-wise and in general armament to other units within their own ranges and across the Elf/Dwarf/Human ranges, which is why I suspect they are being cut. Also, The War Altar is festooned with so much Old-World imagery, and features a long-dead Old-World hero, that discontinuing it is entirely justified.

The Skycutter's removal is a bit of a mystery, though. I'd guess they want to keep the things with wings and birds as a Stormcast aesthetic, and the mechanical flying things as a Dwarf aesthetic. If they are planning on entirely integrated forces, the role overlap makes cutting it pretty simple. On top of that, it is a ranged shooting chariot, so it's a bit confused on what it wants to do - Ben-Hur things, or shoot them? Kind of like the Ballista Shark for the Idoneth - rather confused about what it wants to do (though more obvious in the shark's case). 

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17 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Could you point me to the list? I am a serial converter, and don't want to be at the whim of a store manager.

They’re in the Warscroll Compendiums which are still available on the App. Though for anything I’d say  just speak with your TO or opponents I’ve never had an issue with count as or conversions but I am careful not to model for adavantage 

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1 hour ago, dekay said:

I'm asking absolutely honestly and don't want to sound antagonising, really, I just want to know your line of thought better:

Do you have a gripe with ogre cavalry units, savage orcs, black orcs, witch elves and other khainites, dryads and treemen, ghouls and strigoi vampires, vampire counts and skeletons, hexwraiths and spirits, lizardmen, skaven, beastmen and daemons of all four gods being kept and expanded into AoS factions as well? If not, what makes a difference for you?

Because when I thought about it, only AoS factions not based on old WFB kits are the Stormcast, Idoneth, Kharadons and Fyreslayers. 

To clarify, my gripe is that GW waited this long to squat old models that they did not plan on supporting through the life span of AoS.

I've always viewed AoS as a separate game from WHFB and found the presence of many old but unsupported armies to be confusing and messy. This wave of squatting cleans up some but not all of that mess. It should have occurred 3-4 years ago though.

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2 hours ago, Zanzou said:

You should have told that to GW before they decided to release (and even officially rebox and rebase many of them) ancient models with officially branded "AoS" support... only to remove that "support" after such a short time in AoS.  THAT is on GW. For the time that many of these models had in AoS, the rules for them were a complete joke and people here said things like "don't worry, just wait until they get a battletome before you complain about your investment"... That did not age well.

 

Pretty sure the standard advice has always been 'don't buy an army that doesn't have a battle tome', not 'buy the models and then hope a battle tome comes out'.

I am also a new player but it took me a whole 5 minutes to figure out I should not be buying the old model lines that aren't properly supported.

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13 minutes ago, 123lac said:

To clarify, my gripe is that GW waited this long to squat old models that they did not plan on supporting through the life span of AoS.

That is absolutely correct. If High Elves disappeared together with Tomb Kings and Bretonnia, no would be complaining now and the rage wave of the first squatting would by only marginally stronger than it already was. Also, we'd avoid the entire Dawnspire fiasco that way.

9 minutes ago, 123lac said:

Pretty sure the standard advice has always been 'don't buy an army that doesn't have a battle tome', not 'buy the models and then hope a battle tome comes out'.

I am also a new player but it took me a whole 5 minutes to figure out I should not be buying the old model lines that aren't properly supported.

It's actually a problem touching mostly people who started playing in early days of AoS. First GHB or so. Nearly no one had a battletome at that point but it was clear that old factions are being rebuilt into something new. The choice of battletome only factions was, limited to say the least and we can't reasonably expect people to ignore 90% of the model line and play one of the 4 or so battletome armies. Most of the ones frustrated now seem to come from that generation.

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11 minutes ago, 123lac said:

Pretty sure the standard advice has always been 'don't buy an army that doesn't have a battle tome', not 'buy the models and then hope a battle tome comes out'.

I am also a new player but it took me a whole 5 minutes to figure out I should not be buying the old model lines that aren't properly supported.

What about if they got mercenary rules in a suppliment document like the Generals Handbook less than 1 month ago? 

That did for the dwarven cannon model. 

