Overread

The news that TK are coming back has possibly been one of the most asked for armies in AoS in terms of having the models back. So having them return to the Old World is fantastic. Heck I hope it might make some appreciate the Ossiarchs as their own thing now - as a force who aren't "stealing the TK slot or model releases" and such.

And there you are! Welcome! Sorry again that it took a while to problem solve the signup issue.

I keep hoping it means they are saving up all the slots for a mega "10 Chaos Titans and Knights over 3 months release wave" type deal. I'll also accept xenos

Honestly I really wish Warcry would stop including Chaos stuff. Or at the very least I hope the new warbands are for the Chaos Demon armies rather than for Slaves to Darkness - because darn it that army is almost all going to be Warcry Warbands in model range. Which are fantastic models, but also quite similar in stats and style in what role they fill kinda. Great models, but spread the love out GW! Spread it out!

I wanted the Verminlord at one stage, but it was to go with the wolf-rats that they used to sell which I only got one pack of before they vanished. Sad to say many of the ones I really wanted were things like the old Magma dragon which are long gone now. Honestly I suspect the only parts of the AoS line that will remain will be the ones shared with other lines - ergo the Chaos Demons and the two Champions (never sure why they didn't give Tzeentch and Slaanesh champion prince combos of their own).

Another nail in the coffin The squig and gloomspite held out really well, though it was the only AoS FW stuff that ever got marketed. I would assume based on this that all the AoS is now last-chance so if you want any of the remains (there's a Moungul, a Rogue Idol and the Warpgnaw verminlord). It could still just be a restocking glitch that the FW site suffers from where things are shown as sold out when its just out of stock. But being as they've stripped the AoS store around this time two years in a row I suspect not.

I think the only strange thing now is that GW kept the old Marauders kit and haven't replaced them through this update nor through Warcry - esp when the Warcry sets (which fill a similar army role) are just outstanding compared to the Marauders which are seriously showing their age. Otherwise super fantastic to see Slaves getting this release at last and rounding out the army with a big chunky release. Interestingly the Vanguard set is also pretty neat, you get warriors, knights, chariot and a lord. Which is a pretty good set to start off a core and also to double up on

Praise to Chaos!

Hopefully Slaves, they've been waiting long enough and it would be a powerful release to start the year off for AoS.

Various reasons 1) Price - FW stuff isn't cheap, though honestly the disparity between FW and GW is pretty small these days. 2) Softer - its softer than plastics. Neither is as hard as metal, but resin is softer/more fragile and some dilske that. 3) Different process. Resin models require a quick wash in warm lightly soapy water and a scrub with a worn toothbrush to remove mould release agents from the model (metal models also benefit from this treatment). Then they require superglue not plastic glue to assemble. 4) Cleaning is a bit more hazardous - resin dust isn't good (nor is plastic dust for that matter); so again this can be one of many minor differences/barriers that puts people off. 5) Bubbles. Resin can have bubbling which can cause errors in the model. Most times you just need something like liquid green stuff or perfect plastic putty to fill in the gap and a colourshaper to smooth it over. This is a big one, especially if people had experience of Finecast from GW. Finecast is NOT normal cast resin, it was a hybrid material used to try and keep metal moulds running and it is very tempormental and can throw a lot of bubbling very readily. It's never been any good nor reliable. Forgeworld resin can have its own issues, but nothing like as bad as Finecast. 6) The FW website is the only place to get FW models, they don't sell to retail. As a result the prices are often higher than 3rd parties and sometimes, in overseas countries (from the UK) this can be quite a big divide. So there's a range of reasons and often its a few of them added together.

So the GW website is hardlinked to their stocking/warehousing system. Each model on the store has a unique code for it and this code corresponds to a specific set of parts for the pickers in the warehouse. Whenever any one of those parts is changed or updated this generates a new code, which means on the website the old code linked model goes "sold out" and the new code has to be relisted to redisplay the model for sale. Sometimes the swapover is fast and we don't notice it; sometimes it lags. I've seen it where both are on display at the same time, one sold out, one relisted. Sometimes it means there's a new battletome coming; sometimes it means that GW just changed the box art or base size; sometimes it means the insert changed or something else. In general if a new battletome is on the horizon you'll notice a bunch from the same faction, however normally by that time the new tome is confirmed by GW and we've already hints of it coming. It's rare that we'll see a whole swath go out of stock and be replaced with a new tome without any warning. Robin Williams did indeed have Eldar as well as some of the Armourcast Titans (legally created during the ancient times, they were basically the models for Epic/Titan Legions upscaled to 40K scale and cast in resin by a firm called Armour Cast). He had other stuff too. A few years back his daughter auctioned a lot of it off. So there's a fair few people in Hollywood that like geeky stuff. Vin Diesel is very upfront about his geeky side; Will Smith has had a few warhammer models appear here and there in films. I think the thing is many Celebrities have their public and private lives and for many their hobbies, like Warhammer, are in their private life. Part of their life where they aren't sponsored or paid to endorse the product and show it off; and part where they just want to be themselves. Where they can go and enjoy a game of whatever it is without being "Mr Celebrity" with the world following their every motion. Henry stands out because he's brought his Warhammer hobby into his public life in a big way, though Vin has also done it pretty big (you can argue his Riddick films are passion projects of his which is pretty massive in a sci-fi geek way). Henry also stands out because he doesn't "look like a geek". He doesn't have glasses; he doesn't get cast in geeky roles. He's not a Simon Pegg. Henry is closer to your Arny or Rambo. He's your hunky good looking action hero who swings a sword, gets the ladies and most certainly isn't living in his mothers basement. He utterly destroys the "casual geek mental image" that many have when they think of a geek. It's the real world geek who isn't just that one dimension image of a person. I think that in itself has pushed him forward, especially in an age where, lets face it, most "geeky" hobbies are pretty mainstream now.

