EccentricCircle

The folder idea is a good one. D&D kind of tried something similar in the 90's ( I guess at the height of the filofax movement?) Rather than producing a single monster manual, and then following it up with sequels they made a ringbinder version, which you could then buy additional sheets for and keep adding to as more and more monster supplement were released. It was a great idea but they made two key mistakes. The first was durability. They printed it on fairly thin note paper, which unfortunately meant that the pages didn't stand up to the heavy use required for flicking too and fro during gaming sessions. This would likely be worse for warhammer where you have multiple sheets to look at in a turn than for D&D where the DM might only be referring to one monster. The advantage is that the shelf life of rules is much shorter for warhammer, where a stat block is expected to last a year or two at most before getting revised. Whereas for D&D you would be using those same basic monster stats for half the 90s until 2.5 came out, possibly longer. Their other mistake, and the key one really, was that they printed multiple creatures on the same sheet, figuring it was better to have different creatures on the two sides of the sheet. This made it all but impossible to actually organise the folder, as new monsters would come out, and there would be no way to slot them in alphabetically between creatures which shared a sheet of paper. This is easily fixed, for example by having full page art on the reverse. But it probably doomed what was otherwise a good idea for a product. Even so, if you learn the lessons of the past, I think a filofax approach would work great. I'd still want a nice hardback lore and art book though, and disagree with those who claim that is bad for the environment. The embodied energy of the internet, the tablet or phone you read the pdf on and the digital infrastructure supporting it all is collosal, so don't kid yourself that you are saving trees. Trees can and are replanted to offset the carbon used in paper production. I accept that printing books cheaply in China means a higher carbon footprint and environmental impact, than optimal, but they are fundamentally a sustainable technology, which your e reader is not.

Everyone happy now? I thought the most surprising thing was the return of the Bretonians, in the form of a novel at least.

I'm all for a new cycle of warcry bands, but I really don't think they need a whole new edition of te rules. They can stand to expand on what they've done for a bit rather than needing to redo all te grand alliance books again. Here's hoping.

LotR models are more realistic i n their proportions, but aren't true 25mm either. Terrain is terrain though, and only somewhat sticks to a scale. It should be absolutely fine for AoS. I use all of the present middle earth terrain kits like the rohan and laketown buildings and they all look fine with AoS models. These kits look lovely and it's great to have the next two books confirmed.

Its great to see the return of this thread. It's always fun seeing such large armies ranked up on the tabletop. Well done everyone!

Where doe that date for the Middle Earth License running out come from? I've not seen that, but if true its hard to know whether they would want to renew it. Certainly they have a vested interest in stopping anyone else from capitalising on that brand. Its hard to say whether its popularity will pick up again with the new series coming out. GW have also focused heavily on their own IP in the time since the LOTR range started coming out, so who can say. I'd love to get a few more expansions for this edition, even if it does end up being the last edition.

We start the week on Monday in the UK as well, so I'm not sure who the eagles were fighting to gain that right.

Yeah, as others have said, get forgeworld models if you really like them as works of art, and want them as a hobby and painting project. Don't get them because you think the rules are going to be the major selling point. Even were support not lacking, and the future not uncertain, rules come and go, and what is fun today is terrible tomorrow. In three years time we will have 4e Age of Sigmar, and no one can predict what will or won't be good. If you are going to spend money on a big model, and then spend all the time and effort to paint it, it shouldn't be for any reason as transitory as rules. This goes for the big GW centre pieces too, but is especially important for forgeworld, because they are often so pricey, and so uncertain. But that said, some of them are fantastic models. I love my Dread Maw, even if she's never been used for warhammer (she has been used for D&D on multiple occasions, but that's another story). My Carmine dragon doesn't leave the display case, and the same will be true of the Dread Saurian when I finish painting him.

Those are fantastic. I've seen their lizardmen stand ins before, such amazing details.

It will be interesting to see the sprues. I suspect the riders will be integrated, as that seems to be the norm for stormcast. If against all odds they are easily detachable then I can just magnetise them and swap them out for human sized knights depending on what I'm playing. Otherwise a head swap with greatswords or demigriph knights might be in order! on a related note, does anyone know o a company that makes winged valkyrie type models? I like the idea if winged scouts or infantry riding dragons ti the battle field then flying off to engage. Nit a great fan of the winged stormcast though they are just so bulky.

