EccentricCircle

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!

Interesting, It makes sense that civilisations outside of the sphere of Sigmar worshipers would have a slightly more neutral take on things. I'll have to check those out. I've never played Mighty Empires, as no one I knew got it at the time. It sounds pretty fun, and has been recommended to me a few times, but at this point I don't think it can actually be acquired.

Yeah, I've always been quite interested in trying to see a more nuanced take on Chaos. For ever ravening berserker who has been entirely subsumed by it there must be dozens if not hundreds of people who aren't as far along, and are still balanced between the darkness and the light. The idea of Chaos as a positive force is also intriguing, because in many ways its always been a part of the lore, but is sort of alien to the way chaos is actually expressed in the miniatures line. I like the idea that chaos worshipers don't consider themselves to be evil, and that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. However we generally see people who are already at the cartoon villainy stage of the process. I'm curious to see what a chaos "civilisation" looks like. It would be cool to see crusading paladins of the dark gods, who are actually trying to save people from the undead, or the depravation of the stormcast. They would have to be ever vigilant that they don't fall to far and become blood crazed fanatics, at which point they can no longer do what they set out to do. I'm sure I've read somewhere that the Worship of Tzeetch was actually legal in Araby for a while, but I've not seen anything which describes what a society of that sort would actually look like, beyond having powerful magic because of the innovation and experimentation which that sort of society would encourage. I'd like to do a narrative campaign, with a strong diplomatic element along with the warhammer games. That way you do have to worry about what your neighbours think, and make deals to ensure that your trade routes stay open. I like the idea that my fledgling free city might find itself besieged by the undead, and magically teleport out a few messengers to ask other civilisations for aid. What happens when the other free cities of the area say "Sorry, we're busy with these skaven here, and the Stormcast all left to deal with a nurgle tainted city..." Then they get ambushed by a whole legion of Tzaangors on the way back, and the chaos sorcerer leading the beasts waves off his men and says "I heard your people are in a spot of bother... have you considered letting chaos into your life?"

Very nice! Well done!

I don't want to derail this back to costs too much, but my Friendly Local Gaming Store have confirmed that it should be £95. They seemed to be looking it up on some sort of GW material, rather than making a guess based on other sets, so may have advanced information as retailer. I think it looks great. I'll be keen to paint up the new Sylvaneth Hero, although I might need to wait until it comes out separately. I've already got most of the Sylvie side, and had resolved not to start Gloomspite until next year, since I've got far too much stuff to paint at the moment.

I think part of it is that a wargame is by its nature about the broad strokes. You get to see the deeds of characters who have risen to power within their factions, so for the most part they reflect that factions archetype. Some of the Black Library novels seem to shed light on other parts of the world, which would only really be seen in the RPG, not the wargame. For example the focus on Witch Hunters of various stripes, the various books set in urban areas, or otherwise away from active warzones. That stuff all has its place in the world, and probably provides more opourtunity for diversity of characterisation. For all we know one of the goblins in my squad might be very well read and scholarly. However its not going to come up in the game between the point where I put him on the table alongside twenty others, and the point at which he ignominiously dies. Conversely if he is my PC in a WFRP game, or the protagonist of my novel then the ways in which he defies the tropes of his people makes him interesting. Characters (like a certain drow) who rebel against the trappings of their society are very popular for a reason. They have a lot of conflict baked into their personality, and plenty of reasons to get into interesting situations. There is definitely space for that in the mortal realms. The setting is so vast, and with so much in it that it has the potential to be very rich indeed. However its going to take a lot of work to expand it and develop it to that stage. They will have to be willing to push the envelop, and whether they will do that remains to be seen. It is certainly easier to just stick to the classic stereotypes, and there will always be a place for that, but I for one would certainly like to see something more as well. I actually think that this is more relevant to the topic of Slaanesh mortals than you might think. Everyone would like an army of soldiers made up for mortals who worship Slaanesh, because we're playing a wargame, and so soldiers are what its all about. However I think that sort of rings false when you consider what Slaanesh cults are actually about. They work in the shadows, carefully corrupting people, and spreading the taint of their dark god across the land. They seduce and infiltrate, they blackmail and connive. If they are doing their job properly then their enemies won't even know that they are dealing with a Slaanesh cult until they find themselves corrupted. You can certainly come up with cool ideas for why Slaanesh would have mortal armies, (I've seen many in other threads), but it isn't at its heart what Slaanesh worship is about. To a lesser extent this is true of the other Chaos Gods too, Tzeetch in particular is about gaining magical power at the cost of your soul and purity. These are themes which are always much easier to explore in a novel or an RPG where you see the cults in their natural habitat. On the battlefield you are always going to see the cult at the point where they can't or won't stay hidden anymore. AoS has gone a long way to explaining why that would be the case, they literally already won in the age of chaos and now order is striking back at dominant chaos tribes. However as the cities of Order grow it opens up the phase space for more clandestine chaos cults to infiltrate and corrupt. In that respect it would be good to see more non combat themed chaos stuff, but the place for that clearly isn't in the wargame.

Its just a case of what they actually consider to be "armies". Its always worth taking stuff which is said in interviews with a pinch of salt. Clearly he will have planned what he could and couldn't say, but it didn't strike me as a scripted statement of the sort you get in a press release or preview. It was just him saying that his intention was to get to all of the factions eventually. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. Directions can change, current factions could be merged or split, and things do sometimes get discontinued. We'll have to wait and see.

