EccentricCircle

The new year trailer also showed some sort of sisters of slaughter heroine for DoK, so they are likely getting a book. I'd be surprised if there is no overlap between Aos and ToW. Almost all recently released factions have had a core of perfectly respectable old world style models (LRL, SBG, OWC). Plus loads of the original models are still on sale. That said I absolutely wouldn't put it past some executives to have issued that mandate despite the lack of logic to it. It wouldn't be the first time They've done something that daft. The tail often wags the dog, as it has been said...

Most of my long standing armies have fleshed out leaders (well in the case of the tomb kings, "fleshed out" may not quite be the right term...) My Daughters of Khaine are led by Queen Azinda, who was a humble(-ish) hag queen in the armies of her temple. During a battle with the forces of Chaos, her commanding officers were slain, and she assumed command of the army, she stood against multiple chaos warriors, nearly falling multiple times, but always coming back from the brink, and allowing her surviving sisters to escape. ( I lost the game, but a legend was born as a result...) Azinda was elevated to Slaughter queen as a result of her bravery, and I converted her model to have a sword in place of the original goblet in light of this fact. She has been the general ever since. She has close links to the darkling covens, and Iriana, a darkling sorceress is her closest adviser and confident. They generally go into battle together, often leading combined forces. This alliance has meant that they haven't been too badly affected by the tensions between the Daughters and the Cities, which haven't yet reached their corner of the realms. When they were beset by the undead they were even rescued from certain doom by a freeguild regiment, commanded by Aleksandr Von Khyl, a bright wizard of the Collegiate arcane. Now his guild and Iriana's coven jointly control the powerful arcane nexus where the battle took place and are building (or rather rebuilding) a new wizard's guild and free city dedicated to the arcane arts amidst the ruins. I am still fleshing out the collegiate arcane. My plan is do do a painting project called "Mages through the ages" where I paint up a series of wizards of different colleges and vintages. I have many of the models, but haven't gotten around to painting many of them yet. The leader will be a gold wizard, using one of the really old citadel mage sculpts. He is going to be Professor Sir Herbert Seltzer Ph.D. FRAlS, Alchemist Royal in his kingdom, and Archchancellor of the Collegiate Arcane in the newly rebuilt city of Dragonsdorf. The Dragonsdorf alliance was then approached by the leaders of my Tomb Kings army, a pair of twin sorceresses named Ameriset and Amenirdis. They wanted the mortal's aid to capitalise on the temporary fall of Nagash, and try to free their kingdom in the desert of skulls from the thrall of the God of Death forever. They knew of an ancient relic of a now eaten death god deep within the desert of skulls. With it they could make a magical barrier which would grant all sentient undead within the continent their free will, and keep the forces of Nagash at bay. However, they knew that even in his weakened state, he would become aware of the ritual the moment they tried to enact it, and take control of their liche priests to stop it from happening. They thus negotiated an alliance with the Dragonsdorf Guild, and Herbert and Iriana led a contingent of a hundred wizards into the desert. The moment Nagash learned of the betrayal the Tomb Kings turned upon their mortal allies, but the freeguild and the Daughters of Khaine were able to hold them off long enough for the wizards to complete the ritual, and Nagash was driven from their home. The two cities, living and dead have been firm allies ever since, though both have come under attack by vampires and nighthaunt as a result of their betrayal. The Tomb Kings now stand eternal vigil over the site of the ritual, so that the spells which keep them free can never be undone. So that's the Dragonsdorf Saga. I've posted elsewhere about my plans for my Chaos Army, and Elsar Ragnarsdottir's bid to slay archaeon and become the next everchosen, but perhaps I'll put that here too in a later post!

I love this idea. I'm not going to do it as I'm not sure I could fit my whole backlog in one photo, but its a great idea nontheless!

I'm also a models first kind of person. As others have said, the longer you are in the hobby, the more fleeting and temporary the rules that go with them seem. I tend to start something new when I need those models for an existing project, and often not actually a warhammer related one. More than a few of my armies have been started when I bought a box of this and a box of that for use in D&D or frostgrave, and then thought "ooh, if I put those together and add this or that it will be a functional-ish warhammer army" I will often go for army deals and boxed sets, but only when I already have a strong plan or theme that I know they will fit in with. I never get anything just because its a good deal.

