Skabnoze

They never release the models from the core starter sets separately. What they generally do is release a separate version of those models. However, there are exceptions such as what they did for Chainrasps.

There are two kinds of boxes that they make. There are starter boxes that have unique miniatures, but that generally get different sculpts for a main release later on. And then there are temporary 2 faction release boxes that are a way to sell new models early. Usually after a wait those models are packaged up separately. Its hard to tell which type of box this new 40k box is. My guess is that their production capacity has increased and they can change the 2 faction boxes so that they contain all new sculpts rather than just a couple new ones and they will release the models separately later on. But this could also be a Dark Imperium box replacement. We will have to wait and see. As someone who has played Black Legion since the 2nd edition 40k Chaos codex I will probably buy a couple sets of this box. I put my Chaos army in the closet when Dark Vengeance came out years ago with new Chaos models. I want new standard Chaos marines with the updated Chaos aesthetic and it looks like they are finally delivering that.

Yeah, I wish the limited edition books were more like the fancy ones they used to do in the past that came in a box with some tokens and extras. The Genestealer Cult limited edition book was really cool. That said, I did pick up the fancy version of the Gloomspite book even though they did not really do enough in my opinion to warrant the cost. But it is the first time they have ever given goblins their own army book, I have played them as a full army for over 25 years now, and so I thought of it more as paying a bit extra as a thank you for giving me the army I always wanted. There are a few other books that I would buy the special edition for the same reason. If they expand Bonesplitterz or Ironjawz more then I would buy that book. If Darkoath ends up a full army range inspired by Frank Frazetta’s Conan art style then I would happily buy that book. And even though I don’t plan to buy an army for common people I would buy the limited edition book in a second if they release a Free Cities style book that combines a lot of the city-dwelling human, dwarfs, aelves, and other races together into an army. That is such a cool idea for AoS that I would pay extra for the book.

I am not opposed to them splitting off Ardboyz. And I agree that Brute weapon options are useful, but that still does not mean there isn’t value in creating 2 version of Brutes. If GW wants to add some unit variety then that is a very simple option for them to do and just requires repackaging. Is it the right thing to do? I don’t know. But I don’t think it is the “wrong” thing to do either. I think it is just “a” thing they can do. In the end it just depends on what the design team wants to do with this faction and what they have the model production bandwidth (considering other projects) to do. However, I do think that they should split up Gore Gruntas in order to make the Hacka option worthwhile. They could adjust the weapon profile, but it feels like they could really use some sort of lance type of special rule or something instead.

I would like that also, but I would really like to see GW expand what Ardboyz are. Ideally I would like to see Ironjawz rolled into a larger allegiance similar to Gloomspite that brings back Greenskinz as a horde-style sub allegiance, Ironjawz as the elite allegiance, and then give Ardboyz the keywords to sit in both. Make it “Waaagh! Gordrak” or something. Add a few new heroes - such as the boss on Goregrunta and tune up a few waracrolls and I think we would have a really great book.

Yuck.. So disgusting! Who would do such a mean thing to a cooking knife?

As much as I would love to see new kits for Ironjawz, I think they could also split the brutes and gore grunta units into 2 units each based upon the weapon options in the box. That would allow them to play with the unit stats and abilities and make both options useful choices while also adding more unit variety into the army. That said, I really think that the Ironjawz are missing hero variety. I would really like to see an Ardboyz hero or two added to the army and at least one other Ironjawz hero option.

To play Devil's Advocate - you have not even read the new book yet. So you don't know what has changed in regards to warscrolls and what the terrain piece really means in regards to the army as a whole yet. They might not change much and then it ends up being disappointing - or they might rework a whole lot and the ability ends up being quite better in the end. At least we will know in 2 weeks.

TL;DR - Who cares where they come from - they all have beards worth scalping.

I agree, but buying a new book every year is a 1st-world problem that I would like to have compared to the past alternative of waiting up to a decade for a book refresh. If GW needs me to shell out $50 a year for my favorite factions and they are willing to put in the effort to provide a good up to date product then that is a problem worth having.

They still cannot stop someone from making generic equivalent models and calling them: "orc brute with axe", or "dwarf warrior with shield", or "elf ranger with bow", etc. They can trademark names such as Orruksand Aelves, but they can't enforce someone making generic fantasy models using public IP races. What they can do is trademark certain symbols and prevent someone from using those. They can also prevent someone from profiting from fan-fiction within their IP.

