EccentricCircle

Interesting question. What effect do the ascended mortal type gods have on the Realm of Chaos. Does their ascension generate a psychic maelstrom in the warp like a regular god, or do they work the other way out, by pulling the essence of a wind of magic out of the warp, and binding it to a mortal (or undead) form, do they insulate the warp from their godlyness? I'd guess the later, but I've never read End Times, so I'm not 100% up on precisely how ascension works, even if we got real answers at the time. As a side note, I read the book with the Khornate kingdom, which is called "Angeria" and my first thought was, "that's terrible world building, can't they come up with better names for things?" Then a bit further through the book I started thinking... "then again, its a kingdom where all the sensible people were murdered hundreds of years ago, and we've gotten to the point where Khornate Berserkers are the ones having to name things. Maybe a ridiculously stupid name actually fits the circumstances and is good world building!"

Thanks! And of course that leads to the other great irony of Chaos... The only way to defeat it forever is the total victory of the undead. As far as I know the idea was first proposed (explicitly at least) In the Liber Necris of Manfred von Carstein. He put forward the idea that if everyone and everything would be turned into mind less zombies enthralled to the will if a single undead being then the warp would quiet, and the chaos gods would starve. This more or less remains Nagash' plan, ans is pretty much what he's been working towards since ascending to godhood. But if course that pesky Sigmar keeps standing in his way and fighting for life and self determination the very things that keep chaos strong. Of course there's a fair chance it actually wouldn't work anyway. The Chaos Gods have been shown to be pan dimensional beings, drawing power from every universe that touches the Realm of Chaos. Archaon thought he could kill them by destroying the world, but they just wandered off to other universes. So Nagash would have to triumph in the Realms, the Necrons would have to overrun the 40k galaxy and so in, all more or less simultaneously. If any life survives, chaos will claw its way back into the world....

Ha! In the good old days, all gods were aspects of Khorne! And we liked it! Or at least there are some very long standing conspiracy theories, as to precisely how the Chaos Gods present themselves to mortals, and how that influenced the religion of the old world. So the obvious one first, and the one which used to be actual canon; Khaine. So the old books actually don't beat about the bush at all on this one. "Khaine" is explicitly spelt out to be the elvish name for Khorne, and this is 100% reflected in the khornate iconography carried by witch elves. Look at the cover of the 1990's Dark Elves book, or the battle standards of the last metal witch elves. The skull rune of Khorne is right there on their shields. Next up we have Sotek, bloody handed god of the skinks. Unlike the other deities worshipped by the lizardmen, Sotek is explicitly on an Old One, but rather something else, which made a deal with Tenehuini to help his people to defeat the Skaven, in exchange for bloody sacrifices and the offering of skulls. Beyond the blood and skulls we can't say for sure that this entity is Khorne, but it certainly seems to be one sort of Chaos God. The holy symbol of Sotek is of course the twin tailed comet, that appeared in the skies as he drove clan pestilens from Lustria. This corresponded with the comet heralding the birth of Sigmar over in the old world... Which brings us to everyone's favourite god of hammers. I know of less direct evidence that the "sigmar" worshipped by the empire was actually the guise of a chaos god, however there is a lot of circumstantial theological evidence. First we need to understand how gods work in the warhammer universe. Essentially faith and belief shape reality. There is a case to be made that the historical Sigmar didn't actually ascend to godhood in the literal sense. Rather his followers believed he did, and their belief influenced the Realm of Chaos, creating something vaguely Sigmar shaped, which embodied all the ideals and values which they believed he should embody. Is it still a chaos god if it fights for law? Does originating in the immaterial make it irredeemably tainted by chaos even if no one realises that? Does Tzeetch move in mysterious ways, and play the long game even if that means defeating himself in the process? Are any of the Chaos Gods above posing as another deity, if they think it will get them more skulls for the skull throne? As a different emperor once said "only now, at the end, do you understand..." Far more detail can be found here on this TV tropes wild mass guessing page: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WMG/Warhammer I kind of love this sort of theological speculation, and think its great that Warhammer lore really used to embrace it, and leave itself really open to interpretation.

