EccentricCircle

Agreed. I think there is a place for cannons, I'm just not sure if that's the direction they are going in, seeing as there are very few of the older artillery models left.

I don't know. It feels as though AoS has been moving away from the idea of stationary war machines in general. Apart from the Stormcast ballista I can't think of any new faction which has had artilliary. Kharadrons have guns on their ships, but those function as a mobile platform. All of the other factions are more along the lines of monsters and troops. I feel like it is one way they are trying to differentiate it from 40K, making it more about the big monsters and skirmishing troops, and less about artillery, pike and shot style units and other wargaming classics.

That sounds epic! Do you run the relevant parts of your bretonnian force as free peoples, or is that just counting former empire models? My freeguild are about half and half.

There is certainly no reason for them to rush to phase out resin and metal models entirely. So long as they are supporting Lord of the Rings they are going to have to maintain the capacity to produce them, since half of that range is still metal or resin, and it doesn't seem to be popular enough for it to be worth their while reissuing everything as a plastic sculpt. They have been doing an increasing number of new plastic character models of late, but I can't see many people crying out for plastic men of arms of Dol Amroth for example. I get the impression that 40K is in a similar boat, they have a vast number of resin characters, and unlike AoS there is a need to keep those specific characters as unique models. It would take a massive revamp for every army in order to phase out resin entirely. I've no doubt that one day that will happen, but it will be as and when they update the ranges, not all at once. AoS seems to be closest to phasing out resin, but its very army specific, there are many factions with none left, but also forces like Skaven and Serphon who couldn't work without their resin models. Until the time comes for wholesale reworkings of those factions, i'm sure that resin models will continue to hang around here and there, such as the branchwraith. There is no point in losing that unit, or spending a lot on a new model yet, but one day there probably will be. If they ever lose the LOTR license then I could see that precipitating a wholesale move away from resin, and I'm sure that they plan to have AoS and 40K be entirely plastic by the time that time comes.

So to summarize: Some more new stuff will be released this year. This could range from four more books, one for each grand alliance, or potentially as much as everything that still needs an update. We know what a couple of those things are going to be (Orks and Cities), and can guess at a couple more (Ogres and Undead), but have no idea when or in what order they are actually coming. Any speculation on things "being pushed back" is baseless, since we never knew when they were meant to come out in the first place. Everything could have been pushed back, nothing could have, chances are we will never know! To summarize the summary of the summary: We'll just have to wait and see!

I was once told by my local GW that their fairly friendly exchange policy caused them some problems. The Waterstones round the corner from their shop decided to put black library books into their 3 for 2 offer, and suddenly the GW store had loads of people coming in to try to swap BL books from Waterstone's fairly limited selection for ones from the GW store. They were getting a duplicate book free, and then trading it for one they actually wanted at the other shop. I think they had to demand proof of purchases in the end, so as to make sure that they weren't effectively giving away free books due to another shop's offer!

There was also the animated trailer called "the tithe". It was just a trailer, so didn't confirm it was a) something new, or b) necessarily for death, but it seems likely due to the iconography. Theres a whole thread on it, if you want more details.

I was looking at mercenary forces, and thinking how strange it was for them to discontinue some of the stuff that they'd just promoted as mercs. However it occurred to me that we might have been drawing the wrong conclusions from the existence of the mercenary lists. What if they were always intended as a way to keep things in the game, even though they weren't going to be included in the new Battletome? No evidence one way or the other, and no real thoughts on what implications that might have for everything else, but it seems a bit of a disjointed marketing plan otherwise. Now though, mounted generals and dwarven canons may no longer be available, but anyone who has them can still field them as merc battalions.

Yeah, I think this is more a case of wanting to provide options for the various Tomb Kings fans still out there. They are making models suitable for most of the Old TK units, as well as some pretty cool Dark Elf proxies. Creating models for a niche which Games Workshop has abandoned is likely to be more useful than one which it is about to release some serious competition for! It looks like a nice selection of models, but I always find these big model haul kickstarters to be a bit too pricey for me. Individually the prices seem fine, but getting an entire army at once is a bit impractical. Hopefully it won't take too long for them to go on sale generally.

How many space marines do people need? They already make the stormcast range look a bit limited! I'll admit I'm biased, being a xenos player, but other 40k factions need it much more (cough eldar cough.) More on topic, it feels like we pretty much have a roadmap for the rest of the year at this point, there isn't much space left for them to squeeze in more than a couple of surprises, so the rumour game is mainly trying to guess what order things will happen.

Hopefully a few more people will be posting pictures here once Cities of Sigmar arrives. I'd imagine there will be quite a few people with one or two modest order armies which will now combine to be over 5000! Depending on what actually ends up in the book I reckon all of my Elves and Dwarves could end up being over 10,000, we shall see!

Go for it. I'm keen to do something creative with all this from a lore or maybe rules perspective. Once the new book is out we'll know what's lacking and what would be cool to home brew.

I've got all the 8e army books, so if you let me know what you need i should be able to look them up for you. Might not have time u til Wednesday though, as I'm on trains most of tomorrow.

Glade guard could easily substitute for either of the LOTR wood elf kits, they'd look a bit cartoonish, particularly alongside the newer kit, but I can't see many players having a problem with it. I once ran a D&D game about a dwarven civil war, and used LOTR dwarves on round bases as the Royalists, and Warhammer Dwarves on square bases as the parliamentarians. The difference in styles caused much merriment, but it made it easy to see which side everyone was on, without me needing to repaint one force to have a different livery. (Both my Dwarven armies use red, for some reason!)