Current internet wisdom (sometimes right and sometimes wrong) says that Dankhold are not that great. The same wisdom holds that the Troggboss is not that great on his own - but command traits and relics benefit him enormously and can change that. My advice would be to proxy them out in a couple of games if you are interested in using them or buying a few of the models. You may find that you agree with the opinion that they are an amazing model but have overpriced rules, or you may find that you really like them and find that they are worth the value to you. I would mainly consider online opinions of what is good or not to be simply opinionated advice and decide for yourself. At the end of the day what matters is that you enjoy using the models that you buy and everyones opinion is subjective.

I honestly don’t really know. However, I do feel that a Troll Hag is going to be pretty rough to deal with in a low point game. The Troggboss can be very nasty as well once you add in a relic (although you can opt to give a relic to the Hag) and command trait. Trolls are trolls and both types are good depending on what you are trying to do. Fellwater are more offensive and rockbiter are a bit tougher. I bet this would do fairly well and it only has 8 models!

Troggboss 3x Trolls - pick a flavor 3x Trolls - pick a flavor Troggoth Hag 1000 points

To each their own and aesthetics are a personal thing as I said before. They are definitely over the top and I can't fault someone if that is what they like about them. For me personally, I think there are a whole lot of really good minotaur models on the market and I just don't think GW's really stack up next to a number of them (such as the ones from Mierce). But again, that is just my personal opinion. And since there are plenty of minotaurs of similar size on the market I feel no desire to ask GW to sculpt new ones as I would be just as happy to buy those other ones. I can't fault anyone for liking something for being over the top. The crazier a goblin sculpt is the more I like them. So I get it.

That is fair. I can understand when people don't care for pose issues for models that came from Warhammer Fantasy. There were definitely pose limitations for units in that game since it played on square bases and functionally they had to rank up in base to base. That requirement led most individual models to be more static than you see in games where models operate in a skirmish unit formation (like 40k, AoS, etc). I personally think their poses are fine, but I can't fault anyone for that opinion and I expect if the current design team were to sculpt this unit for AoS then they would be more dynamic models.

I really like the current Dragon Ogres. Why do you say they have not aged well? I cannot see anything poor about the sculpt. They are Ogre/Dragon centaur guys and the sculpt seems pretty appropriate for that. I get that aesthetics are personal and not everyone will like every concept, but I don't see what about them has not aged well. There is nothing technically wrong with the sculpts that I can see. They are not lacking detail for what they are and the proportions & anatomy does not seem wrong. The GW plastic Minotaurs on the other hand have muscles that simply do not make any anatomical sense. I would say that those have aged poorly - but to each their own.

That is weird, because they are honestly pretty new sculpts in regards to stuff carried over from Warhammer Fantasy. You should have seen the Dragon Ogre sculpts prior to the current plastic ones.

I apologize, but I am not really certain what point you are trying to express here. Are you saying that you think combo-books are temporary and they won't ever come back to those combo battletomes in the future? History tells me that GW will rewrite every army book at least one time before potentially dropping them from the game (and army removal is quite infrequent). But the combo battletomes and mono battletomes are still following the same basic format - with some differences to account for handling sub-allegiances. But each book still seems to contain allegiance abilities, spell lores, relics, command traits, and battalions. Usually you can also include conditional battleline as well. Not all current books have these things and you can definitely see an evolution over time. They iterated to that format, but it seems pretty set in stone at this point. Sure, not everything should be a combo book and probably won't be. I would expect that for the most part combo books are a tool to consolidate things - most of which is left overs from Warhammer Fantasy. That said, I expect combo books will be with us for quite a while and I would not rule out GW making another combo faction out of the blue. These are just tools in a toolbox and you never know what ideas the design team will come up with down the road. But with the current state of factions right now there are a lot of books that do not fit the current format for what an army book is (ignore combo or mono). Any book prior to Sylvaneth are missing a whole lot of what are now standard parts. The GHB filled in some of that, for some factions, but not everything. These are the things I was mentioning should be addressed to put the game in a better state.

At least they are mainly discussing the upcoming releases.

I agree that the game will always be in a state of unfinished. If they ever finished it then it is likely it would start to fade away. But, the mess I speak of is mainly because they changed their design vision for the game faster than they could update (or chose to) the various factions in the game. So what we now have is a large number of factions in various states depending upon when their book was released (if they even have one). Only a small handful of books have been reworked so far, so that leaves most factions with some combination of their release book and the GHB. If GW can get most of the armies onto a close footing in regards to army-wide rules updated to the current state of the game then the game as a whole will be in a much better place. We will all have a rough idea of what the armies will look like moving foward. There will be less worry about armies being removed or no longer supported simply because GW will not have made a book of rules for them. If any armies get cut from that future vision then we would at least know what they are and can better move forward as customers with purchasing decisions. Also the more armies are updated and brought current then theoretically the more vibrant and diverse the player-base is and I think everyone benefits from a broader and more diverse array of opponents. I agree with you that they seem to be getting onto this path. My personal opinion is that so far GW is announcing exactly what I would like to see at least in regards to book releases so far this year. They appear to have an emphasis on updating the state of the factions. If they can knock out a lot of the rules updates at least (lets put model releases aside), then they should be positioned well for doing a number of really neat things for 2020.