Intriguing, I didn't know there was an unpublished book. How far along did it get and what details are known about it? Any source where I can learn more? I have some of the Otherworlds stone golems to go with my chaos dwarfs since they also have the Assyrian aesthetic an it was an obvious combination. It's nice to know there is sort of a precedent in canon. Or almost canon anyway!

So long as you are going from a smaller base to the larger one I find it works well enough. I glue the small base on top of the large one, roll out a snake of greenstuff and put that around the upper base to smooth out the transition. Cover that with sand or texture paint and you're good.

One of my armies is Daughters of Khaine, so this was a definite concern. I have bulked out my Sisters of Slaughter with Mantic succubi, which have a similar if less dynamic look (just with actual demon horns, rather than demon masks). For witch Elves I ended up getting some OOP metal models, which somehow ended up being cheaper than the current plastic kit. I don't think that one is going to work for most armies though! Generally I just wait for Battleforces and SC sets before I start an army project, and try to get the basic troops as part of a bundle, rather than individually.

Interesting. Thanks for explaining. I was in a similar boat, in that there was no way I could afford the original set. However our group soon discovered that we could get on fine without it. We already had warbands from our AoS armies, the stand alone rulebook wasn't too bad by GW standards, and it didn't take long to get our card packs and start playing. We haven't once missed not having the cards, tokens etc, and while I have picked up quite a bit of the terrain separately, we always make our own arrangements anyway, so didn't need that. This time around I was keen on catacombs, in spite of its price, since as a D&D player, the doors and dungeon terrain will actually be quite useful. Its a shame its overpriced, but not being sure whether to get the Shadowstalkers won't stop my existing DoK warband from continuing to slice and dice their way through our ongoing warcry campaign.

I'm no fan of increased prices, and its a shame the new warcry set proved to be so expensive. However, I've seen a few people comment things along the lines of: "I've enjoyed playing warcry so far, but will have to stop now because I can't afford Catacombs" Or "I was planning to get into Warcry, but this new set being too expensive means I can't". Not wanting to buy the set is fair enough, but you can play warcry perfectly well without it? As far as I can see its just a way to get the new warbands a little early, and with a nominal discount. It has what looks like a cool optional campaign, but I don't see it really as an introductory product at this point. If you already have the rulebook and cards, then you can keep playing just fine, and if you want to start, buying the books and a warband is still one of the less ludicrously expensive options. I'm not quite sure why anyone thinks they need catacombs, besides it being the new hotness?

Yeah, I never said it would be easy. I agree that the official stance of GW and their supporters very much clashes with this approach. I very much come from an RPG background, and mostly play games that are mini agnostic, so while I enjoy the richness of the GW lore, I tend to get a bit frustrated with just how restrictive they tend to make the models. I'd far rather have a more generic toolbox system and be able to use models a bit more freely. Now the issue of being able to recognise things on the tabletop is an interesting one. I'm genuinely curious as to how many people see this as is a major consideration. (To explain, I'm partially sighted, so there is no way I'd be able to tell what weapon a model was holding without picking it up to look at it. I always have to peer at things to confirm what they are, or ask my opponant for clarification). I find it hard to judge what everyone else does. Do you always glance at models as they are being used to make sure they have swords instead of spears? Would your ability to play the game be impacted if you couldn't remember, and it wasn't clear? Since I've always had to either remember or ask, its hard to put myself in the mindset that not being able to tell is a problem.

Here's one which is particularly relevant now that meeting up is becoming difficult again... Play using a virtual tabletop. Its trivial to turn the pictures from th GW web store into counters and upload them to roll20 or one of the other similar packages. There are loads of maps and terrain files out there, many of them either free or cheap. Moving counters in large blocks is slightly tricky, but once you get the hang of it is ok. You can play using only the free rules, or focus your limited budget on getting a battle tome if you want allegiance stuff. Admittedly that only helps with the gaming fix, not the hobby one. It could though let you play and try out lists while slowly building and army, and staying within your means both in terms of money an time. (I feel like very few of us do the latter). There are things we can do as individuals to keep costs down, and I'm sure we'll see some good ideas. There are also things we can do as a community. Let's reduce peer pressures to always buy the next big thing. Let's be more accepting of proxies,kitbashes, third party models, slight differences in scale or things not being wysiwyg. If someone wants to print out cardboard pawns tk try out a new list, or proxy old orcs as Ironjaws or whatever, so that shouldn't be frowned on. Not every game is tournament, and not every game has to use battletome rules. If your opponents can't afford their factions book then don't insist on using yours. Play the free version of the game.