So: things we can be fairly sure of. Idoneth amd Fyreslayers, probably just a tome and heroes, though I'd be very happy to be proven wrong. We've also seen heroes for Nighthaunt and Daughters of Khaine in the trailer. My guess is that they will just be a book and hero too, but again you never know. So my money is on those being the first four tomes of the year. If we get one of the old resin factions updated then I think it will be Seraphon. Looking back at last edition, the malign portents heroes clearly telegraphed the shape of things to come. Broken Realms felt more miscellaneous, but if the stand alone models released were part of upcoming design efforts then that suggests Seraphon, Sylvaneth, and Cities. Now cities stuff could just come as part of cursed city expansions, after all, the S2D expansion last edition was by way of warcry, and I feel as though the two factions could well be analogous. Cursed City might give us more undead too, perhaps more vampires, or maybe more likely nighthaunt and ghouls timed so that they get something with their tomes? I don't expect Lumineth or Slaanesh to get another wave, despite being in broken realms, as they already did. It wouldn't completely surprise me though! Then I think we'll see something completely new, but this is just as likely tp be completely unexpected as it is to be something we're wishlisting! As a dwarf fan, I'd live the rise of Grungni or Valaya, or the return of the Chaos dwarves. But the brand new factions are very rarely anything we could have predicted. As for shadow rlves, I've historically been skeptical that they were on the schedule, but each year they get more likely, and we're now reaching the point where GW have had time to design them twice over in the time we've been hyped for their upcoming release. So maybe they will have thoughts s time! Mostly though, expect a lot of stuff to come via spin off games like underworlds, warcry and maybe now cursed city. Remember that between them they almost get as many model release slots as regular AoS. They are also smaller drop releases, easier to squeeze in. Above all expect the unexpected. That tends to ge what we get!

Alternating activation. That is all.

I think the thing to remember is that those of us who care about updates, metas and the upcoming release schedule at all aren't the bulk of the customer base. We talk loudest on the internet, but there are a lot of people who only play and collect casually. Around here, you get the impression that if you are a fan of an army, you buy all the units soon after release (or at least enough for 2k points) and then sit around waiting for more shiny things. However, there are a lot of folks, young people in particular, who don't have that kind of disposable income. They might play with basically a couple of boxes, and maybe get a bigger monster at christmas. For casual players there is no rush to update, and a single hero model, who can more or less be bought at a whim, is probably a pretty nice addition. For that audience, Fyreslayers aren't a ridiculous lineup. A lot of folks wont even know how old the book is, let alone be hampering for an update.

I hope that everyone gets put in a soup, dwarves, dark elves, the lot. Put in a soup by the shiny updated ogors of our dreams that is.

Cool, I've not actually got any, so was going off the catalogue photos rather than experience. good to know they are easier than they look!

Lets not lose sight of why factions like Stormcast and Space Marines are the poster boys. It actually has a lot less to do with the lore, which comes after the models are designed, and much more to do with what will hook in new hobbyists. Those two factions are gold in that respect because they are relatively easy to paint. The models are in a larger scale than the rest of the range (justified by they being giants), they are heavily armoured, with big chunky weapons, and often have helmets so that you don't need to be able to paint skin, hair, faces and the like straight away. They have solid ranges, with lots of options, so that even when they aren't great competitively they are a solid pick for a new player. The "enemy factions" over the last few editions were likely chosen for similar reasons. Look at Necrons and Nighthaunt. As "Skeleton" factions both of them have the potential to be painted really straight forwardly, and so aren't too intimidating to a new painter, even if they are a fair bit more complex than Stormcast and space marines. Nurgle is similarly a good pick, as they lend themselves to sloppy grunginess rather than a really precise painting style. From a lore perspective, Lumineth seem like a natural poster faction, but from what I hear the models are complex to build and a nightmare to paint. Elves will always be fiddly, and that means that however popular they get, they don't work so well as an introductory faction to put in every box which a new player might pick up. That said, the same could potentially be said of Kruleboyz, and they've made the starter set, so who knows. Maybe they are changing their approach.