Yeah, splitting rumours from news is less useful than trying to split off topic stuff from rumours and news. But... we've had off topic threads before though, and they've never gotten the kind of traction the rumour thread gets. I think at this point it is what it is an will never change.

My first thought was Dragonlance too. The mention of dragon riders jousting will do that. They won't reference it though, any shout out to a rival IP is going to be frowned upon. In fact I was reading the article from a couple of days ago where they showed off a hobby-ists amazingly painted Thousand Sons, and they quoted her as saying that she like dthe idea of magic being a dark pact which destroys the mages physical health "just like wizards in fantasy novels". To which I thought, that's not really a generic trope, that's just Raistlin, I bet that's what she said and they edited out the D&D reference. Who can say? I love that these are very much classic dragons. There are so many different dragon morphologies, and GW has for many years leaned into the winged serpent with claws aesthetic, which is cool, and I have several. But these have an awesome Todd Lockwood vibe to them, which I really love. That's the kind of Dragon art I'm most fond of, and the kind of dragon's i've always wanted for my warhammer armies. This is going to be a really epic expansion to the range. Can't wait.

Oh wow! Yeah, just reading the article now, and this is looking very encouraging! I've never been the biggest fan of stormcast, but I could make an exception for these guys (or do some nifty conversions.) I guess I'd better get saving my pennies. I doubt they are going to be cheap. Soon my dragon armies shall take flight!

Yep, that could work well!

For a long while I've wanted to do an entire dragon mounted army. AoS probably isn't the right system for it, but the new kits could be a great starting point. The idea would be essentially to have a couple of big centrepiece dragons, and then several smaller drakes, being ridden by different troop types. So you would have heavily armoured dragon knights on medium sized dragons. Big dragons acting as troop transports for "dragon dragoons", and then smaller drakes with lightly armoured scouts and mages. I'd probably source lots of toy dragons and repaint them, building howdas out of matches and lollypop sticks. Smaller creatures like wyverns and wingless drakes would also be cool. Then heroes would of course need to all have pseudo dragons on arms and shoulders etc. The reason none of this has happened yet is finding appropriate models. I'd imagine I can get historical knight models which come without horses, and can be given more exotic mounts, but it would be nice to find some winged figures for the scouts, so that they can fly off their dragons as needed, and fight alongside them. Maybe one day I'll find the right models for the job!

I wonder if part of the problem lies in the way we as a fanbase interact with the product. All fandon revolves around consumer products to a greater or lesser extent, but how we engage with those products can vary substantially. Consequently the degree of ownership we have over them does too. Some elements of fandom are what I would term "passive". You absorb and enjoy media, as it is presented to you, but even if you're really into it, you're still only engaging with the text as presented. Other kinds are active. You absorb the product, and engage in transformative activities related to it. Tabletop games in particular fall into this latter category, but of course so do things like Cosplay and Fanfiction. So when we become fans of something like warhammer, it isn't just to sit there are read the books that have been written. Its to play our own games, using the rules. And most of us go beyond that, because the hobby aspect is so important. We spend hundreds of hours painting, crafting, and generally creating within the framework of the game. Even a lot of the actual game play is about telling our own stories within that world. So its no surprise that we feel a lot of ownership over that IP, and to a large extent this has historically been encouraged. Its always been about customising, crafting, making your models your own and telling your own stories. And so its only natural that some folks will want to take that much further, and make fan films, and write warhammer stories, and generally engage with the IP in a much more transformative way than perhaps the people who own that IP would like. Indeed, in the twenty years I've been in the hobby, I reckon there has been a shift from a general encouragement of custimisation and transformation, to a tacit acknowledgement of it, and perhaps to tactic discouragement. We have seen GW dial down on their IP to try to make their setting unique, and in the process have turned a toolbox for playing fantasy battles into a very specific and prescriptive setting and a game that supports that. However, I feel like the community is still stuck in a bit of a limbo between these two paradigms. We still feel ownership of something which legally speaking is not ours. I have no interest in getting into the broader debate as to whether this should be the state of affairs. Maybe its fine for the big corporation to have ownership over their employees creations, or maybe we should all be trying to sieze the means of production, and put the ownership in the hands of the creatives. Where exactly my opinions fall on that scale is irrelevant to the discussion, because for better or worse we live in a capitalist culture. Thus GW does get to defend their IP, and whether their ability to do so is proportionate to their merit doesn't really enter into it. If they want to shut down fan films, they have the power to do so, and there isn't much we can do about it, because no amount of pressure we could collectively apply to them to do so would be enough. The problem lies in that we've always had things like fan films, and have felt entitled to be able to produce that kind of transformative work. I know I for one prefer to engage with the hobby in that way, and really enjoy creating things more than I do "following the rules as written" at least where lore is concerned. However, I recognise that if I want free rein to be able to do that, I have to enjoy their IP for what it is, take inspiration from it, and then go and put the effort and dedication into working on my own creations, within a space which is entirely my own IP. Not everyone is going to want to do that though. But until the revolution comes, I don't really see the trajectory changing back towards a more open "toolboxy" approach which supports transformative fan engagement. GW have made the big bucks by dialling down on the uniqueness of their IP, and making sure that they have control over it, and that isn't going to change.