 

The other thing is many of those armies are not dead to those who played them; high elves, for example, have been around probably as long if not longer than Space Marines. They weren't just some shoe-horned in army they were a core main force from the game with 30 years history behind them. That's kind of the issue; esp since many of the retired models were not old or replaced with updated sculpts etc... 

Eg dwarven infantry you can see that they removed the old designs but kept the newer models. 

 

Also several of the wood elf models were shown in promotional material for the new free cities battletome announced only a week or two ago. 

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3 minutes ago, Overread said:

What about if they got mercenary rules in a suppliment document like the Generals Handbook less than 1 month ago? 

That did for the dwarven cannon model. 

 

The other thing is many of those armies are not dead to those who played them; high elves, for example, have been around probably as long if not longer than Space Marines. They weren't just some shoe-horned in army they were a core main force from the game with 30 years history behind them. That's kind of the issue; esp since many of the retired models were not old or replaced with updated sculpts etc... 

Eg dwarven infantry you can see that they removed the old designs but kept the newer models. 

 

Also several of the wood elf models were shown in promotional material for the new free cities battletome announced only a week or two ago. 

For the cannon, yeah that's weird, but you can always use it as a "counts as" for a similar type of artillery.

High Elves were part of WHFB, AoS is a separate game in a separate universe. Personally I am 10 x more excited by what they might do with the light elf faction from Hysh than seeing them try to keep an ancient model line fresh.

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1 minute ago, 123lac said:

For the cannon, yeah that's weird, but you can always use it as a "counts as" for a similar type of artillery.

High Elves were part of WHFB, AoS is a separate game in a separate universe. Personally I am 10 x more excited by what they might do with the light elf faction from Hysh than seeing them try to keep an ancient model line fresh.

For all the argument that AoS is a new game - its really not. It's a new lore based off the old; its a new rules system but its entire roster is basically from the Old World. Only the KO and Stormcast are totally unique to it and of them really only the Stormcast are AoS specific (Old World Dwarves had most of the tech that KO display, it was just banned tech so airships and such were not used in great numbers - however the Gotrek and Felix series features a massive airship; whilst Man O War had dreadnoughts and airships a plenty for the Dwarves). 

AoS cannot lose its Old World connections at all. 

 

I agree cutting down the line of models to a more sensible number of factions leaves GW open to adding new factions; that is a good thing in so much as they can add the forces they've hinted at for a long while. IT's also a good thing because the "At launch" display of AoS was an utter mess and had far too many factions to ever support. I just think that GW could have done it a little better - a Free Cities with dwarves and men and than an Aelves book as well; though that likely still would have had nearly as many cuts as we've seen now. 

Thing is some of the choices were just odd - dragons and skycutters and such are very modern kits and big iconic ones that were popular. In addition they fantastically fit into the high fantasy world of AoS. 

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41 minutes ago, 123lac said:

For the cannon, yeah that's weird, but you can always use it as a "counts as" for a similar type of artillery.

Counts as what, exactly?

  • Not the empire cannon, that's already gone (and GW said it could not the other way around).
  • Ballista's would be weird (and the elf ones are probably also gone now, so the only ones left are Sigmarines).
  • Rocket launchers? They don't even look halfway alike.
  • It does not look remotely like a gyrocopter, gyrobomber, gun hauler, frigate, steam tank or ironclad.

And that is all there is for order artillery.

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7 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Counts as what, exactly?

  • Not the empire cannon, that's already gone (and GW said it could not the other way around).
  • Ballista's would be weird (and the elf ones are probably also gone now, so the only ones left are Sigmarines).
  • Rocket launchers? They don't even look halfway alike.
  • It does not look remotely like a gyrocopter, gyrobomber, gun hauler, frigate, steam tank or ironclad.

And that is all there is for order artillery.

For now. Can't have greywater fastness without cannons.

Greywater_Fastness.jpg

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I disagree with the idea that "redundancy" played any real role in deciding what was cut, the cuts only make sense when looking at the individual factions and not Cities as a whole, which is still going to be a messy soup book with lots of redundant choices and overlapping roles.

