EccentricCircle

"Astrolithic" is a very Seraphon type word. If they are coming as soon as suggested then that could be their terrain.

Well, so long as I can still play my older armies on squares, and newer ones on rounds I'll be happy. I have yet to rebase anything, and have no plans to. Life is too short to worry about what shape my toy soldiers stand on! The main problem I've got these days is keeping armies consistent. For the most part its easy enough to keep with a base style within a collection, but there are an increasing number of cases where I've ended up with a few models on contrasting bases, which can be a little annoying. Deciding which to choose for a newer army can also be a challenge. At the moment I'm working on gloomspite, and decided to go with rounds, because I would run out of bases if I tried to use my stock of squares for that many goblins, but it does make the army slightly less versatile, since it would be tricky to use them in retrogames. Maybe they'll have found some sort of solution, which lets you freely convert between the two, but I can't think of a good way to do that in practice!

Yeah there's no surprise that Sisters are popular given that they are one of the classic armies, which have been neglected for aeons. It really puts the situation with S2D into perspective. One edition without an update suddenly doesn't seem so bad!

My approach, would be that the size of territory doesn't affect the game on the level of specific matchups or battles. Rather it has some other, non mechanical, benefit related to the actual arc of the campaign. Thus if you reclaim the Falls of Fire, it doesn't make you better at using fire, or give you more troops, but it means that you have the eternal gratitude of the Fyreslayers who can now return to their ancestral home etc. There doesn't need to even be a specific win/loose condition, rather the outcomes of the various battles spin out into the shared history of that region of the mortal realms, and gradually you build up more and more of a story. As for contesting regions a long way from your territory, it could be that there is a certain resource, or strategic position at that location, which you need to get to for some story reason. Perhaps your reinforcements are going to come through a realmgate there, or you must replenish your store of magitek by capturing the Endless spells that roam the Sorceric wastes. the player who's territory is in that area has a strategic advantage, but other factions will still need to send expeditions there every so often, and thus come into contact with the faction which controls it.

Interesting. I'd thought that Steamhead Duardin were something else, but maybe I had just heard people speculating about what they thought they could be, and thought there was more to it.

I remain quite skeptical of the rumoured Light and Shadow elves. I know that there have been numerous mentions in the background, and maybe we will get them one day, but it seems as though everyone has been confidently predicting them for years. They always seem to be just around the corner, but never actually show up. At this rate, if they do come out towards the end of next year, it could well be because GW saw how keen on them everyone was, and decided they'd better go and design some, not because they were planned from the start! A lot of folks I talk to seem to always be surprised when a faction is hinted at repeatedly in the background, but then a video teaser or announcement seminar drops, and something else comes out of left field which no one was expecting. The thing is, thinking back over the lifetime of AoS, I can't think of a single faction which got lots of mentions in the background, and then got released shortly afterwards. It might have happened with some of the initial wave (stormcast, Khorne, fyreslayers, Ironjaws etc.) However I wasn't following things back then, and am not sure how representative that era is of AoS as a whole. At that point, all the lore was being spun up from nothing in parallel with everything being released. They were sort of doing it all at once, from whole cloth, rather than dropping hints for things in years to come. Looking back over the last couple of years, Bonereapers, Idoneth, Kharadrons, Tzeentch, Gloomspite etc all really came out of nowhere. They were foreshadowed for sure, but only by their own marketing campaigns, not as part of the more general fabric of Age of Sigmar. I can't think of one occasion where a faction was alluded to in a novel, or a battletome, and then came out a year or so later. There are a few cases where a battletome or novel has contained spoilers for whatever was coming next, since clearly they were written at the same time, so there wasn't much point in not mentioning Idoneth in DoK or whatever. But I think that's a different phenomenon entirely. In short, most armies are surprises, and foreshadowing isn't really something Games Workshop do... Clearly there is enough of a fandom for Malekith and the Twins that some people are keen to see their armies, but its actually been a while since we've gotten a big centerpiece god model for a faction release. There are already a lot of elves, and I'm not sure how many different takes on them are really sustainable at this point. Time will tell, and hopefully I'm completely wrong, but I'm not going to believe in more elves until they are sitting on my painting table.

Eh, I bought into legion of Azgorh because the models were cool and I wanted a unique army that would be different to play. I think most people who invest heavily in niche armies and forgeworld models pretty much know where they stand.

