The "mortals redesign" Discussion

[Whitefang]

3 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I would not mind using old models, the problem is more that the majority of my list consist of Ironweld and Collegiate Arcane stuff that (it looks like right now) might be gone without replacement.

I was really hoping that those models would stick around, but with good looking foot troops to run alongside them. Well, it looks like we are getting cool foot troops, at least.

Collegiate Arcane should be safe by now.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

8 minutes ago, Whitefang said:

Collegiate Arcane should be safe by now.

If you could confirm the safety of the Steam Tank, too, I'd be eternally grateful.

[Asbestress]

9 minutes ago, Whitefang said:

Collegiate Arcane should be safe by now.

So Hurricanum stays, but Steam Tanks and Gyros are out?

Bit miffed to be honest, although those will probably come back for TOW, as the Steam Tanks had already been made by then. Not sure about the Gyros.

[Snorri Nelriksson]

TBH i can't see them removing Gyrocopters....dawi already lost many kits the ones remained are the bare minimum?
It would make strange having KO ships but not the things that spawned them technology wise(and the models were recent).
 

[Baron Klatz]

Makes sense the wizard wagons are okay. They show up in the latest tomes like in that Kharadron bit where they’re trying to monopolize on the Metaliths and sell them to the Dawners, that’s how the Vindicarum humans retaliate the daylight robbery by the Hysh luminarks shooting lasers at the Ironclad hulls until they start to overheat and are forced down to talk.

I get the feeling we’ll see three main things right now

Faith, Magic and Gunpowder.

Steam and Steel come later.

3 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Pouring out a 40 of Aqua Ghyranis for my homies.

My condolences. Here’s hoping there’s enough cool new units to proxy them as.

Like maybe if the new giant bombard can match the Steamtank you can add Tesla coils to their cannons and say they’re special Chamon/Azyr variants that shoot giant electro balls at the cost of movement. 🤔 

4 hours ago, Chikout said:

I’m very curious to see what else comes along. With the Lumineth reveal, gw started very traditional but got wackier as they went along. I could definitely see the same thing happening here. If anything these guys are the equivalent of the old militia kit with their mismatched equipment. What will the more elite troops look like?

Whitefang did hint at that vibe by comparing them to the Lumineth releases before(and heck look at how we went from slightly anime’d up vampires to werewolf-hybrids and the crazy Avengorii drake-centaurs)

My guesses:

Wheel cult will pull in metalith pieces with gargoyle heads that spew out boiling oil or fireballs. (Hoping the AoS RTS that Frontier is making will include the unit to yell “Sigmar Wheels it!” )

Living gargoyle monster beasts brought to life by the life flood and their Aqua Ghyranis wells that kinda act as their gryph-hounds but bigger and fast walls.

Special cavalry composed of giant bugs from either the beetles of Ghyran or the swamp striders of Ghur.

Airship or weaponized metalith with crossbows & bombs like some of that Dawnbringer art hinted at(and Kharadron were actually about to retaliate with back in that earlier “Metaliths for Sale” story. They filled them with bombs for an attack run if the talks came to blows)

and then my ideas kinda trail off into various chimera mounts, more gargoyle concepts so they have basic stone beasts to exist in any realm and lots of wizards, mage-engineers from Broken Realms and even witch hunters upgraded to wizard status with rune powers & weapons.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Baron Klatz

[Freemeta]

really sad if they remove Sister of  the thorn and Sisters of the Watch because they are the only 2 female units.

and why there is no Azyr city like Azyrheim?

Dawnbringer and Cities are separate books?

[RyantheFett]

3 minutes ago, Freemeta said:

really sad if they remove Sister of  the thorn and Sisters of the Watch because they are the only 2 female units.

and why there is no Azyr city like Azyrheim?

Dawnbringer and Cities are separate books?

Dawnbringer is just the name of the event going on. The faction will be still be called Cities of Sigmar.

As for what is staying and what is going I still think GW should at least be upfront about the future of the faction and if they do plan to slowly phase out everthing.

