The "mortals redesign" Discussion

[CommissarRotke]

1 hour ago, Deepkin said:

You can always make your own background. Isn't that one of the joys of the Warhammer universe? If you think the current background is morally reprehensible, write your own that contains the level of moral didacticism you deem appropriate. Who knows? Write it well enough, and perhaps GW will incorporate it in their own. 

Sure it is, however, when your own army's lore clashes enough with the company's evolving canon it can really deflate motivation to participate in the universe as a whole. Again, the worry is that established GW lore for COS will be changed--the didacticism that GW itself has canonized.

[Greybeard86]

I think quite a few of us were missing exactly "mortals" in the "mortal realms". Because when everything is over the top, the lack of contrast removes the excitement. So I applaud the move to give simple mortals more of a role. 

That said, I am also concerned about the fate of CoS, as it seems that crusades might be invading its design space. Frankly, the slow bleeding of CoS is very painful to watch, I can imagine it will only get worse now.

At the end of the day, it seems that GW is going with TOW as a home for old sculpts (though when?), so they might feel "safer" squatting (wait, do we have to retire this term now?) CoS. That'd be the nicer way to look at it.

[Deepkin]

13 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

Sure it is, however, when your own army's lore clashes enough with the company's evolving canon it can really deflate motivation to participate in the universe as a whole. Again, the worry is that established GW lore for COS will be changed--the didacticism that GW itself has canonized.

If the lore changes and you do not want to change with it, then what can be done? Such is progress.

[CommissarRotke]

7 minutes ago, Deepkin said:

If the lore changes and you do not want to change with it, then what can be done? Such is progress.

If the lore changes in a way that feels like a retcon to how a faction was specifically introduced, people are allowed to be upset about it. If it's bad enough, yea people will just leave. And making that decision to leave the largest, penultimate wargaming system in the world still hurts even if you're finally, legitimately done with GW's decisions/models/lore etc. There are really no true alternatives to Warhammer that are not a literal gamble with your money; non-GW scenes that do exist have died very quickly when unwanted or poorly received updates happened. 

[Snorri Nelriksson]

I still don't get it: why everyone assumes dawnbringer cursaders, that works with people like DOK and Fyreslayers in their expansion, should be non-human hating flocks of zealots?
It doesn't make senses imho, as the Sigmarite Church never preached the holyness of human form or other things....hell cities nobility is made up by human,elves,dwarves so why they should just "go crazy" and destroy the very foundation that made them resistant to chaotic assaults?

Edited May 6, 2022 by Snorri Nelriksson

[Sarouan]

I find it weird people here still believe the new mortal redesign "previewed" would be a copy and paste from WFB. You just need to read the books and see pictures of, like, some denizens of the realms of Ghyran next to Aqshy to see they can be quite "high fantasy" indeed - and more tied to the very nature of the realms themselves.

It's like dungeons and dragons multiverse or planar travel : a denizen from the plan of fire doesn't have to be a human with a red feather hat copied from our own history.

I see this redesign the same way GW has made the different chaos warbands for Warcry : sure, there is clear inspiration from WFB, yet it's still quite different in more than one way.

When Warcry was at its beginning, I was indeed hoping they'd do Cities of Sigmar warbands the same way : a band of Ghyran-like, a band of Hysh-like, and so on. I'm actually expecting that's what we'll have here in the end. Even if it's unfortunately something that will take a lot of time before it's released...

IMHO, Whitefang doesn't have access to more information than we have here. It's just common sense and see what is already here.

[CommissarRotke]

These are the first images we ever got of the redesign we had no idea was happening. It is extremely easy to think the redesign would be too much of an Empire 2.0 when every single bit they teased could fit into WHFB without changing. None of these yell "quite unlike anything you’ve seen before" like WarCom called it. @Sarouan I would LOVE to see the denizens of Ghyran and Aqshy. These bitz they've showed us do not bring confidence that that's what we'll get.

[CDM]

Do we have images and examples of non emipe looking  order humans. I remember seeing a few around first generals handbook I think and some great descriptions from the malign portents series.

Have they done something similar with CoS that they did with guard regiments? Kit bashes etc. To be honest I'd love it if they sold pre made kitbashes to increase the amount of unique city units they could have alongside some dawnbringers!

