Skabnoze

Who you gonna call?

I am simply curious - is the GW store the only place to play?

If they end up teasing anything Grot related in the reveal I think I will probably have to get a new pair of pants...

Those Nurgle pictures are rumored to be with some Rogue Trader version of Kill Team.

This is a fair point. Also, they demonstrated with 40k that they were willing to make alterations to the core framework for the game with an FAQ so I would not rule out GW making other changes in that manner and releasing it alongside the Magic supplement. They might also simply put any core rule tweaks they want to make into the book that comes with the Magic supplement. The core rules are only a handful of pages so it's not like it is difficult to fit it into any book they want to release.

Looking more at the current toothy-mouth preview, I think the model is smaller than I first thought. There are not very many teeth in the mouth - certainly not enough for a huge squig model. Squigs are basically just giant mouths - and they tend to have a lot of teeth in them. This model is fairly snaggle-toothed and does not seem to have a ton of teeth. Also, you can see plainly see a lot of the brush-strokes from painting. I think this model is probably close to the size of the current metal cave squigs - or maybe just slightly bigger.

I don't have ill-will against the Stormcast Eternals as a faction, nor Space Marines for 40k. But I have played GW games since the late 80s and I have very much seen the army demographics change over time (in a lot of areas as I have moved around the US a fair bit) and it has very much coincided with the attention GW has lavished over certain ranges. The simple fact is that the more favoritism a company shows for a product the more it tends to sell compared to other products. Space Marines have always been popular, but back in the 80s and 90s I tended to see only roughly 25-30% of players fielding a space marine force (it went up a bit when Chaos finally got a codex and new model range in 2nd edition). And Warhammer Fantasy has always had a much much bigger diversity in the armies fielded by the player-base. Players of every single faction are better served by a bigger variety in opposing forces. Fighting big swathes of the same thing gets dull and also serves to narrow down what is useful in your own range. When the range of opponents is more diverse then the game becomes more interesting in general but list options also open up a lot more. This is good for everyone. GW has less "losers" in their product line, players have a more enjoyable game and more useful options to choose from across the board, etc. I just wish that GW would finally figure this out. They have seriously tunnel-visioned on Space Marines (which I agree are cool) and spent a couple of decades trying to squeeze blood from a stone when they have such a fertile environment to explore and profit from. It's simply opportunity squandered and something I do not want to see them do with Age of Sigmar. Unfortunately, the trend has already begun with Stormcast. Heroes are only interesting if they have interesting stuff to fight.

I like the Stormcast Eternals the more I learn about them from reading the background. I think the models are ok. The aesthetic is not my favorite, but I don't dislike them. They have grown on me over time as I was very much put off by them at the start. That said, I think endlessly bloating that faction & model range rather than exploring the rest of the allegiances in the game is a mistake. Honestly, Stormcast has enough stuff to tide them over for a fair bit compared to the rest of the allegiances. What the Stormcast probably need most is for their Battletome to be rewritten to be more modern and the GHB-18 to do a better job at handling the costs of units & battalions than the '17 version did (the more allegiances I explore the point costs for - the more it seems that they flubbed up costs across the whole game in that book). A simple battletome rerelease, without new models like as with the Nagash book, would do more for Stormcast Eternals than dropping another couple of new model kits would.

Bingo. If this is a greenskin of some sort, then it might be the massive Ghazgkull kit that has been rumored. Supposedly he is some sort of colossal "prime ork" or some such. That is the only way that I could see this possibly being a greenskin due to the fact that the mouth is half-circular and hollow. That means the mouth is fairly big since you can see all the way through it on a profile view. It might seem obvious (I don't think all of the rumor image teasers are meant to be non-obvious), but I agree with Sheriff and I think this is most likely a Squig given the solid rumors of upcoming Moonclan. If Moonclan gets a full battletome then most likely there is a number of squig kits coming. Other than that, I would also agree that this is some sort of monster. It is hard to tell the scale, but the impression that I get from this picture is that it is fairly large. It does not look too far off from the Colossal Squig to be honest (I would not at all be surprised to see that turned into a plastic kit for a full Moonclan Book) - but it could also be a Giant Squig or Mangler Squig kit (those could possibly be combined into the same kit).