[Morglum StormBasha]

If collegiate arcane is staying I assume that’s only the battlemage kit and the luminark.

 

battlemage on griffin surely is going 

[Lich King]

There’s no way the hurricanes and luminark stay . They should get new models - they even have Karl Franz on the side still 

[Baron Klatz]

If they don’t get a quick update or upgrade pack to fix that then they’re likely placeholders too for something much farther out.

Like first wave the ground troops, fanatics & basic weaponry to hold a settlement. Second wave the big guns and steampunk goodness from the Ironweld awarded to start building up a surviving settlement into a major city. 
 

Then finally the full powers of the arcane grace the city to research what realmstone, ancient arcane forges, Stormvaults or nexus leylines it sits upon to raise it up into a flourishing magic metropolis with trade across races and realms

 

With how far out the big crazy magic stuff might be it’s probably seen as acceptable to use holdovers for now.

 

[Freemeta]

noob question:

why Azyrheim is not a part of Cities of Sigmar ? because Azyr gate was closed ?

[Baron Klatz]

38 minutes ago, Freemeta said:

noob question:

why Azyrheim is not a part of Cities of Sigmar ? because Azyr gate was closed ?

Pretty much. The city’s not at threat and can’t be attacked like the others are so there’s not much narrative there besides the origins of Azyrite colonists and base of operations for the Stormcast Eternals.

At best it’s the secret 12th city(Sigmar’s holy number) that’s being represented by the Stormcast coalitions bolting across the Cosmos of the Realms to save the settlements & cities.

[Sunshine]

On 3/23/2023 at 4:21 AM, Baron Klatz said:

Really like the new design. Feels really new with a bit of Bret militia mixed in to show how ragtag these valiant defenders of the Realms are.

They do indeed look like non-corrupt Legionnaires and echo that Sky Wars art with the wide brims and armored down style of desperate soldiers.

Love the shields look both over-the-top but also like they were assembled from eccentric metal fences they had to break down and weld into defenses.

And most exciting is we might get 12 Cities(Sigmar’s holy number ⚡️) for the tome.

The state of those models 😂

The pose of the guy with the hammer and the guy’s face with the axe.

[Baron Klatz]

They do have the Discworld guards vibe of being over-enthusiastic greenhorns.

What’s interesting to me is that despite being basically militia fodder they’re still well armed and almost covered in plate mail with plenty of chainmail.(compared to say the Wfb troops which had professional state troops in just uniforms with some even barefoot or the sorry state of either Bret or Emp militia which were lucky to even get a chest plate)

speaks well that they’re low tier troops can still be hardy defenders and also of the upscaled dangers of ye Mortal Realms that this is the bare-minimum to survive the eldritch dangers on the vast stretches of magic reality.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

13 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

My condolences. Here’s hoping there’s enough cool new units to proxy them as.

Like maybe if the new giant bombard can match the Steamtank you can add Tesla coils to their cannons and say they’re special Chamon/Azyr variants that shoot giant electro balls at the cost of movement. 🤔 

I'll see how things go. If the Hurricanum is at least usable in the next book, I'll probably try to make things work. I bought a lot of my Cities models with the expectation that they would not be around forever, like the Helstroms, Outriders and Cursed City heroes. So I was always prepared to just shelve those units or use them in some other way. It's the big centerpiece kits that I would be really sad to see go.

It's a weird position for me to be in. I liked the new troops when I first saw them, and I am still excited to see the rest of the range. The prospect of a big cannon artillery kit seems cool, too. And I definitely get that the Cities book need some cleaning up in terms of warscrolls and old kits. It's just kind of hard not to feel a bit down about losing some of my favourite models in the process.

[The Lost Sigmarite]

I feel like GW was in a bit of a difficult spot for these guys.

