Overread

I don't think you can "mod hat" rumours into existence unless you're a GW Mod That said I think the closest to rumour is Skaven metals going out of production - Warlord is already listed out of production and others might well follow. Even that isn't really a rumour and is just sorta news though good news to spread. It would be a shame to see them vanish without people realising like we've just had happen with greenskins stuff.

It was announced somewhere over Christmas as a general thing to come, but we've only been told they are coming with no hint as to what they might be. As for predatory spells they have a lot of uses, but are very positional critical. Because of how control swaps over (or can swap over) you need to position them carefully so that when they are used you leave them in a position where your opponent cannot fire them easily back at you and, at best, can just deflect them. So you can guarantee one good turn from them and thereafter its more of a risk; but it varies. Eg the Pendulum can only move one way; so all your opponent can do is slow it for a turn by hardly or not moving it. Meanwhile others can drift or move more freely.

This Employee Orientation video should tell you all you need to know sorry about the - ahem - filters they put on it for creative effect.

GW closed the rumour mines and I've heard that cutbacks at the office have meant that the Leaks Department has also had to donate their potato for the shareholders dinner.

He might and he might not. The thing is Gods tend to operate at different time scales and can wipe out interest in mundane regular troops - whilst your average gamer is more vested in the lore of the peoples they play as. Basically a god in teh game is a single model (if that) whilst a faction is a whole race of peoples and armies and such. The peoples are more interesting than the gods in terms of lore and worldbuilding by and large.

I think once the main stories shift away from the god-battles a bit and focus on the people in the stories we might well see a lot of shifting perspectives. Right now much of the big lore events are at the GOD end of the scale; which honestly leaves little room to develop characters for some factions because by the time most gods complete a campaign many of the more mortal creatures are generations old. AoS started with the gods, but I think we'll steadily see characters and mortals rise up and the time advance slow down some. I think tihs has to happen for GW to get a handle on the lore and background and to build up character franchises. You need your Gotreks and your Gaunts Ghosts and such to be the backbone of your lore.

@Nos I think you're reading way too far into the lore with a specific lean against humans. Don't forget the Dwarves got beaten long before humanity fell to Chaos. Come the end time setting Dwarves are heavily on the way out and are a fallen race by and large (I've been reading the old Gotrek novels so yeah dwarves are very much a failing old race). Humans lasted far longer - however dwarf, human, elf, tree - they ALL feel when Chaos tore the old world apart. None were able to withstand it and all fell. Stormcast are the extreme reaction, but they are not the be-all and end all. They have their own failings and issues. Plus don't forget your average aelf is not much more durable than the average human. Aelves and Dwarves are not godly in power and are flesh and blood just like a human; their only real bonus is in being able to naturally live a lot longer. Humans often relied on population - faster breeding and also generally being able to work with stuff like technology and magic at the same time (Aelves and Dwarves focusing on one or the other). Honestly look at Skaven - 90% of their forces are fearful ratmen who die in DROVES and who basically are just sort of nasty and easy to kill. If they can survive then surely humans can too. We won't lose humans - we will get 1 or more human factions in the AoS setting and they will work. They will have features that let them rise up to meet the challenge of the current age of Chaos. Be it through machines, magic, grit, population, divine intervention etc... Heck in the lore they already fit - we already have them all over the place. The only place we don't have them is with a Battletome.

Humans were far from annihilated in the Realms. Sigmar is their patron god and humans themselves were as heavily populated as any other species. They were, like ALL others, decimated when Chaos launched their major offensive and took the Realms for a Thousand Years. Dwarves, Aelves, Humans - all were crushed. Also you're mistaken about the gods - the age of Gods and beasts was the Age of Myth. That age is passed long now and whilst there are still such creatures around they are more rare and muted. Humans can very much survive just as dwarves and Aelves and orks can in this Realm. If it were only the gods then all the other races we play would be near useless. They'd be driven out and crushed too. Yet we see that in the early Realmgate novels there are many bands of humans who survive; we see in the newer stories that humans not only survive, but build cities - big ones. The only reason they are undrerepresented on the tabletop is because they've yet to have their Battletome(s). Just like Destruction and the goblins. Humans can very much survive and thrive in the AoS setting. What might set them apart is a use of things like black powder; the power of steam; the power of magic and also infantry and regular swords. Bolted to the side of the Stormcast; aided by their Patron God Sigmar and perhaps others in the future. The Realms are a dynamic setting and there's certainly room for all factions. Also the Old world was on the brink of the end of the world, but lets not forget the "end of the world" was only a theory until it happened. Until it happened the end could have been coming for another thousand generations or might even have been defeated and driven back.

