EccentricCircle

Actually I think Mantic actually had an underwater faction for ages before GW made the Idoneth. As I've said above, I don't agree with the "it doesn't fit argument" since the world is so open that it has limitless possibilities. I think there is an argument to say that you can't have a death faction that is opposed to Nagash, since at present he controls all undead. However there is no reason it needs to stay that way, and from the looks of it most people don't neccersarily want Tomb Kings to be rereleased verbatim, but would prefer that the aesthetic be reimagined for the current age (with some old favourites reused perhaps). Thus there is no real reason why they couldn't "fit".

I like all of the options, but would prefer a skeleton themed army (either Tomb Kings, or Deathrattle) to a vampire or Zombie force. Undead Pirates would also be pretty nifty!

Yeah, Warhammer quest isn't on the same level as an actual RPG. You can certainly add RP elements to any skirmish game of that sort, and the idea of each player controlling a separate character is there. However, it will simply never have the same degree of flexibility, open endedness and player freedom as a true RPG. It is possible to play an RPG like D&D as more of a tactical miniatures game by going in a very Hack-and-Slash direction and not worrying too much about the story and exploration elements. However that isn't how pretty much any RPG is played by default, even 4e D&D which many felt was more of that sort of game (unfairly I would say). Its clear from the previews we've had so far that Souldbound is going to be a much more story focused RPG than your traditional dungeon crawler, even if it does have a robust combat element.

Glad to see its been resolved. I may have to pick it up again at some point!

Agreed, those later skellies are actually quite good, Tomb Guard are my all time favourite undead kit to paint.

Cool, what sprues does it have?

Are they still advertising it with a picture of the piece it doesn't contain? The easiest "fix" they could have come up with would be to change the packaging, frustrating as that is.

I'm not sure that the walls are new, to me it just looks as though the Azyrite Townscape walls have been kitbashed with the top from the arcane ruins, but we shall see I guess.

Agreed, the eighth ed TK releases were massively fun to paint, and for a lot of us that is far more important than how they fare on the battlefield. I actually never got around to fielding my Tomb Kings until Age of Sigmar started, even though I'd been collecting them for years before hand as a display project.

My first thought on the new rumour was that it looked Eldar or Death (Or both). I think that the scaled pattern is more likely to be Seraphon, it has a very lizardy feel. It seems as though the Chaos Daemons we've yet to get updates for are the less scaly ones, whereas we've had the new Keeper, and some Khornate stuff, which would be a better fit aesthetically. I don't see that is being from a Fury or a Tzeentchian beasty, although I've not painted any of either so am no expert.

This is true, there are no shortage of options when it comes to actual models of late medieval knights at the same, or similar scale. I know that there are a few sources of Tomb King-esk models out there as well. Mantic's egyptian skeletons have already been mentioned, but I think that the better range is actually the Reaper Warlord models. Their undead egyptian faction is called Nefsokar, and has some really cool stuff in it. I have a few of their Anubis warriors, they are smaller than Shabti, but have a very similar aesthetic in other respects.

We've reached 100 Tomb King votes!

Yeah, just looking at the number of people who have posted multiple times as part of the discussion we can see that there will be a lot of repeat viewings.

To be clear, I am well aware that Tomb Kings are not actually popular. The main purpose was to find out how large the vocal minority of fans actually is, and to see whether it was similar for both Tomb Kings and Brets (which is the aspect I was commenting on in my last post). I never intended this poll to be scientifically rigorous, but I don't think that having a control option would actually make it more so in this case. Comparing the number of votes to the total population of the forum, or the population of active members is a much better comparison, since as you note yourself there is no guarantee that everyone would actually vote in the poll. The "something new" option would thus only record people who cared enough (positively or negatively) about old factions to look at this thread in the first place, but don't want them back. So if I rephrase my OP as null hypotheses: 1) The apparent popularity of old factions is due to a small but vocal minority of posters. 2) There is no significant difference in the popularity of the various discontinued factions. I think that the only reliable datasets are actually the TK and Bret ones, since I didn't list the other factions in the title, so their fans might not have known to vote if they didn't care enough about the advertised ones to read the thread. I'm loathe to draw any final conclusions until this thread drops onto the second page, at which point we can be fairly sure that its run its course, and everyone who wants to has voted. However provisional results would seen to suggest that we should accept null hypothesis 1. The number of fans of the retired factions are large enough to be vocal, but small compared to the total population of the busiest AoS forum on the net (which is of course only a proxy for the hobby as a whole, but I believe a reliable one.) We will likely be able to reject null hypothesis two, since Tomb Kings are leading Bretonians by a fair margin, suggesting that there is a difference in popularity between the factions. (I've not actually checked to see whether it is statistically significant.) It would be good if we could get an estimate of "active posters", but I've not been able to find one in a casual search, so am not sure how to go about estimating the number of people who in practice make up the community.

I think the broad consensus of the thread is that its doubtful that any faction will ever come back "as is", but that we would like to see models with a similar aesthetic, or play style as part of future (new) releases. Those who like Tomb Kings are frequently citing the Shabti and constructs. Others have expressed an interest in future factions having the Slavic aesthetic of Kislev, or allowing for massed cavalry playstyles even if they don't aesthetically reproduce the Medieval knights that were central to Bretonnia. I had to draft a poll question which would be simple and to the point, but the implications of how and why things could be revived are absolutely far more interesting than the simple question of whether they could be or not. (Which I agree is largely a foregone conclusion.) Its interesting that my general impression has been reflected in the poll results. There are quite a lot of "Tomb Kings" fans (of whatever definition), with Bretonnia a little way behind, and the other factions lagging further still.