Agreed, warhammer is also a franchise which has always been steeped in historical allegory, social and political commentary and satire. While this has mostly been for the good, the extensive use of fantasy counterpart cultures in all three games carries with it a lot of orientalist tropes. Now this was most pronounced in WFB, while 40k has gradually made itself more generic over the years. AoS has clearly set out to be more of a generic fantasy from the start, and ditch a lot of the more one to one historical equivalences, but they are still hard baked into a lot of the pop cultural ideas which underpin those factions. even if the writers throw up their hands and say "We didn't mean any of that" it doesn't matter, all art is a dialogue with the issues of the time in which it's written. i tend to prefer settings that are aware of the issues they are touching on and explore them in an informed manner, even if that ends up being challenging in one way or another. That shows more maturity than trying to file enough seriel numbers off tropes that the issues can be ignored, or worse being so uninformed that you don't see the connection between reality and fantasy, an uncritically reinforce tropes you aren't even aware of. GW used to be really good at satire. I think these days executive meddling doesn't really let the writers go all in on it. Creating by committee is one of the surest ways to lose touch with the meaning behind the stuff you are writing. I suspect this is what is happening here. They are using the term "Crusade" because at this point they're using it so much in 40k that they just consider it a warhammer trope, and aren't really stopping to consider real world implications explore the themes in a deeper or more critical manner.

I'm disappointed to hear that umbraneth was a fake. I've been thinking that was a great name , and a nice riff on the theme. I've been envisioning them as being more like the Shadar Kai from D&D. They are corrupted elves from the plain of shadow, who are a bit like Dark Eldar turned up to eleven with a bit of slaanesh mixed in.

I was quite disappointed that when they released Cirdan for the Middle Earth SBG they didn't sculpt him with his mighty beard. I painted him as though he had a short one, but kind of wished my green stuff skills were good enough to make him more book acurate!

Much as i'd like a new warband or expansion, she is most likely just the obligatory foot hero to go with a quick battletome only release.

Yep, I've been painting both these units recently, and agree that she is definitely for Daughters of Khaine or some sort of related faction. The first indication is the pale hair and pink skin, which is much closer to the Daughters colour scheme than the dark eldar one. Eldar wyches are generally very pale with red hair, whereas DoK tend to have pale pink hair. Then her Spaulder is much more DoK, the way it arches upwards to a point is distinctive of them, whereas dark eldar ones are flatter, but with spikes. Her vambraces are also a lot more ridged than spiked which DE ones would be. The knife could be dark eldar, but looks a lot more like a Sciansa, so again fits the Daughters theme better. 40K daggers are a bit more jagged. Then the bulk of her costume is a bit too skimpy for Dark Eldar. They usually wear what is effectively a body suite with gaps on the legs and midriff. This model seems to have straps running across her back, which fits better with the Witch Elfs armoured bikini top. If it were a Wych we'd expect the back of the suit to be the most bulky and built up bit, with a lot more vents and armour. Its a bit shadowy, but her lower clothing also looks like it could be coming into a bit of a thong, where again, Dark Eldar tend to be more modest on the lower half. The main exception to that is Lillith, who does traditionally have skimpier attire, and who's old model could more or less pass as a witch elf if you didn't know better. If we hadn't just got a new model of her a couple of years ago, then I could be convinced that this was her, although again the knife would be surprising. So its possible that it could be some sort of DE gladiatrix in her style, but I don't think that is likely. I think some sort of witch elf hero for AoS is far more likely, and that all of the design cues point quite clearly to that, whereas you'd have to make a bit of a stretch for her to be Dark Eldar, and imagine something quite new for their faction, which isn't really needed, or likely.

I'd be amazed if we don't get a slow down honestly. Most of this year has seemed to be GW rushing to get out the stuff that was delayed by the initial lockdowns and supply chain issues last year. Things have (seemingky) been pushed back, shuffled around, rushed and delayed at various points, but we've yet to really see the knock on effect of any slow down in R&D. Given how far ahead they work there is a chance that that is only just working its way through the pipeline to the stage where we become aware of it. Sooner or later there has to be a slowdown of some sort, and my guess is that this rumour desert is the start of it.