Humans also forces GW to write stories within a sane timeframe. At present you've got Aelves and Dwarves and Stormcast and Demons - all of which can live for hundreds of years. Humans get a tiny slot and that forces the stories to focus down far more so on a niche in time so that you can have heroes arise and such. It also fits ithings into a timescale that most people can more readily identify with.

The only "most popular" faction for 40K is Space Marines - everything else pales in comparison. However Imperials sell very strongly in general - heck look at FW they mostly produce Space Marine and Imperial content in buckets - they wouldn't do that if there wasn't a market for it to feed. Fantasy, esp in its latter years, just didn't get the marketing to really push it forward. I think that armies like Bretonians and Empire also started to feel a touch more retro in a market that was steadily advancing away from more historical and toward more epic fantasy (you can blame computergames for that probably). I think the idea that a human faction would be unpopular is not really holding water - Stormcast are basically just humans in big armour and they sell well. It's often more about marketing; model design; communication of themes; updated sculpts etc... Heck lets be honest the only real difference between your average Aelf and human is pointy ears and a slightly thinner body build overall (and I mean slight).

I don't know about those who have gone off and will never return as customers, but it certainly acts as barrier to some looking to get into the game. Both those who have old collections waiting to see if they are valid once more and those who are new, but who like the look/theme of some armies. Heck take the tried and tested staple of a dragon in fantasy. Currently the only Order army with a Battletome that has a dragon is Stormcast - none of the Aelven dragons have a battletome! That said it is being solved and each time a new tome comes out I certainly see people look up and pay attention to the game! GW's plan is working its just slow, made slower by the fact that unlike a new game, AoS already has many models out there. I'd bet it would be different if AoS was a totally new game with no legacy models and the rate of releases would then seem like an insane speed (which it is of course and it feels like that now, but many are still "waiting" for the speedy release to get to their army(ies)

Oh very much agreed and I think even in the world of AoS there's room for mortal warriors. Heck take at a look at Malazan Book of the Fallen - many of the top characters in that are not gods/demigods/gifted but regular sappers and warriors - highly trained after years of brutal war; but essentially normal people who rose to a position of power through skill, practice and dumb luck at staying alive.

Daughters of Khaine are not evil! I assure you all those hearts are donated freely by the weak, the meek, the feeble and the fallen in battle! It's not the fault of the sisters that many in the Mortal Realms are just not as gifted as those who follow Khaine. Interestingly I see DoK and Idoneth as closer to neutral than pure evil, yet both forces are capable of more evil acts than many order factions. Idoneth are just soul-vampires (essentially) who are also somewhat shunned, hated, feared and also very cautious themselves in how they hide up. Whilst DoK are mostly just obsessed with the simplistic concept of survival of the fittest in terms of strength and skill in battle. And hearts, or at least the queens like hearts a lot.

I think the quickest way to link the RPG to the tabletop in terms of using models would be for Cubical 7 to use the Underworld models as a base for some party characters. They don't have to keep the party names nor character names; but can certainly show them as an example and then build profiles using the character creator around them. That way they can show players how they can use regular normal models already in production and how they can be fit into the games character creator and campaign system. That lets them be fully independent of GWs production of models, which might never come or might come only after a very long period of time.

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/Stormcast-Eternals-Heads-Upgrade-1-2019 https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-GB/Stormcast-Eternals-Heads-Upgrade-2-2019 Two sets of resin heads for Stormcast Eternals from Forgeworld! I wonder if they'll address alternate heads for other factions too - I hope so if only to avoid the Stormcast becoming Marines in marketing fully!