I think its a shame that the new ghoul is limited edition, but at the same time I really hope its an insight into the style that GW is going to do for reworking flesheaters and adding to their range. This is the perfect blend of the nightmarish ghoul and their insanity. It plays to the idea of a ghoul who sees itself as a noble king far more so than most of their range where they just look like regular ghouls. A ghoul update is also really exciting to think one might be on the horizon because they only really have 1 boxed set right now so if that gets reworked it doesn't just mean new ghouls - it means new zombiedragon set!! Also don't forget its exclusive but its also going for sale on the GW website too so everyone should have a fair chance to grab it

She'd likely stab you for suggesting that she killed for money when her true patron was Khaine. She killed in HIS name. That said Morathi was not a god when she started (its suggested in the last book that Morathi's move to godhood has recently happened) and Morathi certainly could only intercept belief and likely had no control over stealing souls that died. If she can do that now she's a god is questionable. Other gods do and can, but if Morathi can is still unknown. Furthermore Morathi is very very neurotic about betrayal. It's very likely that she'd only accept those souls that pledged their belief to her and her alone and were the most devout in life. On the other hand maybe after her recent moves she's more keen for warriors and would take any soul she could grab to press them into a new body to fight for her,

Have we ever had closure on that? Far as I recall the souls of the Khinerai and Melusai are all from those saved from Slaanesh's belly and given new bodies by Morathi. I think all the current ones who die go to Nagash and the Undead Realm. Because its only Sigmar he really has a beef with and its only Sigmar who steals active souls from the Mortal Realms who die. That's why it was such a big thing that Morathi stole more than her fair share and damaged the bindings that held Slaanesh in place and why that spell has to keep going as Slaanesh ate a LOT of elf souls from the Old World. Vast legions of them - thus more than enough to keep Morathi well supplied with melusai and khinerai and the others with their creatures.

I'm sad that the new Gotrek book looks like he might not be getting his Witch Aelf companion back And yes I do wish GW kinda did something with Gotrek long term or at least gave him a steady long term goal. His original books he had a direction long term; the current ones he seems to get set on a single major overarching path and then change his mind about it between books. Though rising the Dwarves up has a been a theme for ages. I almost get the feeling like the authors keep getting told "Yeah so after the next book we are going to do a massive load of Dwarf models and releases, to make some noise about that in the story" and then it never happens. Also if this really does mean he's lost his Witch Aelf its criminal that we've another marine hero model and no model for Malineth! New vampire book is great news!

It's intentional because AoS at launch was basically aiming to be army agnostic. That's why GW created 4 themed Grand Alliances and shattered a lot of big armies into small components. I'd wager if we could see the sales data GW have we might even have spotted that those components were based upon sales metrics. If you sold within a certain threshold of values you were split off into your own army (which would explain why some factions had only 1 model to their name). AoS was an accountants game design based on sales data. Those that fell below the line were dropped, those that were above a line survived and those in the middle got fragmented. I suspect if we'd stuck with that plan "armies"wouldn't have existed beyond a few. The majority would have been one to two release wonders. Small forces that would last a certain amount of time on the market before being rotated out once their sales dipped. The 4 Grand Alliances would preserve the structure of the game as you'd not collect an "army" but an "alliance". So it wouldn't matter if Fyreslayers vanished because you'd just pick up another Order faction to bolster your Alliance. Plus the game wasn't really a game, it was just a backdrop for a collection.

Ahh I remembered the title wrong its - A Dynasty of Monsters. But yeah the land in that book very much rises and falls within hours to a day. Some elements of it move slow and some move insanely fast. You see a land movement within the opening pages and it remains a very strong theme. Heck the major settlement in the book survives by being built upon huge stilts so that it's raised up from the land around it to persist through the changes. The tricky thing is that the reader gets little sense of the rules of how the land moves, why it moves, what governs it and what limits there are which allows the people to live, move, trade, hunt, settle and overall exist within this region.