I'd guess its more that Horus Heresy and the specialist games are so much more successful than anything on the AoS side that that is the range they want to put all of their resources into. Forge World can't compete with GW proper making the same sorts of models anymore. It seems to have a new niche, making the specialist stuff, supporting Middle Earth, Horus Heresy and the other less mainstream product lines. I was never fussed about these particular models, but I hope this doesn't presage a larger set of cuts to the range. There are a few things I'd definitely like to get one day, but its going to be a while before I can afford many of them.

The beetle is wearing an elf queen shaped hat!

Oh for sure! I just thought it was interesting to know the actual names for the various components of what I had previously assumed was a single "thing". As a Lego fan the discussion of how they avoid the various mold lines and gate marks was fascinating as well. I was aware just how high precision Lego's manufacturing was, but not the ins and outs of how it works!

This is a bit of a Saga, but here goes! In the beginning I just liked making stuff up. I can pretty much trace all of my current hobbies back to a childhood love of fantasy and science fiction, whether expressed through playground games, building LEGO castles (still do that!) or everything in between. As I've gotten older those games and stories have gotten somewhat more sophisticated, but in retrospect I think my younger self was doing pretty well on the sophisticated worldbuilding front, and many of his ideas are still in use today. These days I'm primarily a roleplaying gamer, however I'd actually been dabbling in Warhammer for about a year or so before getting hooked on Fighting Fantasy and D&D. Warhammer entered the scene around the turn of the millennium, when I was eleven or twelve. One of my friends often came around, and we'd play Stargate SG-1 using our little green army men. He got into 40K first, and then one day he very graciously gave me a couple of his old plastic Gretchins, who I thought were great! I'd always loved goblins, and their spiky helmets were so cool! I'm uncertain how long it took for me to actually decide to build an army, but it must have been around 2002, because the Lord of the Rings game was out by then. That was a better fit for me than 40K, but at the time I didn't dive in to it for a number of reasons. Firstly none of my friends played it, so I knew that if I wanted to actually play the game then 40K was the way to go. I was also familiar with the more anarchic, hyper macho, and somewhat punkish style of my friend's warhammer armies, I thus wasn't entirely convinced that the GW studio would do a good job representing an IP I loved as much as the Lord of the Rings. In fact there was no reason to worry, but I didn't know that yet. In any event I decided to get some friends for my little squad of Gretchin, and began building an Ork army. My friend had switched to playingTau by this point, so I became the Ork player in our little group. It wasn't long after that that the Battle Games in Middle Earth magazine started coming out, and I started getting that, and getting into Lord of the Rings models, just as a painting hobby. The way the magazine gave you a variety of things suited that approach. I wasn't going to be able to play the game, so didn't need to worry about collecting any one army. Instead I got a wide mix of stuff, which I could use in D&D and eventually other minis games. I'd naturally been aware of Warhammer Fantasy throughout this whole process, and while I loved some of the models, it just wasn't practical to get into it while I was spending my limited resources on Lord of the Rings, and still getting the occasional Space Ork. I considered getting a Dwarf army, or maybe Goblins, since then I could have a force made up entirely of my beloved Gretchin! I loved the look of the Tomb Kings too, but I stuck with Lord of the Rings. My wargaming slowed down substantially when I went away to uni. I was heavily into RPGs by that point, so there was only so much time to go around. Plus I'd moved to a town which didn't have a GW or stockist until much later, and in student digs I didn't have space for a dedicated painting table, so that killed the momentum on the projects I was working on. That said I had now met people who played Lord of the Rings, and actually got in a few games of that! Cut forwards to about 2010. I needed some lizardmen for D&D, and couldn't make them from Lego, and of course there weren't any in the Lord of the Rings range. So I actually took a look at the warhammer section for what must have been the first time in years! Within a few months of building that first box of Saurus I was hooked again, and went from almost being out of the hobby to being back with a vengeance! It helped that I was living in a shared house by this point, and so had more space for painting and gaming. I wasn't keen on the prices of the newer Lord of the Rings stuff by that point, so Warhamme was a cheaper and more engaging option. Suddenly I was casting my mind back to all those plans I'd had as a teenager. Once my Lizardmen were done, maybe I should get the Dwarves, or Goblins, or Tomb Kings I'd spent all that time dreaming about! I fairly rapidly had TK and Dwarf armies on the go too, but my initial flurry of activity fizzled out again when PhD studies got more intense. After submitting my thesis, I took stock and decided to finish the three half painted armies I had on the go. I was solidly burned out with writing and study, so it was a really relaxing hobby to sit and paint while I prepared for my Viva. I still hadn't actually played WFB at this point. I knew a few people who played, but they were all busy with their studies too. I'd acquired the big red rulebook, and tried to learn the rules a few times, but found it a bit off putting. It didn't help that I was burned out at that point. I actually finished my backlog around the end of the 2015, and began buying models again, but it wasn't too long before I started hearing rumours of an impending apocalypse. The End Times were upon us, and I wasn't engaged with the community enough to be sure what that presaged. I finished my Lizardmen and Dwarf armies to my satisfaction, and dug in to expanding my undead. It all came to a head when the GW shopkeeper showed me a new boxed set, of what looked to me like Chaos Warriors vs some garishly painted Empire guys. "Looks cool, I said, but I'm a Tomb King player!" Turned out that those shiny knights were the first Stormcast... The World had ended, and my relaxed Undead painting project became a mad scramble to complete my Tomb Kings army before they all vanished from the shelves. I'd already been getting a few of the older Lizardmen sculpts second hand to expand my army, and now those ebay skills proved vital to getting the last few Tomb King kits I needed. I didn't even think about trying AoS at that point. I was annoyed with GW for squatting one of my favourite armies, so I wasn't keen on giving them any money directly for a while. I did want a new army project though, so I decided to see if I could get a retro Chaos Dwarves army. I reckoned I could do it for no more than the cost of buying into Stormcast would be, and it turned out that I was largely right. By the time I'd finished that army project I had largely forgiven GW, and the Legion of Azgorh model range tempted me back to getting models from them directly. I was intrigued when I heard that AoS was a much simpler game, and so checked out the free online rules. It actually looked like a system that would be fun to play, even if I wasn't sold on the setting yet. By that time AoS 2e was coming out, I was starting to get a few AoS faction models, as well as building Old World style armies, and the lore was gradually growing on me. I think Malign Portents was what really made me decide that the new setting had potential, and that coupled with accessible rules soon got me hooked. That led me inexorably to the forums. As a final coda to this wall of text, this year I finally started the goblin army of my dreams, having been considering them pretty much since the very start of my wargaming career. Full circle indeed...