Some people are complaining "these look nothing like the Empire ! I don't like it !". But if they'd been like the Empire, it would have been "GW is just rebooting the Empire in AoS ! It has 0 originality !". I wouldn't have wanted to be the sculptors for these ones. 
For me, I like these little lads. They're more heavily armored than state troops who were hanging around with floppy hats, at least these guys wear their safety helmets and even wear chainmail under their breastplates. Someone has been uping up the safety standards.  I know the steel hats look a bit derpy, but they were an efficient form of helmet in the Middle Ages. That's why those models look a bit weird for Warhammer. Because they put utility before looks. 

I have 0 clue what the color scheme is supposed to represent. If it's Hammerhal, strange that the golden and blue scheme is gone. I have no idea which city has a red, orange and white color scheme. I'm not a big fan of it, I'll wait to see alternate ones. Also these guys will look gorgeous with a grimdark paint job. 

I can't wait to see kitbashes between these guys and plastic kits for TOW. Also, are the neckguards they wear metal or cloth ? I can't tell.

Edited March 24, 2023 by The Lost Sigmarite

[The Lost Sigmarite]

Sorry double post I got confused while typing

Edited March 24, 2023 by The Lost Sigmarite

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

51 minutes ago, The Lost Sigmarite said:

For me, I like these little lads. They're more heavily armored than state troops who were hanging around with floppy hats, at least these guys wear their safety helmets and even wear chainmail over their breastplates. Someone has been uping up the safety standards.  I know the steel hats look a bit derpy, but they were an efficient form of helmet in the Middle Ages. That's why those models look a bit weird for Warhammer. Because they put utility before looks. 

The design of the old Empire troops was always anachronistic. That's not necessarily bad, it's the case for most Warhammer armies and it's generally just a thing we accept in fantasy worlds because it makes them more varied. The design of the old empire troops is based on German troops and mercenaries of the 30 years war. At the time, firearms had finally progressed to such a degree that whole units could be cheaply outfit with them and had acquired the capacity to penetrate at least some of the plate armour available at the time. Since outfitting troops in plate armour is expensive and the tradeoff of reduced mobility for increased protection was not seen as being worth it anymore, armour gradually fell out of fashion during this period.

For armies that heavily used early modern firearms, and who mostly faced other armies that also used them, low-armoured troops are the utilitarian choice. The thing is: Armour is super useful when you are fighting opponents that use weapons against which it actually protects you. Which, in AoS (and even Fantasy) is probably most of them. So the design change definitely makes sense.

However, more importantly: In a fantasy setting it's super hype to see a roman legionnaire fight a musketeer, and that is good enough reason to have both. What is more important than being non-anachronistic is, in my opinion, that the weapons and armour used by the faction help communicate the faction's identity. A roman faction will be imperialistic and well-organized (hello, OBR!), while a musketeer faction might be progressive and daring. From that angle, I definitely like the new Freeguild design, because it communicates that they are the everymen of the mortal realms, who live in a hostile world and use whatever tools they have.

 

48 minutes ago, The Lost Sigmarite said:

I have 0 clue what the color scheme is supposed to represent. If it's Hammerhal, strange that the golden and blue scheme is gone. I have no idea which city has a red, orange and white color scheme. I'm not a big fan of it, I'll wait to see alternate ones. Also these guys will look gorgeous with a grimdark paint job. 

The insignia on the shields would imply Hammerhal Aqsha. It remains an open question whether or not Hammerhal will be split into two separate subfactions in the new book.

 

[The Lost Sigmarite]

2 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

For armies that heavily used early modern firearms, and who mostly faced other armies that also used them, low-armoured troops are the utilitarian choice. The thing is: Armour is super useful when you are fighting opponents that use weapons against which it actually protects you.

Yeah it always felt weird to me that these guys in padded clothing and floppy hats weren't really properly equiped against a 2m tall beastman barreling towards them with murderous intent. I love them, but this seems really counter productive. If I were in their place, I would prefer to be equiped like the Freeguild. 

About firearms, I wonder what they'll do with them. We've seen some hand cannons looking one in a preview, so quite primitive, but I wonder if Ironweld stays around we'll see more advanced looking ones. 

2 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

The insignia on the shields would imply Hammerhal Aqsha. It remains an open question whether or not Hammerhal will be split into two separate subfactions in the new book.