I now kind of want to see a Games Workshop branded burger franchise... "I'll have the double Archaon with Heresy Cheese please, and a side of Terminator Fries!"

If we assume that "-Neth" essentially means "kindred of elves" the I guess Daughters of Khaine could be considered "Sanguineth" if you want to keep with the latin prefix theme. Basically the "elves of blood " to go with the elves of light, shadows, wood, and whatever "Idon" is, presumably something sea related, but my somewhat limited latin is failing me on th derivation of that one. Anyone know where it comes from?

I think I'd have been more surprised if the new dark elves werent called something like that. GW is many things, but creative with its age of sigmar naming is not one of them!

I can't see GW trying to switch to competing with the big media companies to be honest. While I'm sure they'd love to make Marvel Money, and would work towards that if they could, its presently on a different order of magnitude. I think they are much better off being a colossal razor toothed shark in the tiny goldfish bowl that is tabletop wargames, than they would be trying to compete as a pretty small fish in the ocean of the big media conglomerates. They are much better off licensing their IP to those companies, and making money in tandem than they would be trying to compete with Disney on its own terms. I don't see the advantage of them soliciting a buyout by a larger megacorp either.

It will be mildly hilarious if they do ultimately do make vampire pirates, but they turn out to be 40K space pirates or something.

That's true enough. On an unrelated note: Looking at catacombs I almost feel like they wanted to make heroquest, but tried to mash it together with warcry and got something which isn't quite either.

While I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, it is worth pointing out that the fascism and xenophobia in 40K is satirical rather than something they're condoning. I appreciate that the super serious style they present their world in doesn't help matters, compared to the more openly parodic stuff of yesteryear. However, the point of the setting is to take some of the most unpleasant aspects of human society and blows them up to insane levels as a critique and parody of what we see in the real world. Certainly that involves asking the audience to empathise with unheroic heroes, which not everyone will find a pleasant experience. It's very much the Judge Dredd school of story telling, or evolved out of that at any rate. The fact that the protagonists are fanatical religious fundamentalists, and the arm of an oppressive, mass-murdering state is meant to prompt people to question authority, rather than defend its excesses. Whether all the fanboys get that or not is a topic for another day of course...

Did they ever release all the terrain from the old warcry box? I picked up the two ruin sets, but don't think I've ever seen the broken head, spikes or bridges separately. Looks like some of that could be in here, but clearly not all of it.

Interesting, yeah, definitely seems to be a linguistic difference. In fact it was Pathfinder 1 that pioneered the open playtest model, or at least implemented it on a large enough scale to be significant for the first time. Paizo have been pretty open about their design process since the start, and so WotC saw that that worked, and began doing it themselves with the big "DYD next" playtests. Its become more and more common in the last decade or so since the original Pathfinder Playtest rulebook. I believe Fantasy Flight used that model for their Star Wars RPG too. I wish that GW would take that approach rather than releasing books which they know are going to be errata'd and replaced in due course. Clearly they think that the book won't sell if people have already had access to the free rules, but I think that the success of the model elsewhere shows that that isn't the case. Paizo actually release two editions of the core rulebook, a playtest version, and then the proper version later on. They seem to sell the main version well enough, and WotC clearly haven't had a problem with people sticking with the playtest rules/ I'd think in a wargame setting, where everything is a lot more standardised and the tourney crowd obsess over using the most up to date and complete rules set, it shouldn't be a problem at all.

