EccentricCircle

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.

As a dedicated fan of all things Dwarven I'd love for it to be true!

Its interesting, but there are a lot of random new races described in the books that never actually get miniatures. I'm not saying that Light and Shadow Elves are impossible, just that I'm not so sure that they are coming any time soon. No one thought that we'd be getting Beast Aelves first, but it certainly looks that way.

I'm increasingly wondering whether the belief in Light and Shadow Elves is mistaken. For years everyone has been speculating about these two hypothetical factions, but I've seen no official confirmation that they are a thing. It seems to me that a handful of mentions in lore and background books acknowledging that the Aelf Gods exist and have armies have been taken as proof positive that new Aelf armies are comming. We've then hyped them out of all proportions, with everyone repeating that they must be just around the corner and putting them on lists of known factions. But what if this isn't the case at all? Maybe they don't plan to release a complete miniatures line for each aelven god after all! There are other gods in the background, but I've never seen anyone say that some sort of new Grungni dwarves are coming, but as far as I can see the Light and Shadow aelves don't have any more substantial mentions in the lore than the followers of the other Dwarven god. If there is something more substantive I'd be very interested to hear what it is.

The new lizardmen look great, but I wish they'd made them for AoS rather than Bloodbowl. Hopefully I can convert some of the models to have fewer anachronistic elements, but the shorts on the Skinks just ruin the models for all non Bloodbowl purposes alas!

Wasn't there an early one which turned out to be the cover of a Xenos index book too? I think everything since has been models though?

Thanks for summarising it all. I've drawn similar conclusions from the same data. It looks like most stuff is probably safe for the moment, since it seems odd that they would list something as temporarily out of stock if they weren't restocking it. For what its worth I decided to get the kits I need to finish off a couple of Aelven projects. I already have complete Wanderers and Dispossessed armies, but was a little torn between advancing with Freeguild or Aelves. Finishing off my Swifthawk, Eldritch Council, and Scourge Privateers forces only really required getting a kit each, and they were all ones I'd been after for a while. Conversely trying to complete a 2000 point freeguild army would be impractical at present. I'll wait and see what happens and if the sets are still around in six months to a year then they can be a project then. There are still a few Aelven units I don't have, like Phoenix Guard, Darkling Blackguard etc. but I'm pretty sure that those were both featured along with the battletome in the convention photos, so I reckon they are safe no matter what. I'm not so sure whether dragon knights or lion rangers will stick around, but I don't have any of those, and have no plans to start a new allegiance at the eleventh hour. In many ways though, this is driven more out of excitement than panic buying. I'm kind of hoping that I'll soon be able to run a massive Aelven Alliance army, comprised of all my currently disparate collections. Time will tell I guess.

Yeah, I think rampant speculation based on insufficient evidence is basically the entire point of this threat at this point.

I really hope we get miniatures based of some of this character art. Its all been excellent, and female battle mages is something that has been lacking basically forever. An RPG really requires more variety of minis than the wargame has ever supported. Not every soulscryer is going to be exactly the same as every other, so it would be great if they could put out a "heroes of the realms" kit or two, which builds a variety of customisable models that work across factions. Something like the current Battlemages and freeguild/ aelven generals kits, but with more variety for the concepts it can protray maybe.

Regions can be tricky/ misleading. In theory the UK store is the definitive one, since it is more or less shipped straight from the factory. Being available in the US just means that the remaining stock is selling out at different rates in different regions, and so is still available in some areas. It can also be the other way around, if things sell out faster abroad than they have in the UK. Thus we can "see whats coming" a bit by looking at the other regions. It was clear that the Archers and Freeguild general were endangered a few days ahead of them selling out in the UK, since they were already listed as unavailable in a couple of regions. We can thus see what other models are at risk, even though they might still be in stock locally. What none of this tells us is whether things are just going to be reboxed and brought back later. Thus the General likely isn't actually gone for good, since as you say he leads some mercs. However we don't know whether he's being rereleased with round bases, repackaged in a different combination, replaced with a newer model which won't have the same plethora of options as the current one, or just phased out for good. Its thus quite alarming that this all happens with no actual communication. I get that they don't want to tell us that for example archers are no longer going to be supported, as then they would be less likely to sell their remaining stock, but it does come across as a bit disingenuous.

GenCon is at the start of August? Not heard anything about GW there, but its the big one, so I'm sure they'd want some presence there.

Yeah, the Ork was a nice surprise. I had no idea that he was in the kit until I took a look at the sprue. I can't see them removing many of those old plastic kits permanently, particularly ones that have recently been designated merc companies. It looks as though the mounted freeguild general is unavailable in some regions, but that seems like it would make it hard for anyone to put together the mounted mercenary force, in the same way that the dwarven guns would be a problem for anyone wanting the artillery force. So far we've been told so little that its impossible to make an informed decision. It could be that they'll just scrap the Swifthawk stuff that isn't sold any more, and maybe a resin model or two. On the other hand they might want to streamline the troop kits and make the Human, Dwarven and Aelven units compliment each other better. I could see them wanting to have human pikemen, aelven archers, and dwarven handgunners for example, so that each race fills a different troop role within the multicultural militia of the city. Time will tell I guess.

But panic buying is such a good excuse to get more miniatures before i've finished painting the last lot! I hope the freeguild archers are just being reboxed. I was building some this afternoon, and it is a really nice kit. I also discovered that the spare legs from this kit fits pretty well with the spare torsos from the Greatswords sprue, so I made a cool ranger captain conversion as an extra model. Not often you get to make a bonus mini.

That's encouraging. I'm guessing there weren't any Glade Guard on display then? I've had a go at identifying which Aelven units were shown with the book, but have a bit of difficluty making out the details in the pictures that were doing the rounds. If anyone who was actually there could confirm then that would be awesome. To me it looked as though the Eternal Guard and Wild Rider kits were featured, as well as Shadow Warriors and Phoenix guard from the High Elves, although I might be wrong. I wasn't sure which kit the Dark Elf in the picture was from. What seemed to be notably lacking were any of the big Aelven centrepiece models, unless they were in a different bit of the display. I don't see any Scourge Privateers either, which seems odd, given how much they get mentioned in the lore.

The concept of a "spiritual successor" takes on a whole other meaning when talking about the undead!

Ironically GenCon was originally a wargaming convention, before the advent of D&D changed things up a bit. Although since Warhammer is very much a post D&D wargame that doesn't mean much...

Lets go with yes! At least as far as upcoming stuff is concerned at any rate. When the rumours are about old stuff being discontinued I tend to not be quite so zen, since I'm a collector first and foremost. I know there is no rush to collect the new stuff.

If and when it happens I'll be very excited. Until that point experience has taught me not to get my hopes up about anything. I basically don't buy new releases anymore. so I'll be waiting for a battleforce or start collecting regardless of when the new Death Army arrives. Thus whether its here in three months, or twelve doesn't make too much difference...

Gah! How did I double post twice?

Oops, Duplicate post, please ignore.

It may not be an actual vintage mini, but it sure is a great conversion. Oldhammer style takes of various modern factions sounds like a great idea! It perfectly blends the two styles.