Other factions are not as profitable partly because they are very neglected. All of the anecdotal sales figures I have heard said that Khardaron Overlords sold better than GW imagined they would. A number of years ago GW revamped the Dark Eldar line from the abomination it was when it came out in 3rd ed 40k and into the Aesthetic that they currently have. That army went from being almost non-existent (due to a combination of long-time neglect and poor models) to being very popular and prevalent. I don't think that the popularity of Stormcast Eternals is due simply to their design. They are interesting in the background if you dig in quite a bit - but I doubt most players (especially new ones) do that. The designs are not bad, but they are not leaps and bounds beyond other Age of Sigmar ranges either. Honestly, I think their popularity sales figures are highly skewed due to factors like being included in every single box set out there. GW advertises and pimps out that faction more than any other - so of course they will be popular. Personally, I have found that GWs biggest failing is to constantly ride their cash-cows into the dirt and neglect large portions of the rest of their games. They have proved themselves to be pretty brilliant at making new factions or revitalizing older ones when the mood strikes them. I think they would be much better served financially, and the gamers would be better served on the whole, if GW spent more of their energy expanding out their various army ranges and making each army an interesting & tantalizing faction to choose. The more I look into the lore for Age of Sigmar the more that I am convinced that at least the lore team is pulling this off. Now they need to flesh out the various model ranges & battletomes. Age of Sigmar still feels half-cooked to me simply due to the fact that such a heavy amount of the games factions are still operating under stop-gap get-you-by "temporary" rules rather than their own fleshed out battletomes - in addition to fragmented and incomplete model ranges.

I hope so. Games Workshop has shown some seriously impressive creativity when it comes to both new armies for Age of Sigmar and also adapting older armies into this new setting. I absolutely love Orcs & Goblins, but Night Goblins are by far my favorite thing GW has created in any of their universes. While I love what is already there for Moonclan, I am really looking forward to seeing what GW can do with it. My hope is that they keep a lot of the flavor already in the faction and just expand further upon it - rather than doing a huge make-over. So, keep the basic hooded goblin that lives underground and hates the sun. The themes that I would like to see expanded upon are fungus cultivation/use and squigs. I would like to see more squigs and different types. In the past, the main place that fungus has fit into the faction is with Fanatics (who are all zonked out on Madcap Mushrooms) and the shaman who can eat dangerous mushrooms for extra spell power. I would like to see lunatics eating different types of dangerous fungus become more of a theme. It would be neat to see some sort of hero unit that collects & dispenses different fungus for use in poisons or as buffs to nearby units. Something that might functionally work a bit like a prayer or something - but be due to handing out mind-bending fungus that does different things to the unit that eats it (probably at the cost of d3 mortal wounds or something).

I wonder if whenever they get around to Moonclan they will expand upon squigs. They have always been a popular unit and the most iconic thing for Moonclan and probably all of the Orcs & Goblins range. In Warhammer Online the Squig Herder class had a number of different types of squig pets. I always thought it would be neat if they brought some of those ideas onto the table-top with different types of Squigs. We already have different sizes of squig, and a ranged squig does exist with the Forgeworld Squig gobba, so it is not without precedent. There was a giant squig that you could ride (from inside) which is roughly equivalent to the great cave squig that the Warboss can ride. There was the standard squig - which seemed like the normal cave squig. There was a horned squig with a big rhino-horn that was a more offensive-natured melee squig. Then there were 2 ranged oriented squigs. One of them was spiky and could fire it's spines at the enemy. The other had weird fleshy spouts on it's back and it could fire big arcing blasts of slime. It would be pretty cool to see some more variety come into the squig units in the game.

That does not sound too bad though. It looks like Orks are going to be pretty much the last of the established faction codexes for 40k (current rumors have them pegged for a summer release), which means that GW can probably wind down the rapid-fire book releases they have been shoving out the door for 40k. This should allow them to settle into a more standard release schedule with respect to all of their products. I also hope that the bandwidth that they would open up by having all of the 40k codexes updated in such a short time period is that they could rapid-fire out some Age of Sigmar battletomes for things that might not need more additions to the model range. For example, they could knock out a couple Battletomes that group up older factions like Legions of Nagash did. I would love if they took 2-3 months and quickly released a "Waaagh! Gordrak" book that put most of the Destruction forces under his banner and updated them so they were a bit more competitive. And also do the same thing for stuff such as Slaves of Darkness, the Free Peoples, Skaven, and various Elf & Duardin small factions. None of that stuff necessarily needs new models in order to function (unless they want to expand any of them into their own specific battletome), but they could really use more thought into how they fit into full armies.