In English we'd call those trial games, learning games or maybe test games. However that is not the same as playtesting which is specifically done as part of the development of the game. It is equivalent to what computer games call the Alpha and Beta testing. So you are only playtesting if your feedback is actually going to be collated by the designers and used to write the battle tome. If the book is already published then it could be a test game for you, but GW neither knows or cares, and isn't paying you to try it out , so it's not play testing. Now a lot of RPG companies have adopted a much more open approach where they release a beta version of the rules six months to a year early and get feedback from a massive open play test process. They then feed that back into final development and incorporate it into the finwl book. GW don't do that. THey kind of accept feedback just after a book is written and the release errata, but since they do this after you've bought the expensive unchangeable rule book rather than six months before it isn't considered part of the playtest process. That is done in house and by a small group of third party testers who sign an NDA to get an earlier version of the rules. I'd much prefer an open playtest to their publish and errata model but that doesn't seem likely.

Happy Giant Day! Enjoy your lore and monstrous new friend!

I disagree. As a diehard Xenos fan I've been delighted by how much new stuff the necrons have just gotten. Genestealers have been a great expansion over the last few years, so while there have been more marines and imperial toys than ever before, I've felt a lot less neglected than usual. While I'd love it if Eldar got the necron treatment next, I'd be really keen to see a new army or more Kroot too. Everyone will have a different experience, so accept that you and others feel unsatisfied. I'm actually quite hopeful for once. while I much ptefer AoS to 40k in general, I think AoS will be getting new armies in due course, so it's les automatically exciting than the prospect of something new for 40k. I don't think is going to happen though. New undead for us seem much more likely for the early next year release. they tend to try to cycle through the grand alliances at least a bit, so Death should theoretically be next.

Definitely! There is a case to be made that everything in the old world was a lot more tied to chaos than it is in the AoS setting. The implication was always that if people believed something, it took shape within the Realm of Chaos, and enough worship would make it form a god. Whether the gods of Law also originated that way was always a cause of speculation. The Wood elves in particular were one of the darker and more mysterious of the "good" factions, but there was that sense of darkness and corruption at the heart of every faction and creed if you knew where to look!

So I'm much more of a collector, since I barely play the game. My experience thus won't be especially relevant, but here goes... I pretty much buy models which I like the look of, and think I will be able to use in games which I play. For the most part that's D&D, with some dabbling in frostgrave. So I'll gradually pick up a smattering of models across any army or range, as and when I need them for my next adventure, or some scenario I'm planning. Sooner or later a collection thus reaches a tipping point, where I have almost enough models of a specific faction for it to work as a 1K point army. At that point I will likely start to deliberately get a few things that I don't have another use for, just to make it a functional army. However, I tend not to like to get hundreds of battleline models, just so an army is competitive in a game I'm not going to use it for much. My armies thus tend to be quite hero heavy and I'm much more likely to just have one of each troop choice, or maybe an extra unit here and there to be able to build some of the alternate weapon options. Start Collecting sets and Battleforces are great for this kind of approach, as you can fairly quickly get the core of an army, and end up with a lot of variety for RPG and skirmish type stuff. However, I do have a tendency to get a bit obsessive when I like things, so if I have enough models in a range to feel like I'm collecting it, I can get to the point where I want to get one of everything, just because its fun to paint and I want to be able to rank them all up and see my army on parade. As a result I've ended up with some quite large armies, which I probably could build competitive lists from if I were so inclined. So basically my take on collecting multiple armies is: "If once you start down that path, forever shall it dominate your destiny!"

On the non-Chaos Daemon front... Way back in the day, there was speculation/head canon that Athel Loren, home of the wood elves was itself a kind of minor Chaos God, taking the form of the forest's genius loci and empowered by the devotion of its elven inhabitants. The reason being that basically the tree spirits fit the bill for a daemon force pretty consistently. Treemen/Tree lords are greater daemons of Athel Loren, Dryads are the lesser daemons, with tree kin in the intermediate slot. Ariel and Orion are beasically daemon princes empowered by the wood, and so on. Clearly things work differently in the new world to how they did in the old. But its an idea which has certainly been around for a while, and knowing old warhammer lore, I wouldn't put it past the designers to have intended something like that at one point or another.