I like Skaven, but who says they *deserve* more than one combo faction? I get your point about combining dwarfs and elves back together, but I don't quite fully agree. Remember that these factions originally started from a more combined place. It is also worth remembering that AoS has very much been a work in progress and GW seems to have pivoted more than once during the game's short lifespan into their current model. Fyreslayers were in the original release wave which as @Overread described seems like it was meant as smaller splash releases. You can put some other armies such as Ironjawz into that bucket as well. Other armies were designed as similar splash-releases but using already existing Warhammer Fantasy ranges to fill out more faction ranges - such as Flesh Eater Courts, Clan Pestilens, Beastclaw Raiders, Bonesplitterz, etc. The whole time they started iterating what the concept of a Battletome exactly is and then began adapting new releases to that. For some of those they reused old kits and made some new ones (Sylvaneth & Daughters of Khaine), made entirely new full armies (Nighthaunt, Idoneth Deepkin), for others they started trying to knit back together disparate factions (Legions of Nagash, Beasts of Chaos), and then they started doing a hybrid of new releases & consolidation (Gloomspite). They have steadily improved in regards to the state of releases, but the whole game is still very much a work-in-progress. I really enjoy this game right now, but when you take the entire whole state of the game it is still a mess. In a perfect universe they could fully explore every interesting nuance of all of the factions. But that is not the world we occupy. I feel that the best thing for GW to do is to put some brakes on releasing brand new factions into the game and get the current factions into a better state. The early factions were not fully fleshed out and they should probably do that. They massively split up the stuff carried over from Warhammer Fantasy and that no longer seems to fit the vision for the game - so they should fix those factions also. Then other factions have books that are not functioning well or not updated to the current template for Battletomes and they should probably fix that. And then once they get these things nailed down they can work to drop a ton of new stuff into the game or expand existing factions. This is just my opinion, but I am really tired of the sloppy state of the game factions as a whole and I am very glad to see GW issuing these umbrella style books to correct that sooner rather than later. If GW can roll allegiances up into these umbrella books (like putting Pestilens into the new Skaven book) then there is nothing stopping them from breaking them out at a later date. But when GW manages to address issues with multiple allegiances in a single book we should be collectively glad to see that they are improving larger chunks of the game at a quicker pace rather than getting upset that they are not deep-diving into what we individually think they should.

I don't know what you are talking about. I simply said there were people who would collect all of it...

I agree. It is also helpful to consider that miniature games don't necessarily work like other games. You can create a board game, or card game, and make the splash release cycle where you make new products and then discontinue them when you make a new splash release. That is effectively how most collectible games work. But we have never seen an effective collectible miniature game that still requires players to assemble & paint their miniatures. Large wargames simply don't work like that. There is a significant investment on the part of the player in buying, assembling, and painting their force that does not exist in games that effectively play straight out of the box. Many of those games also have cheaper buy ins - at least for the broad playerbase (ignore high level competition). If Magic the Gathering stops selling a specific set and makes a whole new set it does not have a massive impact for the average customer. They can buy the new stuff, or not, and keep playing. Their old cards still work fine and they don't necessarily have to buy the new stuff. But they could also play exclusively new stuff or mix new stuff in with the old. The barrier to entry is low enough that if some customers are turned off by this sales mechanism it is still cheap enough to get new people to buy in. Miniature games are much more expensive in terms of what it takes to get a standard army (a card deck is much cheaper). They also require more work on the part of the player before they can be used. If GW started a sales cycle of single-release armies they would likely cause a lot of their players to simply quit the game in favor of something else with longer-term support. GW used a sales strategy like this with Specialist Games since the 90s and look at the life-span of those games. They generally only flourish while they have active support and as soon as that support slows down they tend to die.

It is basically the problem that they created when they split Warhammer Fantasy factions into a ton of mini-factions for AoS on release and then also created entire new factions and model ranges. They now appear to be working to reforge a lot of those micro-factions back up into broader groupings because the game was a difficult to support mess with the amount of fracturing that they did. My feeling is that this consolidation is a very good thing and we should be careful about advocating that they effectively reverse course. I understand everyone's desire to have their personal favorite forces have more attention and in-depth focus. I'm right there with everyone. If I had my way every grot and orc subfaction would have a full dedicated model range and army book. I would then create more grot and orc armies such as steampunk grot sky-pirates. But it is probably a good thing I am not in charge because I am not sure those actions would improve the long-term health of the game as a whole.