I've always thought that the Dark Oath Warqueen needs a Khornate version actually.

I kind of disagree. Sure some factions got uodated more than others, but WFB books always felt a lot more balanced to me. When you read an army book it tends to be far more from the perspective if the faction than newer tomes. Many books are written from an in universe style, or present documents that are. Each book is almost that factions propaganda, and its only when you read all the books that a true picture of the world emerges. a Newer tomes are very focused on presenting stormcast as the heroes, in a way that was never true of the empire, even thiugh they also featured prominently in BL books and the RPG. They weren't the centre of the world, that was whoever you happened to be reading about.

Oh yeah, you could totally make a Kislevite Free city of some sort with the right minis.

Interesting idea and one which I've toyed with a bit myself. It is entirely plausible that if the Old World somehow survived the End times then it could have been cut off from the newly formed mortal realms. There doesn't need to even be any metaphysical barrier. Spellcasters on the Old World simply don't realise that there are whole other realities within the Winds of Magic, and beings in the Mortal Realms don't know that the Old World still turns. The only path between them is through the Realm of Chaos, and very few venture there and return. To borrow Planescape terminology, you could say that the Old World is the Prime Material Plane. It is a physical world which exists as it always did (potentially changed somewhat by the events of the End Times). Each Wind of Magic flows into the world through the Realm of Chaos, forming transitive planes which lead to an Outer Plane which embodies the Lore of Magic that wind represents. The Aetheric Void and Realm of Chaos then exist as transitive Planes which Connect the Eight Mortal Realms, and various Demiplanes such as the Hidden Gloaming, the All Points and others. The Aetheric Void is Coterminous with all of the Mortal Realms, and thus allows Realmgate Travel from one to another. However it isn't Coterminous with the Old World. Only the Realm of Chaos is, being Coexistant with everything in all realities (Old World, Mortal Realms, 40K, and any other Parallel universe GW cares to invent). Apologies to anyone who doesn't speak fluent Planescape, but it is the most comprehensive system for describing Planar Cosmologies for a reason!

Its interesting that you often see people saying that the Greenskinz are just generic Orcs, and don't really have anything to set them apart as factions. I guess at this point that is true, since the idea of the burly greenskinned orc is so pervasive across various fantasy works due to Warcraft and such. However its quite ironic since GW literally invented Greenskins in the first place and everyone else just copied them. I'd not thought about it, but the idea of the freeguilds is actually quite similar to the idea of Dogs of War. They are more or less small militias or mercs defending their cities. It would be quite cool to have paymaster models for them, or some smaller warbands themed around various unusual freeguilds. As a side note I very nearly included Chaos Dwarves on the list, but left them off in the end since they do have a current range, even if having proper plastic models from GW would be better than the forge world stuff that's currently available. Maybe they will get an update at some point, but i'm not going to hold my breath!

The Doom diver is the model I most regretted not getting when that range was discontinued. Its such a fun idea, and a really nice model. I never had enough goblins to justify getting one though. Hopefully they will take the idea of crazy goblin contraptions up to eleven and release a new faction based around that idea some day!

Yeah, I'd be happy to get a few more Ushabti to round out my collection, but Ideally I'd like them to develop something new and AoS-y based on the idea.

I could definitely see it being the case that the common people of Bretonnia mingled with other surviving humans to become the ancestors of the free peoples, while the most noble of the Bretonnian Knights were reforged as Stormcast, and the bickering and corrupt nobility degenerated into Ghouls. That doesn't mean that the free peoples couldn't seek to emulate their ancestors knightly orders though.

I didn't think there needed to be a specific "none of them" option. Clearly that is going to be the default position for quite a lot of people. I've always been a little skeptical of the argument that things "don't fit the Age of Sigmar aesthetic." Everyone likes different things, and I have no problem with that, so if they don't appeal to your idea of what the setting can be then that's fine. However, the whole point of the Age of Sigmar aesthetic is that it is so broad and varied that anything can exist somewhere. Half the black library stuff I've read recently has been set in desert areas, with a somewhat middle eastern flare, so there's definitely room for more Egyptian themed stuff. Plus pyramids still feature quite prominantly in Nagash's forces, and he and Arkhan show their Khemrian roots. As far as Bretts go, I agree that they fit quite well into the free peoples header. There are a few things which don't quite have a warscroll, but with a bit of creative thinking you can easily run sorceresses as battlemages and find a space for the cavalry and infantry. I don't think there is a good equivalent for the trebuchet without resorting to the compendium though, and some of the more specific stuff clearly works best with its own warscrolls.

There has been an increasing amount of discussion about Tomb Kings of late, with both the GW survey and the egyptian like scenery in White Dwarf. It seems as though my beloved Tomb Kings remain quite popular, but I've struggled to get a clear idea of how popular they actually are, or whether it is just a handful of us vocally demanding their return. I also feel the Tomb Kings get a lot more chatter than other retired factions, but since they are the one closest to my heart it might just be that I don't notice impassioned calls for the rise of Bretonnia to the same extent. So I figured lets do a show of hands as to which retired factions we still love to collect, and would like to see return some day. I've included Greenskins and Gitmob for completeness, and thrown in the old Dogs of War. There are probably other retired factions which I've forgotten about, so please feel free to shout out to others in the comments below!