High Elves got the axe, straight up. They didn't keep even their newer kits because the faction itself was removed. The only thing that stayed were Shadow Warriors (which share a duel kit with Wanderers) and Phoenix Temple, which was either kept because they wanted the phoenixes for Teclis/Tyrion later, or possibly just because one of the seven cities is Phoenicium itself.

Dark Elves on the other hand, not even touched. I'll just let this stand for the contrast with High Elves, and point out that a lot of their units still overlap heavily with what Wanderers kept. 

Wanderers and Dispossessed got their oldest models removed, which is fair enough, and I  expect they will both get armybooks (Soonish, in the case of Wanderers) but it does destroy them as playable armies until then, unless you just happened to have enough other models to hobble along as a Cities force and find that an acceptable alternative.

Free Guild, you can mostly follow the logic of what was kept, (stuff that was old, not plastic or too Karl Franzy) and other cuts seem a bit random and arbitrary for the time being. They were also pretty obviously the only faction in the book that got to keep a lot of old models, because they are actually meant to remain somewhat playable.

Reactions are going to vary a lot depending on what people played and for how long. High Aelf players are done, all they can do is convert everything or ebay their army and hope Hysh Aelves are cool. Dark Aelf players can just keep on trucking, Free Guild players can largely grit their teeth and keep going unless they were unfortunate enough to go heavy devoted of Sigmar or what have you, Wanderers and Dispossessed players are in an unfortunate middle ground of either trying to retool their army and wait for updates or just give up entirely.

Personally, I'm not in any of those camps, I was tempted by High Aelves but fortunately stayed away, I grabbed a few boxes of Wanderers recently and that decision has paid off, Kurnothi will probably be out by the time I'm ready to start painting them up, and I never owned any Dispossessed/Dark Aelves/Empire. I'm always sympathetic to those who have lost models and armies though, knowing the money and time I put into my own projects.

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1 hour ago, zilberfrid said:

Counts as what, exactly?

  • Not the empire cannon, that's already gone (and GW said it could not the other way around).
  • Ballista's would be weird (and the elf ones are probably also gone now, so the only ones left are Sigmarines).
  • Rocket launchers? They don't even look halfway alike.
  • It does not look remotely like a gyrocopter, gyrobomber, gun hauler, frigate, steam tank or ironclad.

And that is all there is for order artillery.

Defo the rockets, angle the barrel up and its a howitzer. The model comes with shell rather than shot anyway.  With a little modelling you could even make it into a mortar 

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46 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Counts as what, exactly?

  • Not the empire cannon, that's already gone (and GW said it could not the other way around).
  • Ballista's would be weird (and the elf ones are probably also gone now, so the only ones left are Sigmarines).
  • Rocket launchers? They don't even look halfway alike.
  • It does not look remotely like a gyrocopter, gyrobomber, gun hauler, frigate, steam tank or ironclad.

And that is all there is for order artillery.

Why not have it count as a rocket launcher. Its an artillery piece which isn't accurate but can do a ton of damage. That could be a cannon. It's not perfect, but noone is not going to misunderstand what it does and have a bad play experience.

Almost all the rest have easy and intuitive understandable proxies with the remaining stuff. Again not perfect, but by no means a disaster. If they don't racially keyword the warscrolls they won't even be proxies, they will just be the thing. Here's my attempt at a list (apologies to anyone who has already done this somewhere on the forum):

Tiranoc chariot - scourgerunner chariot aka elf horse chariot

Lion chariot - drakespawn chariot aka elf monstrous chariot

Lion ranger - wildwood rangers

Glade guard - darkshards or even upgrade to shadow warriors or sisters of the watch

Spell-weaver/archmage  - sorceress aka elf magician probably best, human wizard variants wouldn't be a problem for me though

Archmage or noble on dragon - sorceress/dreadlord

Swordmasters - greatswords/executioner

skycutter - freeguild general on Griffon if high warden variant or (ok so this is a stretch) grundstock gunhauler if you have the ballista variant

dragon blades - probably drakespawn knights aka elven heavy cav, dark riders or wildwood riders at a push

wood elf heroes /dragon knight heroes - whichever other foot heroes you want really. No reason you couldn't have an elven freeguild general.  Other wood elf heroes will sub for nomad prince, waystrider makes a perfectly good assassin.