I came here to cite Sir Terry as the definitive system for cardinal directions on flat worlds, but you beat me to it!

Yeah, I'd say that the surviving order models are probably pretty much safe for the next year or so at least. What happens after that is impossible to predict, since a new edition could lead to more changes, GW could change their plans, or whatever. For the time being though, dramatic as this cull has been, I think it does leave us in a position where very little has a sword of damoclese hanging over it any more. I could see them phasing out some of the older Death models when they release the next death army, and at some point they'll presumably replace the Beastmen and Skaven metal and resin figures. Neither of those looks likely to happen very soon though, otherwise it would have already happened. Order now has basically no resin or metal models outside of the Seraphon range. I think at this point its just some Seraphon, and the Branchwraith. Unless they start scrapping Ogre models I can't see much changing in Destruction, they've had their cull. I'm not so familiar with Chaos, I guess some of the older Mauraders could be endangered if the prophesied Darkoath release comes out, but beyond that they seem to have had opportunity to phase out most resin stuff if they'd wanted to, but have largely kept it around.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd be happy to give them a home. I'd just about convinced myself that GW only have limited production capacity, so they do need to phase out cool models from time to time in order to bring in new stuff. Then... "Next week's preorders: yet more space marines! " Yay, i think I'll be sticking to 2nd hand and 3rd party models for a while again...

I kind of feel sorry for the poor high elf loremaster. It must be embarassing to still be in stock when everything else has sold out in minutes!

Viva la revolution! Disenfrachised armies unite! They may take our points values, but they'll never take our minis! More seriously there is nothing wrong with using older scrolls, or running oop models as newer unit types. They can't break into your house and throw away your armies. Just find a new use for them as whatever the newer equivalent is, so long as your not in a draconian tournament you should be fine

Well, this is a sorry development. I can't say that I'm entirely surprised. Most of the stuff I expected to be cut has been, even if its been a bit worse than my expectations. Fortunately I think I've managed to get all of the models I wanted to complete my armies, so I'm effectively "safe". I've been through this before with Tomb Kings, and then goblins, so at least I'm used to it by now! I was really looking forward to getting a cities of Sigmar battletome, but a bit less so now. I think instead my next project is going to be "Cities against Sigmar" I like the idea of a rag tag collection of Dwarven, and Aelven armies united in the face of Azyrite oppression. I imagine them being hunted across the realms by battalions of Knights Excelsior, sworn to wipe out all cultural diversity from their tyranical God King's realm. Desperate last stands, and heroic sieges will abound as they fight to the last man to help all of their civilians flee into hiding. I'll see if I can do it using the rules in the new book, if not I might try to write up some homebrew rules for the stuff that is going to legends. Either way, Down with the God King! Let the Rebellion begin!

Yeah, I prefer to collect a wide range of models rather than trying to exhaustively stick to an army. This means that a lot of my units are understrength, and a lot of my armies have far more heroes than I'd every actually be able to field. The reason for this is two fold. First I'm more of a collector than a gamer, so when I try to get a "complete army" I tend to want to get every sculpt, rather than a competitive list with all the requisite duplication of battleline options. The second reason is that I often get models for using in D&D and frostgrave, which I play much more regularly than Warhammer. That leads to me picking up a box of random things here and there, which I might later come back to and expand into a little warhammer army. This leads to a bit of a haphazard collection, but over the years I've gradually filled in some gaps, and now have at least a small playable force for most armies. Warband scale games are great in this respect. I recently read the Battle Companies book for middle earth, and I reckon I can put together a small battle company for each of the LOTR factions.

Yeah, I love those multi option kits far more than is sensible. I have four of the arch mages (2 boxes worth), which is the bare minimum you'd need to use all the options. I think there are a few staff heads and a dagger i've not used. With the Battlemages kit, I got a bit carried away, and assembled quite a lot of wizards, trying to use all of the different implements, and create distinct mages for each lore of magic. Most have options in the kit, but a few required kitbashing in some sylvaneth parts. On a semi related note I've realised that once Cities of Sigmar arrives I'll probably have 12000+ points for it. At one point or another I've put together a modest force for each of the five classic WFB armies which it effectively combines, so I'm quite looking forward to trying to put them all on the table, and see how they look arrayed for war. It has though made me realise just how many old projects I need to go back and finish painting before I can do so. Empire and Dwarfs only have a few grey models, since I've played with those a fair bit, but my various Elven armies are going to take a lot of work before they can go on parade! That's not even counting my large collection of 100 or so wizard models from various sources. If I added the points cost for each of them then the army would be even bigger...

On balance I much prefer the 6th ed style wardancers to the older version, but in terms of the grand history of Warhammer the wild orange mane of hair is definitely the "definitive" look for that faction. The fact that we've not seen it for nearly twenty years just makes it seem a bit odd now that they are going back to it.

Wardancers had mohawks long before there were Fyreslayers of course. I'm not sure which came first out of them and the classic trollslayer look though. I guess back in the eighties everyone had a mohawk! Edit: looking through the old catalogue s on stuff of legend i think the wardancers have it. They are listed form around 88 onwards, maybe a little before, but unless I'm missing something I can't see any trollslayers until the early nineties..

I could see them wanting to make it so you have to use the griffon kit for your general. The present trend is for new leader models to be bigger than the troops they command, since it sells centre piece models.