I'm still trying to learn how to play modern 40k, and just not having the time/ brainpower to sit down and do it. I started reading some of the rules discussion for 3e and just went "nope, one thing at a time." I just wasn't enjoying trying to learn it. As others have said, change is sometimes harder than something brand new would be. I play a lot of different games, some more frequently than others, so have a lot of rules systems floating around in my head. Its not that any one of them is, in and of itself, too hard to learn. However, you have to decide what you want to do with your limited time. i could spend hours reading and researching 3e AOS, and play lots of practice games to get up to speed. However doing so doesn't actually give me useful new capabilities. I can already play 2e just fine, and no one is going to force me to play the new edition (Getting a game is impossible round here so I tend to just play solo games). So the time I could spend to learn 3e is better spent playing 2e solo, or frostgrave or warcry with opponants. I could be writing DnD adventures which I'll get to share with others ( that is what I play the most). I could be painting, or writing, working on inumerable homebrew projects, building lego, or just reading more interesting things. So I've decided I'll just skip this edition and maybe pick up 4e or the chaos dwarf tome if that actually happens. Until then I'm good, and don't need to waste my precious free time just because GW have given me home work so that they can sell more books.

Well, I've been hoping for a fyreslayer battleforce for the last three years, as I've wanted to get a small army of them for a while. They have never been featured, so my hopes have always been dashed. However, earlier in the year I decided to stop waiting for a battleforce and get the start collecting set instead. Ergo, sods law will dictate that this year will be the year they finally get their due. Now that I have enough fyrelayers, a fyreslayer battleforce box will be released just to spite me.

With regards to them phasing out resin and metal... I'm not sure it will be any time soon. In AoS, it certainly looks like they are rapidly heading in that direction. I believe that Death now only has a single resin model left, and in the other factions it is mostly contained to a handful of model ranges. In order It's almost all Seraphon, Chaos has a smattering of characters, plus skaven and beasts, and then Destruction has Ogres and a smattering a heroes. That seems pretty doable really. They are constantly putting out new hero models, so it theoretically would only take a year or two for the various resin heroes to get replaced, and if they did a couple of big faction updates in that time they would be half way there. However, that isn't taking into account 40K, and especially Lord of the Rings. The latter game still has a vast amount of metal models in its catalogue, and while they are slowly updating some key heroes, they are also constantly cycling the metal and resin sculpts in and out of production. There are many factions in LotR which have very little plastic at all, so short of a total revamp of the range, or retiring it completely, I don't see them phasing it out completely. They were initially planning to move all of the metal sculpts over to finecast, but we all know how that turned out! I haven't seen them do that for a while. In cases like the Haradrim assassins, they actually brought out a kit which combined a resin model with a couple of metal ones, all of which had been sold seperately originally. That seems to suggest that any plans for finecast to completely replace metal were aborted at some point. The fact that Skaven and I think goblins still have a few metal models supports this too. That said, we shall see what the future holds. I've been quite down on AoS lately, as I've not had painting time, and am too burned out to care about the new edition. However, the amount of credibility which all the Chaos Dwarf speculation is getting, and the hints at other factions are pretty exciting! My favourite factions (old and new) are Seraphon/lizardmen, Tomb Kings, Chaos Dwarfs, and regular Dwarfs. So the fact that there are rumours for all alignments of duardin, and Seraphon are doing a lot in the lore is very encouraging!