Gunmaster - cogsmith

organ gun - volley gun

thunderers/dwarf warriors/quarrelers - just their direct human equivalents

unforged - fyreslayer doomseeker i guess, either that or a warden king on spring break
warrior priests/witch hunter - excelsior war priests

war alter would have to be a lumiark or hurricanum i suppose. Both have bolts of smiting and holy aura's of some description, so again not unintuitive from a gameplay persepctive. 

Just now, Ollie Grimwood said:

Defo the rockets, angle the barrel up and its a howitzer. The model comes with shell rather than shot anyway.  With a little modelling you could even make it into a mortar 

agreed, was writing the post above!

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5 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

I am a new player, drawn to the humans on the side of good, which is a common thing for new players. Stormcast are 10 ft tall posthuman instruments of their god, and really don't fit the "normal dudes fighting monsters" trope, so I went with Freeguild. Did not expect to lose the general pictured in the warscroll, used in 90% of all Freeguild armies and the only option for the merc group.

I do not think it is fair to discontinue at this point, that point was four years ago.

Problem is if they had discontinued all the non AoS armies 4 years ago there wouldn't have been much variation to play the game with. GW brought out AoS to allow them to bring out new things, the legacy armies were just holding until they started to fill out the ranges, They are at that point of a lot of AoS specific factions and models now. I really think this cull creates space for new dwarf/human/elf kits in the future which will be more AoS themed so I think you'll get a AoS flavoured human faction and kits. I'm saying this as a dwarf collector - I expect another new Dwarf faction in the future around the Hammerer and Iron breaker kits. I'm sure the human forces will get something similar in the future. It sucks now but you never know what they have planned in the future. When AoS first dropped I saw that dwarfs were a legacy faction so I put them away. Then Kharadrons came out and I love them- which I didn't expect at all. They want to bring you new things which touch on previous tropes.. hang in there and see what comes up. The thing I like about AoS now is its quite vibrant in terms of releases.. 40k is basically now Chaos vs Imperium..I think a new AoS human faction could be excellent and the kits they are keeping might be the basis of those future factions.

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24 minutes ago, Dr Ben said:

Why not have it count as a rocket launcher. Its an artillery piece which isn't accurate but can do a ton of damage. That could be a cannon. It's not perfect, but noone is not going to misunderstand what it does and have a bad play experience.

Almost all the rest have easy and intuitive understandable proxies with the remaining stuff. Again not perfect, but by no means a disaster. If they don't racially keyword the warscrolls they won't even be proxies, they will just be the thing. Here's my attempt at a list (apologies to anyone who has already done this somewhere on the forum):

Tiranoc chariot - scourgerunner chariot aka elf horse chariot

Lion chariot - drakespawn chariot aka elf monstrous chariot

Lion ranger - wildwood rangers

Glade guard - darkshards or even upgrade to shadow warriors or sisters of the watch

Spell-weaver/archmage  - sorceress aka elf magician probably best, human wizard variants wouldn't be a problem for me though

Archmage or noble on dragon - sorceress/dreadlord

Swordmasters - greatswords/executioner

skycutter - freeguild general on Griffon if high warden variant or (ok so this is a stretch) grundstock gunhauler if you have the ballista variant

dragon blades - probably drakespawn knights aka elven heavy cav, dark riders or wildwood riders at a push

wood elf heroes /dragon knight heroes - whichever other foot heroes you want really. No reason you couldn't have an elven freeguild general.  Other wood elf heroes will sub for nomad prince, waystrider makes a perfectly good assassin.

Gunmaster - cogsmith

organ gun - volley gun

thunderers/dwarf warriors/quarrelers - just their direct human equivalents

unforged - fyreslayer doomseeker i guess, either that or a warden king on spring break
warrior priests/witch hunter - excelsior war priests

war alter would have to be a lumiark or hurricanum i suppose. Both have bolts of smiting and holy aura's of some description, so again not unintuitive from a gameplay persepctive. 

agreed, was writing the post above!

My point was about the Cannon, most of the other stuff I could already find something for. Thanks for the suggestion you two, I had not thought of that.

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