Yes and no. I didn't read any Old World books until AoS came on the scene. The first one I read was Gotrek and I devoured them just so I could read the Gotrek books in AoS whilst having an understanding of the character and his history. Age does come into play in so much as a more mature reader is going to have read a wider variety of stories and the style that hey desire often changes. For me the difference is that Old World was more structured which meant you could see and understand impacts nad settings. Even if the characters never impacted the greater narrative, they felt part of their world and setting. It also helped that Old World ran on real world physics and logic and Tolkien style fantasy. So alongside your wizards and witches you had common orcs and peasants and all. You could easily imagine in your minds eye a LOT of the missing details because they'd be pretty common normal things - horses ploughing fields, crops grown, etc... AOS leans into a setting thats insanely open, insanely free and very much runs on its own physics. Reading the first books you have armies of stormcast climbing mountains to reach lakes of quicksilver whilst fighting in realms where there are storms of rust and living normal flora and fauna with have pistons as much as they have flesh. IT's wild, is amazing, its highly fantastical, but BL don't have Tolkien style authors. So the reader has to fill in the gaps, but its hard when you've such a wild setting. And not just one but multiple realms that are each wild and obeying their own laws. I read the Mother of Monsters book recently and its set in Ghur and one of the hard things to imagine is a setting with farmers, travelling caravans, horses, livestock and all in a realm where the ground moves daily. Where in a few moments you can go from a flat floodplane to a mountainous region. And this is normal. How do you build in that environment? How do you farm, or travel roads, how does a wheel caravan move over terrain where the road might become a mountainside or a valley or a river in moments? How do you tame horses to not bolt as soon as the land moves; how do you achieve any sense of living in such a setting? These were big questions I was asking and the stories don't really answer or try to answer them. They don't go deep enough and that makes immersion a bit harder because I've got ot fill in that huge gap. Furthermore how I fill it in might be different ot the author and other readers so when that setting gets looked at closer and deeper its easier to have a divergence and the author takes things X way which is way different to how others have envisioned it.

I think one reason characters in AoS can feel more hollow is because the setting is so insanely open and huge. It's hard to really have characters that aren't gods who have impact because whole cities and nations can rise and fall and it has zero impact on the setting as a whole. Even if your character is just a minor one in the setting, in Old World they could have impact, they could interact with other major events and characters and you had a sense of when and where they were in the world. In AoS its much harder. The setting has no time system so there's no dating element in place beyond if the author references the age (3 of them) or if its before or after something like the Necroquake. The maps are getting better, but even then its hard because many of the settlements and regions have no real impact. Take the Gotrek books for AoS. Gotrek has been touring several of the Dwarf peoples. Visiting sky cities and mountain holds and yet its all kinda just nothing. Now part of it is possibly that AoS hasn't got as many matured authors. 40K and Old World by far had more and AoS had the amazing Josh Reynolds for a time, but since then I feel like they have good authors and a lot of beginner authors but no one who really stands out. GW in their bid to make a setting that gave them (and players) almost total creative freedom, made a setting that's so open and free its hard to have agency unless you're a god

Plus if you have USRs GW can easily make a card "cheat sheet" that simply summarises all of them so even if the warscroll doesn't have the rule written out in full, there's a quick reference card you can use instead of having to open the rule book. Also GW is getting better at making smaller format rule books - which are more practical for gaming than the big rule book - accessible each edition. Heck the last one I saw was even ring-binder style to even easier to flip through and reference.

I think the key isn't so much removing unique rules, its about making rules that do the same thing be called the same thing Right now a lot of units have unique named rules, but they are the same rule, they do the same thing. Having standardised terminology makes it a lot lot easier to get into the game and understand the flow. I think it also means that when a unit does have a unique rule it feels unique because its the only model to have it. So whilst not every unit might have totally unique ones, it means that those which do feel far more like they stand out as something special because they have a unique rule that isn't just a fancy name, but which actually does something in the game itself that is different.

The Novella series were great fun, its a shame that the last season of them had only 1 AOS book if I recall right and they appear ot have been abandoned as a concept. I still feel like Black Library still hasn't recovered from the loss of Mr Reynolds in terms of having an experienced skilled writer on team dedicated to a lot of AoS writing. Too many of BL's skilled are tied up with 40K

On the one hand I'd honestly like them, but on the other I know that set is going to be a small fortune and sell out at blazing speed on the day. So I'm right out of the running to get them. I did get the first audio novel transcript though and that was a good release - hardback with gold edging of the pages and a nice centre display of all the original Old World cover arts. It felt special and was regular order at a sane price. ALSO GW why is there still no model for Gotrek's favourite Aelf?!

You might be thinking of the new character centaur warrior that Slaves to Darkness are getting? Or sometimes just a different paint job and angle of photos on existing models can make them look rather new, esp when their studio paint job is decades old by now

Yep, I'm in a similar boat myself, though my interest is the sorcerer on mount. Though in my case I think it looks like a perfect necromancer model, however soulblight lack a necromancer on a mount. So if I get it, it might never get used for what I intend.