For the rumour engine, at first glance, I saw the silhouette and thought seraphon, but as soon as I looked closer I could see that it isn't. What looked like feathers are actually blades. It is made of riveted metal plates, which lizzies don't use. If it were a triceratops head then i wouldn't expect tusk like spurs at the sides. The workmanship is also far too crude. Seraphon designs are all solid stone with geometric patterns in bass relief. Metal takes the form of gold plaques and squares set into the stone design. It may be cracked and weathered, often overgrown. However it is never rough or crude. Which this is. i think that chaos dwarfs are possible. Its hard to tell as they have had so many dIfferent aesthetics over the years. This doesn't match the ornate and ritualistic grandeur of classic big hat chaos dwarfs. Their iconography was all sharp arrows and clean lines. However, that hasn't been the dominant look for them since the Hell cannon, which is all about jagged beaten metal plates. The legion of azgirh models are covered with rivets, and their banners have the same idea of being made from riveted rough plates. The design has a bit of a look of a dwarven ancestor gid face, but cruder and less ornate. If the spurs at the sides are tusks then that could also fit, since that is the chaos dwarfs most common mutation. So as someone who has painted almost all Lizardman and Chaos Dwarf sculpts ever over the years, I'm coming down strongly on the CD side! It also has echoes of some of the warcry chaos architecture, maybe. Could be some thing completely different like a new gang for necromunda though you can never tell. as for TOW and cross compatibility, I think its telling that Lumineth and vampires have both had two distinct components to their army. Both have a block of core troops which update classic units, and wouldn't look out of place in the old world. Then both have some weird and wacky stuff to give them the AoS flare. Leave those model s aside though, and you have High Elves and Vampire Counts. All TOW needs to do is release a few hero figures and they have a functional army by cherry picking the appropriate bits of the AoS range. As things stand I reckon you could field Empire, High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Ogre Kingdoms, Vampire Counts, Skaven, Beastmen, Warriors and Demons of Chaos, and Night goblins without too much trouble. If a dispossessed update is coming soon that would sort out Dwarfs, and then really you only need a handful of factions to get the lumineth treatment before you are there.

Nice idea. Could be harder to implement though.

I've sometimes wondered whether the solution to this is to have a glossary thread. You will never convince the entire population if s message board to suddenly stop using jargon. The better solution is then to document that jargon so that we have a quick way to reference what it means.

Most of the legion of Azgorh line arrived in whfb times as part of Turmakhan. However at least one model (Shartor, the huge bull centaur hero) was released later, as an AoS model. He was most likely designed during the transition period when AoS was in development. Given that they start planning the next edition the moment the previous one is out the door, I'm not sure how much there really is to gain in splitting hairs over who was an AoS model and who a WHFB one. the legion was supported well into AoS, so its fair to consider it a valid AoS army, even if it began life in Fantasy.

That makes some sense, and I can see where you are coming from even though I don't really agree. What about a situation where someone is running a Cities army, but wants to use entirely dwarves? Say if they have the core duardin units, and then are using dwarven proxies for the units which are generally human, that wouldn't be as confusing, since it would be obvious that the thunderers must be the hand gunners, since there aren't any humans. None of the actual duardin units are close in appearance? I feel as though that is the main reason which folks who are adverse to using legends rules would substitute dwarves for humans, rather than just doing it randomly? Mind you, I mostly play miniatures agnostic games, so am firmly in the camp that GW is just being silly by being so prescriptivist in their unit descriptions, so I might be biased. I feel that even if there is a good gameplay reason for not liking proxies, which you clearly have, the companies motives are a lot less altruistic.

Yep, this is the attitude we all need to bring to the hobby. Rules will come and go, unit descriptions will change and GW will be ridiculously prescriptivist. But our lovingly crafted armies are eternal, so long as we don't give up on them! I can also second the recommendation of Russian Alternative. I have quite a few of their Chaos Dwarfs too, and they are lovely sculpts. They are not recasters, as I know some people think when they see the name, but rather a legitimate company with their own sculpters and a unique model range, albeit one inspired by some of the out of production GW aesthetics.