EccentricCircle

I'm all for getting updates to the existing factions, but at this point the interesting question might well be what completely new direction they will go in next. So far there has been something brand new each year, so its hopefully only a matter of time before they announce their "next big thing". Looking over the factions, it seems too soon to do yet more elves (much as I love elves). I also can't see them bringing in a fourth Dwarven faction at this point, although as always I would be happy to be surprised. Really Order is looking in quite a good state if they can get tomes out for the legacy factions. There are a range of options new and old, and plenty of room for expansion within the factions that they already have. Chaos also seems to be in quite a good state. If books for Slaanesh and Chaos Undivided are really around the corner then all seven factions will soon be supported (Eight if you count Legion of Azgorh, which would mean an army for each point of the Chaos Star). Thus if they bring out a new chaos faction, chances are it would be completely new. Its hard to imagine what sort of possibilities might be left within that phase space, unless they unleash a new chaos god, but it could happen. Death and Destruction feel like they are still bringing up the rear. They've had some great support over the last couple of years, but still have far fewer factions than the others. I feel like destruction has a lot of potential for expansion. Even having discontinued a load of stuff they have solid Orky and Gobliny offerings, and the potential for multiple contrasting Ogor armies. I still really like the idea of Gutbusters staying as the Classic Ogres, while Beastclaw and Firebellies provide two contrasting, elemental factions. In the case of Death I think there could be a bit of a roadmap. Legions of Nagash provides the classic "Undead United" faction, from the earliest days of Warhammer. Then you have nicely contrasting Ghoul and Ghost heavy forces in the other books. So they could bring out books for Long Legged Beasties, and Things that Go Bump in the Night to round out the set! Alternatively I think they've got plenty of potential to expand Skeletons and Vampires, since those were classically to two main undead variations across much of Warhammer history. I don't think that we'll see Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts come back (awesome as a TK release would be), but I do think that there is a clear space in the warhammer phase diagram for those kind of armies to be expanded. After all, the three main ways to do an undead army have historically been; Necromancer with their minions, Vampire with their minions, and Barrow Wights/Mummys running amok. Time will tell I guess, but I'd be keen to see something completely new.

I'm not doing too badly at one month in: I've managed to get every work in progress model assembled (except for two breakages which will be a pain to fix), and have sorted it all out so that I have a rough plan as to what order I'm going to paint things in! I'm planning a narrative campaign to do with my group, so that should be starting fairly shortly. Finally I now have the starts of a Necron Army for 40K, not really relevant to this forum, but does indicate that I'm able to shake my elf obsession.

Cool. It sounds like its going to be fun. I've gradually come to the conclusion that there is no perfect way to organise RPG material, but some systems definitely do it better than others.

I'm curious how you plan to structure supplemental releases. I find that there are two main approaches, releasing source books with a tight focus, which put lots of options front and centre (Dedicated bestiaries, equipment books, sourcebooks on a certain region or race). Whereas other game lines have loosely themed sourcebooks, which try to include a wide variety of different options (So say a book on a realm or an adventure module which includes with new character options, monsters, artifacts, lore etc.) A good example of the fomer approach being the Starfinder hardbacks and indeed 2e WFRP, and a good example of the later being how FFG have structured the splat books for the Star Wars RPG. Most game lines historically have a mixture (D&D for example.) Are you leaning strongly in either direction? I know as a GM the former is much easier to use at the table than the latter, although as I understand it the reason the second model is so prevalent is that it makes it easier for casual players to buy a book or two here and there, and get a lot of bang for their buck when it comes to expanding their games. Whereas the first model does lend itself more to the GM getting all of the books in the line sooner or later, so that you can have them all at the table, with all the rules nicely organised across the volumes. I guess both models have their pros and cons for publishers. Ideally you want everyone to buy all the books, but in practice only a dedicated GM actually will. Especially adventure modules are likely to not be very attractive to players to don't GM, unless they have a solid appendix of new character options (as the Pathfinder Adventure Paths and D&D's hardback modules tend to do.)