Who wants to go to a fancy party without big fancy hats!? I snuck into one of those fancy human parties once. It was lame. None of the hors d'oeuvres plates had any selection of decent fungus. Nobody ate any Madcap Mushrooms and competed in feats of strength or lunacy! And also at no point were any of the revelers eaten by a hungry loose squig... Human parties are booooooring...

Booo! I notice a distinct lack of big hats. Since puny humans are all the same size how does anyone in the realms know who is important and means business without a big imposing hat?

You could be right and it could be something decayed. To me it seems like something that is snapping due to strain rather than being decayed - but we also don’t have the full picture so who knows.

If we are guessing that the rope is something for Grots (seems most likely for Grots or Skaven), then I highly doubt it is for grot sky pirates. I still think the first grot release we see will be Moonclan, and this rumor looks most like something for a Squig kit. Where the Squig is being restrained or tethered by one or more grots who are probably being partially pulled/dragged along and also straining the ropes to the point where they are snapping. You can see the knot in the picture and it is obviously not a noose - it is a really badly tied knot which I think also supports the idea of Grots or Skaven. If they do a full Moonclan release then they will probably end up creating plastic kits for some of the current range which is heavily resin. My guess is that this is for a new Mangler Squig model.

I have a feeling that many of the old ranges will be slowly retired in some fashion. Either by releasing new battletomes that incorporate them or simply by whole new ranges that replace them. I expect that we will at some point see the legacy stuff quietly retired by removal from the Generals Handbook over a few iterations. But before that point it is not unlikely to get some sort of Legions of Nagash style book for much of it. I do think we will see old stuff pruned from the game at some point, but I don’t feel that they will do anything drastic in the fluff like the did with the swap from the old world to Age of Sigmar. When stuff starts to go away I think it will happen with a whisper rather than a bang.

I don't think a new version release like we are used to seeing in the past will be anything we see for 40k or Age of Sigmar any time soon. They really do look like they are moving in the direction of living rulebooks. If you watch the moves that they are doing they seem to be doing pilot iterations of ideas across both games. Age of Sigmar piloted the idea of a very small and simple set of core rules, moving most of the special rules to units, and eventually the concept of the General's Handbook being used primarily as a vehicle for matched play that they can reissue yearly. Sure, it appears that it was not something they meant to do from the beginning and rather was something they did in reaction to a lot of the push-back from the playerbase due to launching the game without any mechanism that makes the social contract for arranging a game simpler (without this it is hard to handle simple games against strangers - and can even be annoying with a regular game group sometimes). They brought those concepts over to 40k, then layered a bit more complexity into the core rules (some of it is good, but some does not add anything to the game IMO), added stratagems, etc. Now 40k is in a place where they have to rapidly develop the game, in regards to army rules, core rule adjustments, FAQ/Errata policy, etc. The game had such a huge change to the mechanics and rules, and it is financially such an important game to GW, that it is obvious that they have to work hard to make sure that this edition is successful. Age of Sigmar was a giant gamble, but given the relatively poor sales position Warhammer Fantasy was in (which was entirely GWs fault given how expensive they pushed the game to be by doubling up on price increases and pushing an edition that increased unit & army size - they priced out huge chunks of the player base) I think it was a gamble that had little downside. Good that it was successful, but it almost wasn't and they had to work hard at it. If you look at what they have been doing with 40k it is plainly obvious that they learned a lot from Age of Sigmar and are using those lessons in handling 40k. So given all of that, I have a strong feeling that they will turn around and apply things they have learned from 40k back into Age of Sigmar. I think this is a good thing. It has been a long long time since GW appeared to actually learn from their actions (both good and bad). Now that both of their core games are relatively stable and in a good place I think we will see them test certain ideas out in each one and apply the most successful ideas to both. I have a feeling that this big 40k rules Errata/FAQ, which was not tethered to any sort of physical release, will be similarly applied to Age of Sigmar. They can adjust the core rules fairly easily without having to worry too much about cost adjustments. They have a product that allows them to yearly adjust the matched-play costs for the entire game. This means any period of disturbance from a core rules change will not be too long unless they drop that change simultaneously with a General's Handbook. It might honestly be better for them to drop a core rules change 3-6 months ahead of a General's Handbook release to get some feedback. They can always drop an errata and recost a handful of the worst offending units.