I still think they can keep the range large, like others have alluded to you could have a CoS battletome and supplements like 40k or my preference would be to have no CoS battletome but have as an example. Battletome: Morathi Empires? Rules for daughters of khaine, misthavn, har kuron and leading similar units and style with access to a limited number of the order units

[Deepkin]

36 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

If the lore changes in a way that feels like a retcon to how a faction was specifically introduced, people are allowed to be upset about it. If it's bad enough, yea people will just leave. And making that decision to leave the largest, penultimate wargaming system in the world still hurts even if you're finally, legitimately done with GW's decisions/models/lore etc. There are really no true alternatives to Warhammer that are not a literal gamble with your money; non-GW scenes that do exist have died very quickly when unwanted or poorly received updates happened. 

You're certainly allowed to be upset. I was upset when they introduced Primaris, when they made Custodes into Marines +1, when they killed the Old World, when Josh Reynolds left BL, etc. 

Either you adjust to the new lore and make something of it, or you leave. I have been told that holding onto the old lore and complaining when it's changed is a certified Bad Thing. But hey, I get it. It sucks when something you like gets changed into something you don't like. I sympathize. 

[xking]

45 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

These are the first images we ever got of the redesign we had no idea was happening. It is extremely easy to think the redesign would be too much of an Empire 2.0 when every single bit they teased could fit into WHFB without changing. None of these yell "quite unlike anything you’ve seen before" like WarCom called it. @Sarouan I would LOVE to see the denizens of Ghyran and Aqshy. These bitz they've showed us do not bring confidence that that's what we'll get.

I fully expect them to do it the same way they do it in 40K. There will be a core aesthetic for the Army, but they will release units that would be specialized and themed based on a realm. ( Deathcore stuff like that )

[RexHavoc]

I suspect that what they really mean by "quite unlike anything you’ve seen before", is something very similar to the current chaos warcry humans but with the pictured sigmar bits replacing the chaos symbols/skulls/yokes that those minis current have.

The "Quite unlike" bit will just mean they will be the larger 'heroic' scale we are used to seeing from them now (which 'stops' people mixing in stuff like from frostgrave & fireforge etc) and will have the more dynamic style poses, with arms flailing about every where and everyone on at least one tree trunk and four tactical rocks (which makes it harder to use the models in square based unit games)

I loved the mortal artwork designs in the 2nd ed rulebook, the 'undead' human was amazing and deserved to have been a kit two years ago or more. Its very late in the games life to suddenly be bringing back in 'new' mortal designs when they have been retconning old WFB kits into CoS, letting people buy up big collections to now risk bringing in a whole new model design for mortal units.

Personally I'm using Victrix kits for almost every human based army I do nowadays, just got another huge batch of kits to make some rather stylish looking Slaanesh mortals and sloppy Nurgle war elephants. I got bored waiting for GW to bring mortals to the Mortal Realms and would only buy new human/mortal kits once they come in a battleforce deal or cheap set so I could use just one or two models per kit as champions for mortal units.

[Baron Klatz]

5 hours ago, Snorri Nelriksson said:

I still don't get it: why everyone assumes dawnbringer cursaders, that works with people like DOK and Fyreslayers in their expansion, should be non-human hating flocks of zealots?

The AoS3 Corebook talks about other races as well like the hero ghosts of Hallost who aid the Dawncrusaders in settling the Underworlds. And the Destruction Soulbound book talks about Ogors and Orruks that temporarily find themselves in Freeguild ranks.

The other races are just as important as the Stormcast Liberators, Sequitors* and Vindicators that usually lead the crusades. One such crusade was saved by the valiant fortitude of the Fyreslayers.

(*just a note here that the classic Stormcasts are fully active with these too. Cursed Skies are a random hazard(so plenty of Liberators make it back by reforging to tell the tale of what danger ended the crusade) that’s bad news for everyone as they’ll swallow up armies that march under them as they mutate the realmscapes and empower daemons under them. Indeed a lot of non-Thunderstrikes have made heroic forays even under them to save civilians or crush daemon forts and put up martyr memorials in their place. They are all each heroic demigods, afterall. No different than all the Stormcasts that go into the Eight-points that can stop their souls)

That’s why I expect even if the city duardin/aelves elements are pushed further into the background they’ll still be a very friendly faction that commonly unites with the other races.(just the modern ones they want to advertise like Kharadron and Deepkin  )

4 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

I would LOVE to see the denizens of Ghyran and Aqshy. These bitz they've showed us do not bring confidence that that's what we'll get.

Tbf, that stuff fits what we’ve seen of Hammerhal Aqshy with the 2017 WHQ art.

(this one’s my favorite as it notes the human and Aelf nobles regularly go into the slums to cause trouble and have fun)

Plus the icons do have green leaves too which can be for Ghyran and the armor painted to be wooden.

if you seperate the skulls from some then you’ll have Dawners that represent the Realms of Azyr, Shyish, Aqshy and Ghyran. Ulgu and Hysh just need paint jobs and Ghur animal bones and furs on your troops.