That would probably be my ideal way of working it. Thats how its done in frostgrave, which makes for a much faster paced and more engaging experience. You are never sat around for ages waiting for your turn, and you have more opportunities to counter things as they happen. Doesn't Middle Earth use alternating activation too? Its been so long since I've played that I'm not certain.

Because it keeps the game more stable, and means that you don't have to constantly relearn the rules to your army making it far more accessible.

I didn't expect to be asked some of the question that came up, but found that a lot of them didn't really give space to actually justify or explain your answers. I understand that they can only do so much data analysis, and actually reading comments is much harder than having a computer analyse the yes/no results but still. For example I ticked that they should update points etc less frequently, only when they change edition. I kind of think that, but it loses all the nuance of my attidues on GW updates. What I actually think is that they shouldn't publish a book, and then two weeks later release a vast errata document that changes lots of stuff. What they really need is a more thorough playtesting process. I'm all for them doing an open playtest, since the community at large is the most valuable tools for testing a ruleset to destruction and finding all the bugs and combos. However, if what they want is for us to playtest their rules for them before releasing a more definite set then that's what they should do. They should release a free version of the rules at the start, let everyone play with it and then release the actual battle tome six months later. That way the actual expensive book is the definite version, not the printout of a low quality pdf. There was no option to easily tell them that though...

I suggested underworlds warbands that aren't tied ti existing factions. Its a great opportunity to expand the world beyond the stuff you get in large armies. They could make civilian adventurers, strange monsters etc. i stead everything is more or less just a variant of something already found in the wargame.

I voted for Tomb Kings and plastic Chaos Dwarves naturally.

So I guess this means they aren't using the new warbands as an excuse to release updated books for those factions.

What if skinks and saurus aren't actually two different species, but the Lizardmen just exhibit wild sexual dimorphism. In a lot of reptiles the females are larger than the males, so that might indicate which way around they are.

Daughters of Khaine was one of the books which came out just before 2nd ed hit, and was specifically stated to be a 2e book. It has the white spine and new logo, and in form it matches the subsequent books. Therefore it is widely considered up to date and unlikely to be revised unless there is a major release for the daughters, or and edition change. Make of this evidence what you will.

How so?

Is there a definitve source for the various faction symbols ( from firestorm, boxes etc). There are kind of symbols when you select a battletome faction on the webstore, but they are not very clear. I don't think I've ever noticed icons like the ones on old wfb red boxes.

Well historically Undead armies have tended to fall into three broad types. Those led by Vampires in the form of the Vampire Counts and now two mortarchs out of LON, Those led by Nagash and other Necromancers, which again is well represented by LON, and tends to unite a hodge podge of death units. And Tomb Kings. Although there are still plenty of skeletons, theres nothing being sold at the moment which combines constructs, warmachines and monsters in the same way they do By splitting out Ghouls and Ghosts into their own things they have dramatically expanded the death roster beyond those original archetypes. I'd be amazed if the flaming skull symbol isn't night haunt, but as far as the other one goes I could see it going either way. If they plan to expand on the Vampire archetype again in the future then it could be a good opportunity to show that vampires can be their own thing, rather than just part of LoN. However they might be more interested in representing their own factions, in which case the Ghouls would be a safer bet. If the missing symbol is something new for Death then I could see them expanding another type of undead into a full faction again. Skeletons or Zombies would be the best bets, as I can't see Necromancers on their own being substantially different from what LoN can already do. Equally they could do something entirely new, such as adding Long-Legged Beasties and Things-That-go-Bump-in-the-Night to go with the Ghoulies and Ghosties. Much as I'd love to get Tomb Kings back, it seems unlikely, but you never know I guess.

Daemonette weather forecast. So they know where the winds of magic are strongest!

The interviews were last summer. I was one of the people who reported on it, but someone else corroborated my account. In theory whoever got the job has now had plenty of time to work up their gutbusters allegiance, assuming that they actually got on and did that, rather than being put on to other jobs. However if they are actually changing the models then it could take far longer for that to see light of day. I think that if we are getting a new tome and spells to go with the existing range it could be soon-ish, but equally I wouldn't hold out too much hope. We only know what we were told when discussing our work at the interview, so no inside knowledge like a regular rumour monger. We have no way of knowing why gutbusters was picked as the interview task (beyond the fact that it wasn't something they had specific plans for at the time). We thus can't be sure what they were planning to do with it after hiring someone.

Lets see some pictures then! More seriously, well done and may you paint many more!

Seconded, it should definitely have its own section.

Getting every miniature since AoS came out might be doable, getting all the fantasy ones would be much, much harder. I'm not sure how long it would take to get everything from every system. I managed to collect what I think is all of the post Slann lizardmen, so more or less everything from 4e onwards. It took a while to put together the vintage army, but was a fun project. The further you go back the harder it gets to track down all the minis though.

Given that you are a Duke, and appear to have ten thousand men, have you ever marched them up to the top of a hill and then back down again? Its an awesome collection, a really impressive set of models. Getting everything for one faction is challenging, I can't imagine how long it would take to get all of them.