You realise that several pages of this thread today have been dedicated to nothing but warhammer dwarf players discussing how we wanr female models? I think its safe to say that all the evidence suggests that we, you know, do in fact want them!

This is interesting. Are these hashtag numbers over a specific period? Or are they for all time? If the latter it might make sense to normalise the data based on when a faction released. The ideal thing would be number of hits over the length of 2021, as most factions were in more or less their present state for the whole year. Otherwise maybe divide each number by the number of months the faction has been out? Early factions like Seraphon, sylvaneth etc will have had much more time to accumulate hits, while the fact that some later day factions still come out ahead may suggest that they are even more popular than they seem!

It looks... fine? The Fyreslayer hero is kind of cool, if no more original than I was expecting. I think the version of the Idoneth hero on the novel cover was maybe better, but still fine overall. No idea whether I'll get this one, I guess it depends on the price. I'm not overly fussed about the new heroes, and have all the other troops, so if its a really good deal it would "finish off" a couple of armies quite nicely, but if its not then its an easy one to pass over. They could have done much more with the theme, but really, its pretty much exactly what we all expected from the rumours.

Given past experience, I wouldn't put it past them for "Battle of the Elements" to mean a Lumineth civil war!

The crab's meme-power is overwhelming, but for me it was a toss up between Kroak and the Dragons. I went with the great Slann relic priest, because I've not built a dragon yet, and felt my vote should go for a mini I am in the process of painting, rather than one I just like the look of in pictures. I wonder whether AoS has more of a chance this year, I may just have missed it, but I didn't spot a huge 40K character model in the list, which is what usually wins.

I wonder if there will ultimately be Chaos and Destruction themed expansions actually. The basic Cursed City game is almost all about champions of Order (and an Ogre merc) fighting against the undead, but I read the tie in novel, and that actually featured both sides trying to track down a Khorne worshiping serial killer. I could see them thus having thematic expansions, like a chaos cult, or the like that still fits the gothic vibe of Cursed City, but isn't just more vampires.

Yeah, there is almost hope. Whether their return would lead to an uptick in demand for skull pass though is hard to say. It really had its hayday in the Chaos Dwarf community before there were so many good 3rd party options, and if GW get in on the action again then there would be no need for kitbashing at all. As to metal's quality, it really depends what kind of models we're talking about. I can see where you are coming from, but as I'm an RPG player primarily, metal models have a certain appeal beyond what they have in wargames circles I think. They have a heft and "feel" to them which plastics just don't quite match. If you are putting a lot of effort into just one hero you end up having different priorities to making lots of troops. Kitbashing is an issue, and as someone who can no longer use superglue I do find multi part metals a challenge. However, a lot of what sells well on the second hand market are the single piece metals, which are often just fantastic even without conversion and kitbashing. The cheaper production material meant that they were able to make a lot more variety of hero figures back then, and the models just have a lot of character. Single piece models don't have the same issues of fragility as their multi part kin, which again is useful if you are taking them to and from games. I often find that my plastic figures snap, but have managed to drop a D&D book on old lead figures before now, and while their spears had to be bent back into shape, they were otherwise fine!

Now, I know news of a new space marine doesn't really excite us Age of Sigmar players, but lets think of the 40K crowd for once! After all, they've not had any news space marines since... *checks notes* Every other week forever... What was I saying?

Its very hard to predict what old plastics are worth. Metal models hold their value a lot better on the collector's market. Multi part plastics tend to depreciate, as the ones on sale are often built in bad poses, or not assembled very well. Single pose plastics hold up better, but aren't likely to fetch as good prices as the metals. Broken models can bring the price down, even though quite a lot of us are more than happy to repair and convert. Looking on Ebay is your best bet, as skull pass sets do come up from time to time. The models used to be in quite high demand among chaos dwarf fans, as you could convert the dwarves into chaos dwarves and the goblins into hobgoblins to get a workable army.