Chamon’s the trickiest as gold armored troops are more Hammerhal’s thing.

Might just have to go blue & and odder metal colors along with making anything natural(leaves,wood,leathers) into golds and silvers. Plus pairing them up with things associated with the Metal Realm like some Vindicator forces do(lots of magic swords & Tzeentchian monsters among them)

4 hours ago, CDM said:

Do we have images and examples of non emipe looking  order humans. I remember seeing a few around first generals handbook I think and some great descriptions from the malign portents series.

Yeah, a lot of the Malign Portents ones are still showed off in the current material my favorite three among them:

and the Shyish dude mentioned earlier:

Then Warclaw, Realmslayer and a bottom left part of a “War of the Sky Portals” art had some.

 

 

and then Soulbound:

 

 

 

 

Edited May 7, 2022 by Baron Klatz

[Sarouan]

6 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

Yeah, a lot of the Malign Portents ones are still showed off in the current material my favorite three among them:

Spoiler

and the Shyish dude mentioned earlier:

That's what I have in mind mostly - I don't expect the common of AoS people to be that ornated, but still.

So far, the way the cities are described in the background makes them look quite alien to what you'd expect from WFB's Empire. A city whose money is small parts of prophecy stones, a city that is split between a realm of fire and a realm of life by portals, a city that was released from amber and is protected by the magical mist created from it, a city that mainly has its economy from the exploitation of a lake whose waters make you forget everything (and is quite dangerous to even just fall into)...all of that has visual influence as well for its citizens. Sure, you can always stick a feathered hat on their heads and colorful clothes directly from our own Renaissance period - but to me, main reason they still appear in GW AoS books is simply because they still sell these miniatures. And GW is all about making sure to promote their products in everything they make.

IMHO, once we have the redesigned models released, you can be sure we'll suddenly see very few Empire-like artworks in their future books - that is, anything that is not about re-using their old artwork.

So far, the pictures they showed on the previews is more about terrain parts than soldiers - and they're pretty much uninspired (writting "Sigmar" and putting skulls on everything, sorry but that's not being different from WFB like at all). The question is more about what system they're thought for.

If it's for armies with a common battletome, the units will need to be generic enough so that you can use them for any city. If it's for skirmish mode like Warcry or whatever they will call it once we're there, the key is more about characterfull models more intended for a small faction like in Kill Team and the Death Korps regiment featured. To me, skirmish mode is much more suited to really distinct different city designs and have specific Excelsis, Living City or Hammerhal warbands.

Future will tell, but I wouldn't really take the previewed pictures as really telling so far. They have a feeling of just common stuff made because they had to show something for the Warhammer Fest, IMHO (maybe because of the leaks that spoiled too much of the surprise ? ).

Edited May 7, 2022 by Sarouan

[Baron Klatz]

1 hour ago, Sarouan said:

but to me, main reason they still appear in GW AoS books is simply because they still sell these miniatures. And GW is all about making sure to promote their products in everything they make.

Oh 100%, that’s a big reason why they dragged their feet on so much artwork that barely shows what Incredible stuff is in the lore besides locations. They’re not gonna show off a Freeguild Ghyran Knight, covered in magic wooden armor with a varnish shine, golden embellishments flowing behind him as he rides a Ghyrlion plant-beast to battle with a fey green soulpod axe at the ready, and not have the models to back up that kind of advertisement.

1 hour ago, Sarouan said:

A city whose money is small parts of prophecy stones, a city that is split between a realm of fire and a realm of life by portals, a city that was released from amber and is protected by the magical mist created from it, a city that mainly has its economy from the exploitation of a lake whose waters make you forget everything (and is quite dangerous to even just fall into)...all of that has visual influence as well for its citizens.

My favorite currency bits are with Chamon and Aqshy.

In Chamon there’s nobility with flowers on their clothes to show off their great wealth because it means they can afford clean water and pure soil in a Realm of copper-water and silver shard filled dirt little can grow in. 
 

These and objects from Ghyran act as currency since gold and silver are so common the Lantic Empire made entire roadworks to their cities and fortresses literally paved with gold.

And in Aqshy it’s wooden jewelry for similar reasons but can’t be flowers because they won’t survive the constant heat.

[Snorri Nelriksson]

@Baron Klatznow that you mention Lantic empire...i really hope they'll show something of them in the new human rework.

At least some bits or ruin.

[Baron Klatz]

Probably ruins. They were the big heroes and last bastion of Order before everything just kept going down hill for them to comical proportions.