I'd not particularly planned on posting my submission, but would be happy to share it. This isn't the right topic to do so in though, but anyone who is interested can message me. The only other "rumour-y" thing to come out of the process was something I learnt about the shadespire warbands. We discussed the creative process behind coming up with stuff, and they mentioned that in that case the miniatures came first, as test pieces and study models, which the design studio started playing with since they had some around. They thought it would be cool to design a game to work with those models, and to get the sculpts out there somehow. Maybe this is already well known, but I don't think i've seen it mentioned anywhere else. I don't have any particular theories about what that could mean for future stuff though. It was just a cool thing that came up.

All we really know is that those of us who applied for the GW game designer job had to work up alligiance abilities for gutbusters as the assessment exercise. The implication was that it wasn't a faction that the design studio had done much with, but whoever got that job could well have run with whatever they came up with. So i wouldn't expect it very soob, given their usual turnaround, but could well happen on a medium timescale (whatever that may be...)

Having gone through and counted up the points for a few more of my collections I can add a couple more armies to this: My Tomb Kings army stands at 7100 points, so definitely makes the cut. The rest of my undead are close. I have a fair few Deathrattle, Nighthaunt and Flesh eater courts, but not over 5000 of any of one faction (unless I use all the TK skelies to pad out the deathrattle). However by combining all eligible units into a Legions of Nagash army it would come out at 5790. Once I finish painting the Nighthaunt I'll try to get a picture of them all together! Here are my Chaos Dwarves/ Legion of Azgorh. I have 3770 points of actual Legion of Azgorh units and a similar number of older, Big Hat chaos dwarves. According to Ravening Hordes the older models also come out at 3720 so thats a grand total of 7490. Maybe a little more counting the third party models, like the Mantic Gargoyles, or the Magmadroth and Maulerfiend used as K'daai Destroyers. My Dispossessed / Dwarfs are at 5330, but I don't have a recent picture of them. I also do possess more than 100 different wizard models, so that could arguably be said to be over 12000 points, they are not all painted though, so pictures will have to wait. Finally my Wanderers and Sylvaneth armies are both under 5000, but if you combined them into a classic Wood Elves force then they would be between 6000 and 8000 points, depending on how many of the Sylvaneth only models I was able to field as a wood elf equivalent.

My first thought when reading this comic was that you would be pleased to see his triumphant return. I don't know if that qualifies you as some sort of Roll Models superfan, but it probably should!

Got to love Chaos Dwarves. I've got quite a lot of them too, but I'm not sure if they are over 5000 or not. As with my Lizardmen, not all of the older models have an obvious AoS profile, so working out a total number of points is challenging. I know I don't have more than 5000 of the actual Legion of Azgorh models, but I could maybe total it up using the lists in Turmakhan and Ravening Hordes to see what they all come to as a 6-8th ed army!

It is maybe worth noting that most of last years big event releases kind of came in twos. They had the big Elves event where they redid DoK, then released Idoneth a few months later. Then there was the LoN tome, followed in fairly short order by the Nighthaunt. It does kind of feel as though they were doing a "lets expand this little thing, and then feed that into releasing this new thing". So it wouldn't surprise me if something else for destruction comes on the heels of Gloomspite. That said it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't either. I've never learnt how to predict GWs plans, and my Time Machine is in for repairs at present.

Nice, in my games I decided that the collective noun for a group of battlemages was a "battle conference". You're is a particularly distinguished looking one!

Sorry, somehow ended up with double post.

That would be a good approach to take, there are some very characterful models in there, but I do think there is space for essentially "Civilian adventurers" particularly for WFRP, where a character is less likely to be a soldier in a specific army, but probably just a random guy or gal who has ended up over their head somehow.

That is excellent, I shall look forward to seeing what you've got planned for us! I suspect I already know the answer to this question, but is there any plan for GW to support your RPG with miniature releases? Great as the Warhammer ranges are, they don't lend themselves very well to rag tag bands of adventurers, drawn from various factions and backgrounds. It would be great if GW could put out more sets like the RPG focused Adventurer lines that started it all, so that we've got plenty of options to use. It would be slightly ironic if we end up using figures from Reaper, Otherworlds, or even D&D to play the Warhammer RPGs!

