EccentricCircle

Interesting. I just flicked back to see if I could see a German helmet. And it definitely looks like one. Only I can see a WWI helmet, because clearly I only skim read your post, and so was looking for the wrong thing! I think its like an ink blot test at this point. If you look hard enough you can see anything!

In general I don't think there is a vast amount of egyptian influence in this design, but honestly that bit to the side of the head looks more like an Egyptian nemes headdress than a Chinese queue! If it weren't for the fact that the top of the head looks more like a conical helm anyway... The more I look at it, actually, the more I think it just looks like a string of bones!

I think we can be pretty certain that the designers at Games Workshop know about the Amarna Heresy. They have historically had a lot of history enthusiasts on their team, and I don't believe for a moment that they just decided to name a major period of 40K history "the Horus Heresy" for no reason. Akhenaten's reign isn't the only religious movement to be known as "the X Heresy" but its a pretty big one, particularly if you are invoking ancient egyptian culture with Horus at the same time... Its worth noting that while Aten is usually depicted as a sun disk, which is absent from that stele, there are a set of candles mounted on top of it! Maybe the religion requires the light of the sun god to be represented with actual light rather than being depicted graphically.

I see a scorpion before an oval, forming an eye of horus type shape, so plenty of deserty iconography, even if the candles are more gothic.

I think that's him sitting in a grave stone shaped throne with candles on top isn't it?

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!