Had the known largest empire that spanned multiple realms. From vast metalworks and forges in Aqshy, golden roads through Chamon to their stark Iron fortresses and large holdings even in the Realm of Death.

It all got rocked hard by the initial Chaos invasion and shattered it.

Their Fyreslayer allies that built their massive defense steambulk walls turned on them for Chaos’ Ur-gold and hit the weak spots of the Great walls with Magmadroth herds

had to rally as the last defensive so the countless millions of refugees from the other realms could escape to Azyrheim as Archaon and United Chaos fell upon the last Lantic Bastion.

their scattered empire remnants in Shyish that held out on the new hellscapes are infected by Ushoran’s spreading madness and become the first major Flesh-Eater Courts thanks to all their starving peasants.

Their empress is zapped up by the God-King to be reforged leaving them even more divided and confused on what’s going on. 
 

And the final note on them was after the 2016 Seeds of Hope campaign lead to the Age of Hope and civilizations being built up again in the realms with fleets of Cogforts reclaiming vast tracts of land in Aqshy, the Lantic remnants began a new settlement with them there only for a maw-gate to open and ravenous Ogors to rain down on them snuffing it out.

They had the mother of all bad days. Left behind lots of fancy ruins, shattered steamworks and glittering roads tho.

Edited May 7, 2022 by Baron Klatz

[Asbestress]

A thing to keep in mind imo is that releases are almost always complete years in advance. E.g.: the newly teased World Eaters are probably already fully ready for production/already produced. The Castellan Crowe studio mini was painted around 5 years before release. Snazzgar Stinkmullett (the Malign Portents Gloomspite Shaman) was probably made together with the full range that released around a year after him.

This could mean that our best guess at the refresh's aesthetics could be the Ven Densts released last year, as, perhaps, they were done either as a "testing ground" for the redesign's style, or together with it, and released as "harbringers" before the 3rd edition, as they like to tease the "big releases" of upcoming editions in the book series (Malign Portents, Psychic Awakening (Squats!), Broken Realms), and the minis released alongside them (e.g.: Knight of Shrouds, Gloomspite Shaman, Kragnos, that Lord-Ordinator, etc.)

Edited June 25, 2023 by Asbestress

[Rungi]

The little they showed us has me thinking about how GW explicitly celebrates conversion with articles  in both White Dwarf and the Community site. And they’ve done so forever…

What if what we’ve “never seen” is kits of generic humans/aelves/duardin by race with spruces full of bits to facilitate hobbyists tailoring them to fit different realms, themes, or contexts? These kinds of kits would be wildly popular because of the unlimited possibilities. If scaled closely to the older models from WHFB, GW would have retroactively established a mortal baseline in AOS, which sounds like what they’re claiming is coming. I don’t know what’s logistically possible, but if they went this route it seems like a gold mine.

The other, maybe more reasonable or likely alternative to accomplish a similar goal by still assuming a great deal of conversion, would be releasing highly flavorful Warcry-esque. This has been mentioned a bunch previously and seems fairly probable. Units featuring different races and very distinct styles would again give hobbyists the fuel needed to create distinct settings & populations

I'm hoping they go in the first direction, however improbable that is, but would probably end up spending a good bit on either. I’d imagine I’m not alone there.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 hours ago, Rungi said:

The little they showed us has me thinking about how GW explicitly celebrates conversion with articles  in both White Dwarf and the Community site. And they’ve done so forever…

What if what we’ve “never seen” is kits of generic humans/aelves/duardin by race with spruces full of bits to facilitate hobbyists tailoring them to fit different realms, themes, or contexts? These kinds of kits would be wildly popular because of the unlimited possibilities. If scaled closely to the older models from WHFB, GW would have retroactively established a mortal baseline in AOS, which sounds like what they’re claiming is coming. I don’t know what’s logistically possible, but if they went this route it seems like a gold mine.

The other, maybe more reasonable or likely alternative to accomplish a similar goal by still assuming a great deal of conversion, would be releasing highly flavorful Warcry-esque. This has been mentioned a bunch previously and seems fairly probable. Units featuring different races and very distinct styles would again give hobbyists the fuel needed to create distinct settings & populations

I'm hoping they go in the first direction, however improbable that is, but would probably end up spending a good bit on either. I’d imagine I’m not alone there.

I think it's fairly likely that we will see two things:

• A refresh of the current Freeguild models that does not constitute a radical departure from the old Empire aesthetic

It would make sense given the current lore and would prevent the invalidation of existing Freeguild-heavy armies. Plus, I am sure there are people out there that actually like the current look of those models. I think the revealed renders seem to indicate that this could be true. It has been noted by many that they seem very similar to current Freeguild/old Empire iconography, just updated for AoS.