I'm massively looking forward to this. I've not yet had a chance to play 4e WFRP yet, but i've liked what I've read so far, and the book is beautifully illustrated! I'm very keen to see what you can do with the cosmic scope of the AoS setting. Its a shame that the two RPGs won't be compatible though. What are you're plans to support the games going forwards? You've definitely got the potential for some planescape style realm books for the AoS line, Do you plan to maintain both game lines in parallel, or will the AoS RPG be the flagship? I'd be keen to read sourcebooks for either setting, but would think that there would be a fair bit of overlap when it comes to things like bestiaries, or sourcebooks on the Realm of Chaos.

RPGs can take a long time to playtest. If they plan on releasing the game this year, then it wouldn't surprise me at all if the book is largely finished, and they are busy working out the various kinks and bugs with the way abilities and mechanics interact. The core mechanics and the structure of the game has most likely been set in stone for a while, and that's what much of the text will likely be.

Its also odd that none of the stuff that's vanished over the last month or so has been listed as "last chance to buy" before hand. There was a point where they seemed to always list stuff like that before it went out of stock, presumably to persuade people to rush out and get it before it was gone. I'm not quite sure when they stopped doing this, but I do seem to recall a couple of times when stuff was removed for re-basing, without being listed as gone for good.

Wow, that's a great collection, and a truly mighty host!

Its interesting to see how many people are saying "play the game more". I'd kind of thought that most people on here played a lot more than I do, so its somewhat reassuring to see that I'm not the only one making that a goal. As a slight update to my resolution, as of Christmas I have kind of acquired even more Elves, but I also have some Necrons too!

5000 models must take up a lot of space. I'm pushing five hundred, and have boxes all over the place, I can't imagine what ten times that many would look like!

I can add my Lizardmen / Seraphon army. I wasn't certain precisely how many points it was, as I've never fielded all of it! Working out the points total is complicated by the fact that I don't think that there is any one edition on warhammer in which you can actually use all the models! AoS doesn't have points for skink archers, or the Slann being carried by temple guards, let alone Citadel snakemen or cold ones being ridden by skinks! I've thus treated the snake men as Saurus Guard, and the Skink riders as Saurus ones, and used the most similar set of points for all the others. The result: 12410 points A few of the units are under strength, since not all of the models fit neatly into the AoS brackets (I didn't know I needed another kroxigor...) Anyone fancy a game? It might take a month or two to play, and I might need to deploy over most of my gaming table as the photo shows! Here's the full breakdown for the curious the list may not exactly match whats in the photo, but its the most complete lineup of them I have to hand, and I'm not setting them all up tonight.

They need to do a parody of the Coca Cola advert which goes "Goblinses are coming... goblinses are coming..."

The ironic thing is that the greenskin models really shouldn't be as generic as they now seem. GW literally reinvented Orcs when they made them huge green fighting machines. Nothing before looked anything like what is now the default, but so many people have copied them over the years that a core part of their product identity isn't unique to them anymore.

With the end of the year rapidly approaching who is taking stock of how well they've done in 2018, and making plans for the coming year? 2018 Successes: Last year I had two main hobby resolutions, the first being to focus on building my scenery collection, and the second being to try to play the actual game a bit more regularly. My christmas battleforce was Kharadron Overlords, but I didn't end up expanding it into a full army. Instead I've mainly focused on collecting non GW figures to build up a set of crusades era Saracens who can be used for other games, or as an Araby style freeguild army. I've done pretty well on the scenery front, expanding my random assortment of terrain into several fully painted sets themed around different terrains. Before all my battles were fought among a hodge podge of ruins and trees, but I now have a solid set of town houses, and jungle and desert themed boards, as well as the ability to make more crowded boards of ruins and forest. On the second count I started a facebook group of all my warhammer loving friends and have been gradually getting a more regular (if not more frequent) set of gaming going. I've definitely played more games in as a result, though I've ended up playing a lot more 40K and frostgrave than age of sigmar. (Not that that's a bad thing...) 2019 plans: So looking ahead to next year I need to continue building my local group, probably with some campaigns. I want to try to get more Lord of the Rings and AoS games in. Getting more stuff painted is a boring new years resolution, as just about everyone will probably say that, but it kind of has to be on the list. I think my main collecting project will be trying to get a second full 40K army together, along with a few Kill Teams for variety. That also means that I can keep my AoS focus on painting up the few thousand points of Elves i've got waiting. We'll see how that turns out... I may end up sitting here in 12 months time with twice as many grey elves and not a necron in sight!