Feels weird to see Hammerhal without the blue and gold colors. But oranges and reds fit for a city located in Aqshy. 

[Rhivan]

As someone who was really hype about potentially getting new Cities I find myself pretty disappointed with them. Largely because I love historical arms and armor. Something I love about the Empire and Brettonia is how historically accurate the armors are. With the new models they aren't historically accurate, which is unfortunate. But they also look really rough and bulky. When I see them I feel like I'm looking at what Fallout Raiders would wear if they knew what medieval arms and armor looked like.

When I read rumors that they were a mirror to the Chaos Legionnaires I got really excited because Chaos Legionnaires look honestly amazing and are a fantastic blend of WH Chaos, and actual historical designs.

[Hollow]

[Lich King]

2 hours ago, Rhivan said:

As someone who was really hype about potentially getting new Cities I find myself pretty disappointed with them. Largely because I love historical arms and armor. Something I love about the Empire and Brettonia is how historically accurate the armors are. With the new models they aren't historically accurate, which is unfortunate. But they also look really rough and bulky. When I see them I feel like I'm looking at what Fallout Raiders would wear if they knew what medieval arms and armor looked like.

When I read rumors that they were a mirror to the Chaos Legionnaires I got really excited because Chaos Legionnaires look honestly amazing and are a fantastic blend of WH Chaos, and actual historical designs.

Check out the Empire models from Highlands Miniatures. Great alternatives. Otherwise I would wait and see the rest of the range - it does seem promising .

[Chikout]

3 hours ago, Rhivan said:

As someone who was really hype about potentially getting new Cities I find myself pretty disappointed with them. Largely because I love historical arms and armor. Something I love about the Empire and Brettonia is how historically accurate the armors are. With the new models they aren't historically accurate, which is unfortunate. But they also look really rough and bulky. When I see them I feel like I'm looking at what Fallout Raiders would wear if they knew what medieval arms and armor looked like.

When I read rumors that they were a mirror to the Chaos Legionnaires I got really excited because Chaos Legionnaires look honestly amazing and are a fantastic blend of WH Chaos, and actual historical designs.

I've seen contrasting opinions about this. On Kirioth's video one of the comments was from a HEMA instructor who loved them because they were historically accurate. I'm no expert but I'm really curious as to what qualifies these as being inaccurate. The bulky look seems to come from the steel breastplates they are wearing. Is this not how real armour would look? I've definitely found lots of examples of oversized helmets. 

[Beliman]

9 hours ago, Rhivan said:

As someone who was really hype about potentially getting new Cities I find myself pretty disappointed with them. Largely because I love historical arms and armor. Something I love about the Empire and Brettonia is how historically accurate the armors are. With the new models they aren't historically accurate, which is unfortunate. But they also look really rough and bulky. When I see them I feel like I'm looking at what Fallout Raiders would wear if they knew what medieval arms and armor looked like.

I think that's why I like them. Not sure if I'm going to collect them but their designs are growing on me, and take in mind that I don't usually like humans in fantasy settings. They have a grimdark tone that they could and remind me of Berzerk or Dark Souls. 

Edited March 27, 2023 by Beliman

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

The designs have grown on me a lot, as well, but I think you have to be in the right mindset to appreciate them. People always respond better to cool stuff, I feel. We saw that with Sons of Behemat, the biggest proxy army out there: Even though the GW giants are pretty unique compared to other giant models that are out there, people still wish they were more badass. It's not super easy to drum up hype by showing the basic, kinda goofy, kinda schlubby dudes of Cities first. Like, the Hammerhal Geezer is purposefully a bit chubby with bad skin and ill-fitting armour. And since these models will replace the old Empire kits that people have a lot of attachment to, that makes it even harder to get that inital spark of hype because in the back of your mind you always compare these new guys to your nostalgia-tinted image of what will be lost.

But overall, I think there is a lot of potential for a cool, new, unique Freeguild aesthetic for the mortal realms here. I really can't wait to see more of the range.