This could contain updated Freeguild troops, new steam vehicles, an expanded Devoted to Sigmar subfaction, and new Collegiate Arcane units.

• The Warcry-ification of the humans of AoS

Much like the existing Warcry warbands did a lot to show the diversity between Chaos humans, GW could put out a bunch of small warbands  that show the diversity of the people of the realms. It would be a good way to pay off the current lore without having to scrap Cities of Sigmar as an army and starting from scratch.

This could contain all the weird stuff that is constantly mentioned for flavour, like those Shyishian death cults and so on.

[RyantheFett]

Would also be cool if they released a conversion pack for both the humans and/or the other races. The bits they did show sort of look like they would fit over a lot of the pieces?

[Doko]

I was hyped for my citys rework.

 

Now im sad,my cos army are only 100% new dwarfs and elfs. Nothing gonna get reworked and only gonna be olds warscrolls forgotten and useless inside tye new shiny new empire with luck,and a chance of these units being removed

 

Oh and new empire looks horrible for me,i love regular humana with armor,but hate everything that have religion or barroque and gothic,and new empire seems gonna be all around this as sisters of battle in 40k that i really hate.

I wanted new revamped empire following totalwar units and not sisters of battle in sigmar

Edited May 10, 2022 by Doko

[RuneBrush]

6 hours ago, Doko said:

I was hyped for my citys rework.

 

Now im sad,my cos army are only 100% new dwarfs and elfs. Nothing gonna get reworked and only gonna be olds warscrolls forgotten and useless inside tye new shiny new empire with luck,and a chance of these units being removed

 

Oh and new empire looks horrible for me,i love regular humana with armor,but hate everything that have religion or barroque and gothic,and new empire seems gonna be all around this as sisters of battle in 40k that i really hate.

I wanted new revamped empire following totalwar units and not sisters of battle in sigmar

Over the past years we've had a wealth of new designs depicting a massive variety of mortals from the realms.  There was no situation where this artwork wasn't going to make it's way into AoS in an army of some kind.  Equally the existing Cities of Sigmar range is very heavily WHFB with it's pseudo historical aesthetic and although we may see some elements of this being kept, we were never going to have "new empire" in the way you seem to be thinking.  I will also add that we've not been given any information on the actual army itself either, it's entirely possible that we'll have a unit wielding double handed swords that you can use your existing greatsword miniatures for.

[RyantheFett]

Not sure how good their PR has been in the past for stuff like this, but I do think they need to answer the question of what is going on with all the other units (with the understanding that there is a good chance that they don't even know yet). A decent amount of the talk around the rework has been around the non human races. Which is just funny, but I don't think that was what GW was aiming for.

As for the Cities units we got now I figure the 15+ human units get removed, but hopefully the new stuff is close enough to proxy or kit bash (conversion kits would still be amazing). They mention the ven Densts and the heroes from Cursed City so they are the only ones we know for sure now.

As for the other 30+ non human units a nice middle ground could work. Looking at the list a lot of units are either redundant or look very similar to each other. Combing a lot of units could easily cut down the amount of units to half and actually make a lot of them feel different from each other. 

My jaded self thinks that they will just push every unit back into The Old World with GW pretty much admitting it was a place holder for the real faction and a way to keep the old fantasy fans quite until they rebooted lol.

Edited May 10, 2022 by RyantheFett

[CommissarRotke]

@RyantheFett Give em a week or two; I'm expecting another article within that time. Plus a few extra days for edits, if the community upset took them by surprise.

[CommissarRotke]

11 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Over the past years we've had a wealth of new designs depicting a massive variety of mortals from the realms.  There was no situation where this artwork wasn't going to make it's way into AoS in an army of some kind.  Equally the existing Cities of Sigmar range is very heavily WHFB with it's pseudo historical aesthetic and although we may see some elements of this being kept, we were never going to have "new empire" in the way you seem to be thinking.  I will also add that we've not been given any information on the actual army itself either, it's entirely possible that we'll have a unit wielding double handed swords that you can use your existing greatsword miniatures for.

Yeah I do think the most likely outcome is core troops that have little throwbacks to the Empire, but are better looking for a high fantasy world, supported by Realm- and role-specific units. 

More armored mortal humans would be great to reflect the danger of Chaos and the Realms. And if the leak that Chaos Legionnaires are going to be an armored marauder redesign, Order humans should get the same treatment.