With all the various realms they could make one Bestiary book per realm and I'd be sold on all of them if they were high grade with art and loads of details! Of course right after I'd be demanding GW make models of most of them too - but it would be a fantastic way to flesh out the world. Esp for an RPG where adventurers are more likely to be roaming and encounter beasts and such in the wilds whilst huge armies might only meet the local dragon

Welcome Emmetation! Looking forward to seeing how this develops, both as an RPG game, but also seeing the kind of lore and support material that gets built up around it. AoS Realms being so new there's a big hunger for lore and background and general such things, so a fleshed out RPG setting is the kind of thing I can see many getting into just for the world crafting elements alone. So I guess on that front I'd ask how much of that you've been able to put together and if you're going to feature the game with its own specific setting. Even if its just to present it and give an example that players can build off.

If they are in the public marketing and consultation phase chances are they have written the core of the book already. Or at least got the solid foundation and direction that they want to take established. There's nothing worse than trying to interact with the public if you've got no idea what kind of product you're making to begin with. Even if the market hates it, it at least gives a solid foundation to base discussions off.

@Ben As Cubical 7 seem keen to reach out to the community might be worth you dropping them an email and invitation to head over here to TGA! Throw up a subsection for the RPG game on the forums and welcome them to come share news and tid bits here (since we'd only be repeating any news announced here anyway).

We've also see those same Aelves in Warqueen and we've the misty Aelf unique hero model that's been around for quite a while now. Which honestly sets the scene pretty strongly for them being Malarions Aelves which means we can expect his force to be quite dominant in that kind of creature (so less likely to blend in Darkling Covens, but might merge well with serpentis)

Probably because GW's armies can take years to build. No joke its a slow product not a fast one. A new ipad can come out each year and the old one is retired; GW couldn't do that because half the people or more would only have just got part way through buying, building and painting an army. Miniature wargames are a long term investment for most customers who are gamers. Sure any company can go belly up or any army be retired; but look at the companies who do well and you can see that where they have long standing factions which are stable they have good sales. Companies that jump army to army start to lose sales - armies left abandoned or ignored start to lose faith in customers and stagnate to nothing. Spartan Games did this over and over; jumping to new armies and new games so often that they wound up actually killing a good portion of their own market and ultimately it likely contributed to their eventual closure (there were other things going on too of course). And that was without them retiring armies and games - just not paying attention to them. Like I said "Squatting" armies is actually very rare for GW to do. If a system is selling the armies remain on sale - the only time we've ever seen them drop armies en-mass is when they've ended support for a game or when AoS launched. Otherwise their general operation has been to preserve armies and expand and support them. Heck they were slowly retiring Sisters of Battle yet now they are investing full on into them. GW and their customers want long lasting armies and support - it builds faith in the customers and customers who have faith in GW are more likely to buy more models and expand into new armies. If GW started to get a reputation for retiring armies at a whim then they'd fast lose sales form new and existing customers

Honestly I think most people are on board with that considering that Wood Elves are split in half at least and Dark Elves already have Daughters of Khaine split off into their own faction. The real debate is on if GW will link up the old armies together; if they'll cross them over; if they'll expand them into their own sub army or if they'll retire the models entirely. There's loads of potential things GW could do and we just don't know that's where all the frustration comes in for most gamers. Those who own models don't know if they want to sell them on or expand; those on the fence of joining into AoS are waiting and waiting for the army they think they want to form to see if it's going to exist or not; those who have a bit of a start in those forces are waiting to see if their investment lasts and if things change - no sense buying a full 2K Worth of Dark Riders if GW decides that Shadowblades are going to be retired/rolled into another army etc...

There is no guarantee, but there is an expectation that GW sell stuff that will - you know - last. Most armies do in fact last a long while. Squatting is famous but its actually (until AoS launched) super rare to occur. More likely is that individual models or niche groups of models are retired. For example specialist Imperial Guard variations have appeared and retired over the years - however most are generic enough that they can count-as a regular IG army without any issues. Squatting is always the great fear - it happened once and was a fear story for years that Necron, Dark Eldar and other faction players have feared would happen. Also in your example Darkling Covens (until christmas) had a specific product page, they have lore, they have a dedicate section of pages in the Generals Handbook. They are a functional usable army and if GW's plan is to retire them fully then most would assume GW would do it now rather than waiting for a random point in the future.

Honestly I don't think they hint at all with their comics - anything new tends to be purely accidental if it gets any comic reference before the release.

Winged Slaanesh dragondemons!