EccentricCircle

I'm the proud owner of a Legion of Azgorh army, and also have Elspeth, so relatively speaking i've invested quite heavily into forgeworld stuff. It helps that I'm not really fussed on the rules at all. If I use them its only going to be in friendly or narrative games. I think the big problem for me is the cost. Its not something I can get with any regularity, and some of the bigger beasties are just too big. I'd love to get a dread saurian, and in fact its pretty much the only Lizardmen model I don't own. However the price tag has always put me off. Things like the Dread Maw, Mournghul and Magma Dragon are really cool and if I recall correctly, a bit more affordable, but not something I can just buy on a whim. I'm a little skeptical of their Middle Earth stuff as well. That is one of my favourite GW games, but some of the models they've put out are just really too steep a price increase on the older metal equivalents.

This is one of those wishlists so awesome, that I'll be kind of disapointed if it isn't what ultimately happens!

Yeah, I noticed that too. My grand plan is to get two woods for each season, which i can then mix and match to make huge forests as needed. the project stalled a bit, since painting four woods at once for spring and summer gave me plenty to be getting in with. Now I've quickly come back to it, I've just painted up my winter trees last week, while they are still available. Still got autumn to do, but that can probably wait for the new tree set, since it does look more secure than the old ones.

Tough choice! I really like quite a few of them. The Realm of Chaos is obviously a classic, but it maybe is a bit too dangerous to have proper adventuring potential. I picked Ulgu as the top one, as I really like the idea of swirling shadows, and mist shrouded lands. However I'd rank Ghyran and Aqshay almost as highly, since fiery volcanic mountains and burnign deserts are awesome, and I love jungle shrouded lands, and the idea of nature being in the ascendant. I'm less fussed about the others. Ghur seems cool, and I think Chamon has interesting potential, although I don't feel as though I quite have a handle on it. I'm less fussed about Azyr, since its the most civlised and sigmarite of the realms, which isn't that interesting really. I'm not so keen on Shyish either, since I've never quite got the way its afterlife pocket planes work. How are they connected? How do they get from one to another? Can you just set up shop in any underworld, or are only the oldest ones, where fewer new souls are heading habitable? etc.

Yay for Sylvaneth finally sprouting! That is excellent news. I like the middle earth stuff they've announced too. That new ruffian kit looks like it could be very handy.

I have several armies, and like them all for slightly different reasons, although a lot of those boil down tot he models being awesome, or looking fun to paint. A lot of the time I will invest in an army because I like the theme, or the culture it draws inspiration from. I really like factions with a very clear aethetic, which I know that I will enjoy painting. I'd also been playing Lord of the Rings and 40K for a while before picking up WFB, so that meant that I often went with stuff which would contrast with what I already had. LOTR gave me plenty of europeanish models, so I went for more "exotic" cultures which Warhammer had available. I also had a tonne of Orks from 40k, so although I love them dearly they weren't a high priority for my fantasy collection. As far as the specific armies go: In the beginning were the Lizardmen, I needed some for a D&D game, and was impressed to find just how large and varied the range was for something which I would have expected to be fairly niche. I really like the Aztec theme, as again it was something very different to the LOTR models I was used to painting, and Lizzies are both fun and easy to paint, so it was pretty easy to get carried away in painting them. I've always loved dinosaurs, so really that faction couldn't go wrong for me! Once I had a solid Lizardmen army I switched to Tomb Kings, since Ancient Egypt had always been my favorite period of history. I loved the aesthetic of the Tomb Kings, and they gave me a different painting challenge, while also being fairly easy. I quickly fell in love with the lore and background to the Tomb Kings. I really liked the fact that they weren't your usual evil undead, but were more of a neutral faction. That sort of nuance really appealed to me, and I had great fun building my collection. At about the same time I started Dwarves, since those had always been one of my favorite fantasy races, and I'd always said that if I ever started playing Fantasy then I'd do a dwarf army. This grew a bit slower, since compared to the Saurus and Skeletons they were a lot more complex to paint, but I very much enjoyed building up some of the models which I'd been thinking about getting for years! Dwarf models have so much character, and are such cool and imaginative takes on what is usually quite a cliched fantasy race, so it was really cool to build gyrocoptors and miners. When they cancelled the Tomb Kings I really wanted to finish my second army, and so that basically introduced me to the whole second hand market. In the wake of finishing my Tomb Kings army I wanted a new faction, but didn't massively want to reward GW for getting rid of some of my favourite models, so I used my newfound knowledge of ebay to collect Chaos Dwarves instead! Trying to do this in an affordable manner was a really enjoyable collecting challenge, and so they appealed to all of the different strands of the hobby, not just the painting, modeling and playing. They appeal to me for a lot of the same reasons described above. They are dwarves, whom i've always had a soft spot for, but also have wacky magic, awesome fire elementals, and a nifty Persian theme, which fit my interest in collecting armies for varied fantasy cultures. They've also got a kind of steampunk thing going on which I enjoy painting. More recently I've been putting together a Daughters of Khaine force. This is largely due to really liking the look of the Melusai. I've always liked the ancient greek aesthetic, so an army of Gorgons and Harpies really appeals. They've been a nice challenge to paint, as i've gradually gotten better at doing little details. Other honourable mentions include Kharadron Overlords, because any sort of Steampunk Dwarves are going to appeal and Nighthaunt, because my love of the Undead has not faltered since I completed my TK army. My oddest army is my Collegiate Arcane force. I decided to try to track down the old wizard models for each colour of magic, and ended up with a force of more than a hundred wizards, including most of the models that have ever been released as Battle Mages. It took over a year to complete the collection, and I'm still in the process of painting them all up, but it will be awesome when I can see an entire arcane faculty arrayed for war. Wizards have always been one of my favorite character classes, so really what's not to like!