Really interesting watch, Thanks! Does this mean that we've all been using the word "sprue" incorrectly? From his description it sounds as though what we call the sprues are actually the runners and in some cases the gates.

Could it be an Eldar ship for Battlefleet Gothic perhaps? Given the number of specialist games they've revived over the last few years, its surely only a matter of time.

These are just going to be my personal favourites, everyone will have slightly different opinions, and there are factions where I'm not familiar enough with the range to really draw a conclusion. ORDER Stormcast - Probably the Knight Incantor from Soul Wars. She is probably my favourite stormcast all around. Daughters of Khaine - Tough one. Morathi is a wonderful model, but its price tag is ridiculous. I'd maybe recommend the Melusi (in either build), as a more affordable alternative. Kharadron Overlords - Definitely the Underworlds Warband. Its basically the faction in microcosm, with all the main types of non ship Kharadron units represented. Cities of Sigmar - Tricky because they are so many different factions in one. For Humans I'd say the Greatswords kit is fantastic. For the Dwarves there is a lot of potential, and they don't really have any kits left which aren't fantastic. Maybe go for the Cogsmith, or the Hammerers. As far as Elves go I'm not sure I could pick. perhaps wild wood rangers for good elves and the darkling Sorceress. Sylvaneth - It has to be Drycha I think, although Kurnoth hunters and the new Arch revenant are both great too! Seraphon - I'll always have a fondness for the Engine of the Gods, but really I love everything in this faction so much, that its hard to pick. Maybe Chameleon Skinks for a smaller option, they are just great! Idoneth Deepkin - The Tidecaster, and Lotan are both amazing, as is the Turtle. That was what convinced me to get them. Fyreslayers - It has to be the Magmadroth. CHAOS Slaves to Darkness - The Darkoath Warqueen is a fantastic model. I really hope that we eventually get more slaves models in her style. Beasts of Chaos - Some of the Beastlords are pretty cool, but I don't really know the faction that well. Legion of Azgorh - The Magma Cannon is my absolute favourite, but you can't go wrong with a good old Iron Daemon. DEATH Nighthaunt - My favourite is probably the Executioner with the axe and hourglass. The one is soul wars is also cool, but the blister pack one stands out. I've not painted any of the large stuff yet though, so may change my mind when I get to the Heroes. Ossiarch Bonereapers - I'd say any of the Mortisan priests look great. Not yet seen any in the flesh (or bone) so hard to pick a favourite. Flesh Eater Courts - It has to be the Varghulf I think, such a dynamic model, and an awesome design. Legions of Nagash - Probably the Wight King. DESTRUCTION Gloomspite Gitz - Very hard to say, but probably the Loonking himself.