The huge changes they just dropped into 40k, including changes to core rules and even more core rule beta changes, makes the rumors of big core rule changes for Age of Sigmar seem more likely. They just dropped these big rule changes into 40k far ahead of the Chapter Approved book (including a few cost adjustments). I like the fact that they are doing some of the rule changes as beta rules. I would like to see them put some beta rule changes into Age of Sigmar.

I have only played a couple of games of Age of Sigmar since getting over my distaste for how they handled the old world and looking at the current state of the game and fiction with fresh eyes. I decided to bring out my Savage Orcs first simply because it is in more of a playable state and they also have a Battletome that I enjoyed. I bought the Warscroll cards & tokens for them and I found them to be only marginally helpful. I played a game with a friend who used another one of my armies comprised mainly of Moonclan and with a few Spiderfang models tossed in (trying to get him to come back to playing Fantasy with me). My experience with the cards & tokens was fairly poor. I had a fair amount of tokens to represent spells, wardok dances, and relics - and we were unable to really effectively tell them apart other than leaning in close and reading them. I will probably have to break out some crayons and color-tint these things simply to make them more useful than a random coin. I printed out the grot unit warscrolls for my friend to use, and those were about as convenient to use as the Bonesplitterz warscroll cards that GW made. If that is going to be the case then I might as well mock up my own cards that are easier to read and use and then just laminate them. I absolutely love swanky extra junk that looks cool and makes my gaming easier. Price does not generally bother me as long as the item either looks really cool or is highly functional. I love cool dice (even if they can be hard to read) and I will happily buy expensive dice packs (the squishy plague dice for Death Guard are brilliant - I love those things). I have a ton of custom Greenskin dice commissioned by the Waaagh.com years ago from Q-workshop. I will probably commission custom Moonclan and Spiderfang dice from Chessex if GW does not make dice for them (or just because you cannot have too many dice). But I have to say that so far I am very disappointed in both the quality and usefulness of the Warscroll Card packs that GW makes for Age of Sigmar. I will probably be looking into alternatives.

I agree with you for the most part. I like the idea of the warscroll cards. I don't like using electronics for rules in mini games. A lot of games have apps and I don't like any of them for actually playing the game. I greatly prefer cards for unit stats and abilities as I don't want to have to constantly flip through a book. I really like when games have cards for keeping track of your units and abilities. That said, I am not a big fan of the Warscroll cards that GW made for Age of Sigmar. The cards are gigantic, which I don't mind that much, but the print on the cards is stupidly tiny. Most of the card is wasted space. They simply reprinted the warscroll onto the card without any format adjustment. Either change the format and make it work for the real-estate on the card, make the cards smaller if you want tiny text, or adjust the size of the printed text to use the giant flash-cards they made. The tokens are ok, and I like that they made the effort to give them to you, but the art on the tokens is pretty uninspired. GW has excellent artists and they could have had some real fun making doodles for the tokens. It is a shame they decided not to make them more interesting visually. I am also extremely disappointed that they have not provided cards for Spells and Warlord traits. I hope they start doing that in the future. I like the army-specific card packs that 40k has because they look nice with good artwork and they provide you useful reference material like spell lists. Age of Sigmar should have included cards for spells. But, I also think that the 40k cards should have included cards for unit profiles. Honestly, I wish at this point that they would consolidate the card packs for both games into a similar product. I am happy to pay for an accessory pack that is visually interesting and also makes the game easier and quicker for me to play. Right now both the Age of Sigmar and 40k card packs are missing useful stuff.

If they released rules changes like that in the General's Handbook, or at least alongside it, then a full rebalancing is theoretically what you get.

I admire everyone who can pull off gametable view. Fully completed armies look fantastic most times - even with a less detailed level of paint job. My problem is that I have too much OCD when it comes to my models. I am extremely bothered by flash and mold lines and I have to fully clean up almost every model I touch. I also hate duplicates of models (although I can deal with it for stuff like rank & file goblins) so I tend to convert a fair bit (I also like to build over the top display models). And then I can never manage to stop myself from putting very detailed paint jobs on almost all of my models. The end result is that I never seem to manage to finish anything. I need to figure out how to break myself of some of the most extremes of perfectionism...

I am somewhat disappointed that they are not all armed with fish. I may have to remedy this...