The salesman at my local GW told me that the Sylvaneth leak was a mistake by their IT people, the pictures spontaneously started appearing in the cycle of adverts on the in store monitors. Th at suggests that there was a miscommunication internally, the schedule changed and it wasn't announced in time, but the tech priests didnt get the message to pull the ads.

They did a couple of Bretonnian models fairly early on in the run, so its certainly possible that we might see some more later on. Depends how well they sold that time around I guess.

It tints the base colour, painting over gold gives some really cool metallic sheens to it all! Clearly some combinations will work a lot better than others, but that's just down to colour theory, and getting a feel for the transparency of the different paints.

A little off topic, but long ago a shipment of lego was washed overboard, and to this day bricks still wash ashore on certain cornish beaches. The best thing is that the lego bricks in question were largely from the Aquaraiders theme, so what you find on the beach are frequently lego octopuses! so if endless spells start washing up somewhere we'll have evidence for this hypothesis! I'm still kind of hoping it was very confused pirates, but a customs issue seems much more likely....

I'd say Joe Abercrombie without hesitation. His First Law novels have a lot of the same gritty tone and feel as the old world, but with a more nuanced approach to the concepts of good, evil, order, and chaos than you get with actual Warhammer novels.

Yeah, the faction has a lot of potential. It wasn't one I had paid any attention to at all before being set the assignment, but it wasn't hard to identify the core themes, and take a look at the old Ogre Kingdoms books for some interesting ideas. I'm very intrigued to see what they eventually come up with for them. I agree that the fact they were using it at the assessment exercise last year makes it unlikely that they were already working on something at that time, but the fact that they used that faction for the lore writer exercise as well does seem hopeful that it might be in development now.

Here's the gutbusters allegiance I came up with last summer then. never got a chance to playtest since its not a faction I play. I basically went with the idea that the spell lore would revolve around imbuing nearby units with the essence of various body parts to give them boosts to each of their core attributes.

Interesting. I was one of the other people who submitted that assignment last year, and came up with some similar ideas, albeit taking them in a radically different direction. I'll post my version, but I can't figure out how to add the spoiler/hidden contents stuff at the moment?

You should hold it very carefully, and with both hands. If you drop it you will be picking up models for hours, and most of them will be broken.

I have to agree that I prefer the limited edition models to be for the big factions. Last year when they had promos for an army I was actually interested in it got quite stressful to make sure that I could get hold of them. This year my first thought was literally "Ah good I can relax, its just space marines and stormcast..."

Wow, that Witch Aelf actually looks sensibly dressed!

From what i've read the coarse spray is the downside of trying to get a pure white, since its a product of the chemical used to get that colour. The reason the texture is finer with the new greys is because they're not using a white pigment. This seems to imply that the coloured sprays should be finer already, although I guess it would depend on precisely which chemical is being used at the pigment in each.

Ideally I like all of my models to be painted before I use them. Sometimes they might not be entirely finished, as I often take ages over the details, but I like them to at least look ok from a distance even if I'm going to go back and do more later. The closest I've ever gotten to fielding an unpainted army was in my last 40K game, where I wanted to use my new Necrons, so quickly spray painted them silver. I need to go back and paint them properly, but it did the trick for that game.