I wouldn't be surprised if they want to ultimately have an easy to build, entry level army for each grand alliance. So far Stormcast and Nighthaunt have been the go to "hero" factions for this edition of the game, but it would make sense to have Chaos Warriors be as accessible. What they'd do for Destruction being the open question.

Well, in just a few pages we've gone from lots of people looking forward to Death, to various folks excitedly saying that they plan to get StDs! We definitely need some less ambiguous short hands. The new models look fantastic. Not my kind of thing, but great nonetheless!

I've got lots of interesting plans, though how many of them I'll actually get to do is another matter. What I really want to do is a map based narrative campaign, with a strong Kingdom Building element to it. There is a region of wilderness, somewhere adrift in the multiverse, with gates to all eight realms. None of them are very accessible gates, and few people know of them, but if exploited then they could be another all-points. Word is gradually spreading, and factions in all of the adjacent realms are beginning to send out expeditionary forces to establish outposts in the frontier. But these strange new lands are far from uninhabited, and ancient crumbling ruins at their centre suggest that *someone* knew of this place in the dim and distant past. Effectively every player would control their own little colony, in a game that would be a bit like settlers of Catan with warhammer battles. Scouts would have to be sent out to find locations with useful resources and claim them for the kingdom, by building outposts and forts. These can then be upgraded into larger settlements once more resources are secured, but the different colonies will soon come into conflict along their shared frontiers, and various NPC factions will be randomly encountered on the map as well. I plan to use a hybrid of the path to glory rules and the points system. Effectively each player will start out with a single path to glory warband, but will be able to gain more troops as they establish more settlements. If all goes well then they should fairly soon have small standing armies garrisoning each of their settlements and outposts. However how many of those troops they send to any given battle will vary. Some games might be small skirmishes between groups of scouts, while others might be larger pitched battles. In that case there will be an element of seeing how well scouts and spies can report on enemy troop movements. Players will effectively have to try to use espionage to find out how many points worth of troops any given general is committing to a theatre, and decide whether they can commit that many troops themselves without leaving a settlement undefended in ork infested hills etc. I'd ideally like to end up with a mix of big games, skirmish scale games, maybe even play underworlds and warcry from time to time, as small adventuring parties head off to explore the ruins. It will all form part of the unfolding narrative, and each player will have a real attachment to their kingdom (or tribe, or what have you.) I like the idea that there will be a strong roleplay componant as well, with players sending diplomatic missives back and forth. What happens when your order city is besieged by the undead, and sends out messengers asking for help? Will another player come to their rescue, and what if that happens to be the Chaos player, and their aid is contingent on your kingdom turning to the worship of Tzeentch? There is so much potential! Naturally I've yet to be able to persuade anyone I game with to actually play it with me. At this rate I might just do it on my own, with my kingdom pitted against NPC factions, but that would miss out on a lot of the more RP-y parts of the experience.

Yeah, they are great! For single piece models that just slot into their bases they have so much character, and variety. I also love that the warboss has a little squig, and the shaman has a puppet on his staff, its those sorts of little characterful details that are really the point when it comes to goblin armies.

Always keen to see what people are doing with narrative games. Its great for inspiration if nothing else! Competitive players may love to share optimised lists, but we share actual ideas! In unrelated news, I'm slightly concerned that I may have deve loped a goblin addiction. It started innocuously enough with a unit of Shooters, and a unit of stabbas, then I figured that I'd need a few more in order to field all of my fanatics. I figured I must be able to get some older skull pass goblins fairly cheaply, and I was right! But now my goblins didn't line up into nice neat blocks of twenty any more, and I'd started trying to track down some of the older 90's models as well. I've just bought another box, with the intention of building a few of each type to fill in the holes in my units and make a nice round number, and have spent the past hour or so sliding empty bases around to figure out how many of each sort I need to make. Its largely been successful, but I would still be left with a few "spare" including some standard bearers. At this point the little demon-goblin on my shoulder starts saying: "If you had fifty more goblin archers, then you'd have two more units of shootas!" The little angel-goblin replies "don't be ridiculous, thats already more than a thousand points worth of troops, you are literally never going to play a game of warhammer large enough to need to field all of them!" The demon-goblin yells "Challenge accepted!", and while the angel-goblin is trying to explain that actually its someone else who would need to accept a challenge to a 5000 point game or something silly I'm still sliding bases around, and I guess I'm getting fifty more archers for some reason. Send help? Edit: Nabbed 30 warhammer quest archers off ebay for a tenner! I'm doomed... They're a bit monopose, but a few in each unit and it shouldn't be too noticeable.

That's the canonical picture of Sigmar isn't it?

Precisely! I think that those "odd" not particularly balanced scenarios are the ones that have the most potential to generate an interesting story. But I can absolutely see why some players aren't fussed about creating a story, and just want a fair game to play, for the sake of playing a fair game. We almost need a variety of the Indy RPG "Same Page Tool", where the GM circulates answers to a script of questions which define what their campaign is going to play like, so that players know what they are getting and are all on the same page.

I do wonder if some of this is down to what your "gateway" into the game is. A lot of people don't start out as wargamers, but play board and card games, RPGs, or increasingly, computer games, and then decide to branch out into wargaming as well. However every genre has a different philosophy to how games should be played. I come from a roleplaying background, and I feel like RPGs and older wargames all have a very DIY ethos. A good RPG isn't a prescribed game which you play the same way every time. It is a flexible toolbox that lets you play whatever game you want to play. Early GW evolved out of that ethos, and also built on all of the very creative wargame scene from which RPGs emerged in turn. From what I've read about the 70's historical scene, it was all about building cool stuff, customising games, and using different games together in the same campaigns to create a weird but immersive experience. Or that is the elements of the scene that still get recounted fifty years later anyway. Other games are a lot more prescriptive though. Not all board games can be houseruled, and even if they can, most people seem to play the game they are given. On the whole you don't pick up ticket to ride, and say, wouldn't it be cool if we added space ships as well as trains! Card games like Magic have prescribed ways to play, and lists of banned cards. It is very much a top down approach, and it seems as though the community are very much beholden to WoTC for how the game will play. But the biggest thing I think is probably Video Games, because the market for them is bigger than all of our tabletop games combined. I know that there are modders who create custom content for video games, but they aren't anywhere near as flexible or customisible as tabletop games, because by their very nature you need to computer to adjudicate everything. If you want to change the rules you need to be able to code it in. I get the impression that for a lot of games the idea that you can do something beyond what the engine says you can do is just not a "thing". Or if it is, its a case of "wouldn't it be cool if we made our own game where it works in this different, prescribed way". I wonder if people thus bring these sorts of expectations with them. Old school gamers, and people with RPG backgrounds want to be able to convert and kitbash, make our own stuff and do things our own way. Tournament Starcraft players expect a solid, functioning system which is going to be working the same however you play it, and aspire to the mythical concept of balance, and so on. I may be completely wrong, and there are exceptions to every rule, but its interesting to speculate at any rate!

Well, stores like that one usually do stock the battleforces. It tends to be a case of having a look around when the preorder goes up, and seeing which one offers the best discount. Some do anything between 10 and 25% if past years are anything to go by.

For example at the moment Triple Helix has Kurdoss, bladegheists, grimchasts and dreadscythes each for £20.63. https://www.triplehelixwargames.co.uk/product-category/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/grand-alliance-death/night-haunt/ There would be some P&P to pay, probably a fiver or so. Thus I'd need to be able to get the box for £80 or less for it to be a good deal. If the hexwraiths and chainrasps had been stuff I actually wanted then it would have been a no brainer, but getting a few more of those isn't worth paying £100 for the box at full price, even if it is technically a "good deal" in terms of what you get for the price. If you don't want said stuff, then its not a good deal. You can spend a fortune saving money and all that.

I think I'm actually purchasing more hobbits than I was, because unlike AoS models, the Lord of the Rings stuff is still relatively cheap. Most of the old metal LOTR blisters are still reasonable, its only the newer plastic kits, and some of the stuff that was released along with the hobbit movies that is getting a bit pricey. Interestingly I think the gradual price increases across the board may be de-senstising me to some of the higher prices. I remember back when the Hobbit sets came out, that the step up in price for what I was used to in LOTR and Warhammer was a step too far, and I hardly bought any of them (In fact that was what made me really dive into WFB, after not quite getting into it before). Now everything has increased to the point that the Hobbit range is in line with everything else, and LOTR looks quite cheap by comparison. Buying AoS models has clearly warped my sense of what is value for money more than I realised!