I can only speak for myself, but the "Who wants TK back" thread has comments from other fans of the faction, so might be worth checking out. So, to address these questions, what I'm most keen on is the aesthetic returning. I already use my Tomb Kings army as is, using compendium rules, and that if fine. Would I like a more modern battletome with fresh lore and new models for the existing faction? Sure, that would be welcome, and would increase the variety of games I can comfortably play them in. However I'm not holding out much hope for that. I don't think anyone is waiting, staring forlornly at shelves of chariots and skull catapults, longing for the day when Settra return. I think we've all pretty much collected other armies since, or else dropped the hobby entirely. As far as the return of old units, some would be nice to get another box of, but my collection is pretty much complete, so that's not a major issue either. Its more a case that I love the art and archetypes of ancient egypt, and broadly prefer that take on the undead to the gothic horror vibe of the Ex Vampire Counts stuff. I don't hate what's available at the moment, far from it, I have armies for every death faction, and love the Nighthaunt dearly. But egyptian undead just have a certain something that appeals to me. As far as returning characters, I actually couldn't care less. I've enjoyed reading about the TK characters, but I actually don't think that they are as central to the themes of the Tomb Kings as many people think. To me what sums up the themes of the faction, besides its look, is neutrality. The classic Tomb Kings weren't world conquering tyrants, or holy crusaders, they didn't really give a damn about order or chaos, or good or evil. They would fight anyone who disturbed their lands, and weren't above invading other countries to get their stuff back from museums, but on the whole they were far more reasonable than most undead. In that respect I could see them working as a mercenary faction, willing to fight with order or death as the situation arises. I can't see them working with Nagash in their present state. But I don't think that their present state is how they'd come back. Nagash himself was once a liche priest, so he has as much claim to the legacy of Nehekhara as any of the others (even if he was the one to destroy it). All of his legions have had Egyptian elements since day one. If that is the route they go down then I wouldn't consider it to really be Tomb Kings per se, but I would still be happy with it, so long as it captured the look and feel of ancient Egypt in a solid manner. So no, I won't just complain if they do throw me a bone. I'll be excited to see what they do with the old ideas, and what I can make out of them. I'll always have my old army, and if it gets easier to use that it will be great, but if it doesn't then there are plenty more skeletons in the desert.

Thats true. They could definitely kit bash quite a lot out of that set. It is a fantastic model, although a bit small compared to modern centerpiece beasties. The rank and file skeletons and the horsemen and chariots couldn't really be repurposed without standing out at this point, and a new, improved bone giant would be great as the old one does look a bit derpy. Note though that it has a hat made of smaller skeletons, which is one of the Most Warhammer concepts of all time!

Agreed. As a TK collector I think there are a few approaches which could be taken. They can't and won't just bring the old faction back in its entirety, and I highly doubt they'll bring back any of it. The most likely scenario is a new faction, in the style of Nagash and the Mortarchs. A lot of GW's death stuff has a slight egyptian vibe, so it wouldn't take much to lean into that, and come up with something new which still has some nods to the Tomb Kings aesthetic. If they were to go the Daughters of Khaine route, and use old kits as the core of the army then I reckon these three are it. The Sphynx has three builds, and two of them give you a tomb king on foot. The snakes have two builds, each a distinct unit, and the Tomb Guard have two weapon choices and would be a natural fit as the new battleline unit. They could then add between three and five more kits, to fill out the rest of the range. If I were to bet then I would say at minimum a second troop kit, in the style of the Tomb Guard, but with a ranged option, then something like the Ushabti, perhaps with multiple builds, and then either a chariot kit, a catapult. Ideally they'd do all of that, plus a huge centerpiece model. Add a hero or two either separately or as part of one of those and I think it would be a solid range. I'm not going to hold out too much hope for any of that to happen though, but we can hope.

I'm now imagining pirates raiding the ship, triumphantly stealing the shipping containers, and then wondering what to do with a thousand copies of the same book about dryads, and a lifetimes supply of plastic trees!

Well the entire Malign Portents canon is set immediately prior to the Necroquake, and Soul Wars is set at and immediately after it. Beyond that I don't think many of the ones I've read recently have been fixed to a particular time.

I'm going to set all of my horrible monsters to patrol the edges of my domain and eat intruders. The orcs and beastmen etc will occupy the same no mans land, and then I'll have standing armies of Elves and Dwarves etc to keep my citadel safe in the event they cause trouble. I'll keep the undead and Necrons as a last reserve naturally. I figure that even somewhat horrible factions like Witch Elves and Chaos Dwarves would be of use, since they will have to do my bidding, even if their natural proclivities are not quite what I'd like. I'll also have plenty of Wizards for engaging conversation, and to play RPGs and Wargames with. I could do with more minis of regular people though, to do the actual cooking and cleaning and such. As you can tell i've thought this through in quite a bit of detail!