JPjr

No please don’t. This hobby can be embarrassing enough without people going full ‘RELEASE THE SNYDER CUT’ on GW.

Finally picked up the new Sylvaneth battletome at the weekend and just finished reading it now. So couple of things leapt out at me, which in light of recent developments has made me think again about what’s shaping up. Key thing is that there is literally 1 mention of ‘Wanderers’, as a faction, in the whole book and that’s just their inclusion in the allies table. Absolutely zero mentions of them in all the fluff sections, not even the standard story of their retreat/betrayal* in the Age of Chaos. In contrast Stormcast, Fyreslayers, Idoneth, Kharadron, Seraphon and several others all make cameos (at least). As an aside for those that like to parse Games Workshop texts for hidden meanings with all the zeal of an ancient scholar of Talmudic texts, Voynich Manuscript researcher or wild eyed Qanon moron then the word wanderer is used a couple of times but just in sentences describing random beings getting lost in woods and duly eviscerated by angry trees. Cue ominous music... At the same time one figure, Kurnoth, is, despite his lack of model or even being alive, almost omnipresent throughout the book. Barely a page goes by without some reference to him or his, always capitalised, ‘Wild Hunt’. Especially in regard to his connection to Arch Revenants, Kurnoth Hunters and the whole Heartwood Glade. So to cut an overlong, boring, post short I reckon Wanderers as a full faction are done with the Cities of Sigmar release, they’ll keep their keyword, for allies purposes, but the remaining models will just exist as the woodland rangers and the like that rove beyond the city walls acting as scouts, spies & a first like of defence/offence. I can see one of the options in the CoS book being a Ghyran city that lets you put more focus on them but I think for the future that’s them done. Which I realise probably isn’t what people want to hear but in overall terms of the game makes a lot of sense (to me anyway). The Kurnothi (sp) will be their own thing but with very, very close links to the Sylvaneth. I suspect their book, if/when they get one, will either include a couple of existing Sylvaneth warscrolls or allow you to include say a Heartwood Battalion as part of your main army, not as allies. (Of course there is always a possibly, though less likely I’d have thought, they could do something similar with one or two of the more appropriate Wanderers unit like The Sisters of the Thorn but...). Or the alternative, or just a stopgap measure depending on how long it takes to release a full range, is the opposite and the new Beastgrave units get the Sylvaneth keyword as well for the time being until they get fully fleshed out. Either way, the result’s the same and I’m less inclined to believe existing Wanderers units will have a core, or indeed any, role in any ‘beast aelf’ army in their future. But the CoS book will hang around in its soon to be current state for a couple of years and then at some point get a refresh of models with another tranche of old ones being phased out. I think the CoS concept, whilst not exactly new is still pretty interesting and novel for wargames so will stick around, with gradual embellishments, for a while. Usual caveat applies that all the above is just nonsense off the top of my head and no doubt soon to be proved wrong. * delete as appropriate.

Those islands are in that spiral shape. that's just one part of Chamon, The Spiral Crux (or something like that), though not the whole of the realm. formed when a big magnetised godbeast decided to nest there or something wrecking what was once a series of straight landmasses (that had been knocked up by Grungi, I think). anyway, on the subject of cardinal points, I think it's just one of the many, many things they've glossed over for now. add it to the list! I'm pretty sure in some stories they talk about x being x miles north of somewhere or other but I guess that's just ease of story telling. there's always the old Discworld formulation of 'hubwise', 'rimwise' and, one sec let me look this up.... 'turnwise' & 'widdershins' but yeah can't see that being adopted. I think the geography of the mortal realms will pretty much always be a bit of a fudge, but hey it's a magical universe now so just hocus pocus an explanation and you'll be good. I mean we only have a fairly basic idea of the overall topography of the realms as whole dimensions and how they fit together, I think it'll be while, if ever, before they look this down. PLUS whilst we're still figuring out the realms, remember that each of them in turn has its own sub-realms and pocket realities to contend with. So it's fun to ponder but actually getting it to all make sense, well... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@tom_gore no Lady Olynder was just whom Nagash sent to free the 'dread power' that was locked in the Midnight Vault.

whilst I wouldn't normally expect a big faction release to go on sale this close to Christmas if we haven't seen anything beforehand then this strikes me as a pretty good moment to at least reveal the alleged new Death mob (or its leader at any rate).

Blood Bowl lizards - big thumbs up Aeronautica - looks fun, ah there models on the same scale as Adeptus Titanicus you think or not at all? Anyway looks fun and the kind of game I'd be into, now fingers crossed it does well and next year they do a ship version for AoS. New Beasts - Like the BoC models though tbh I'd actually prefer them to be much more beastlike, especially with something like a WHU set, I wanted to see lots of different animals mixed up, so lion headed beasts, bull beasts etc etc. Still cool. Very excited about the Kurnothi as that's totally something I can get behind, I get what people are saying about the poses though, they don't leap out at me (ironically). But will be interesting to see different angles. Paint scheme is fine for me though, the orange hair is a nod right back to the really early (and possibly later too I guess) Wood Elves being essentially, what we mistakenly think of as, Celts so I get the why's and wherefores.

Battlemage Archetype info.

The realm rules can add a lot of flavour but obviously they’re contentious, and there’s a couple of decidedly game changing ones. I think it’s good to add some element of unpredictability though, adapting to less than perfect circumstances that can change should, in my view, be as if not much more important than crafting some perfect list. so personally I can’t see why it’s not above the ken of mortal man (& TOs) to go through the realm rules and trim them down to, let’s say, 3 per realm that are more manageable, still encourage people to consider being more flexible in their army composition without potentially wrecking whole factions. Or go totally the other way and have more options but with a less permanent effect on the game. So bring in ‘Twist’ cards to reflect changing environments, 20-40 universal cards and a selection, say 10, for each realm that has some effect to take into consideration have a new one drawn each round (with a large % being ‘No Twist!’), and hey presto GW can also sell a new pack of cards for £20 On a slightly related tangent... Genuinely curious, as someone who doesn’t really attend these things, how strictly is this observed? As obviously whilst GW do some great terrain these days it’s also pretty limited, no hills, lakes, rivers etc. All those interesting natural features that can really make movement and deployment a tactical experience but aren’t very flashy and/or covered in skulls so unlikely to ever get models. Building your own terrain is, to me, such an integral part of the hobby it seems a shame if every tiny bloody thing needed to be officially produced by GW to have a place in the game*. *obviously people can, and thankfully do, do whatever they want in the comfort of their own homes...

I think we should probably at least wait for the game to be actually released and on sale before deciding whether it's a dumpster fire that will never be spoken of again and probably sink Games Workshop and in fact the entire hobby industry when millions of unsold copies have to be buried in a landfill in Arizona. Anyway reasonably interesting Stormcast show this week with the Warcry project manager. More focused on the aesthetics/model design but gives you an idea of what a core project it's been for them in that they started work on it way back in 2016.

One thing that I'd love to see, and I'd say we're already starting to see examples of this, is for GW to look at being more creative with how the various factions can be put together. The Grand Alliance concept is one I kind of like, in general terms, but obviously at the moment those books are dead in the water and probably not coming back. Let's say by early next year we have all the existing armies dealt with and for better or worse up to 2.0 standard, what I think would be great (and play into my belief that GW wants people to have lots of different factions of various saqizes on the go rather than just being a X or Y player) would be opening up more models to different books. It seems like the Allies system whilst perfectly fine doesn't really get used as much as it should, Mercenaries is another way to try and push this but I think just making battletomes more inclusive would work even better. So the Cities of Sigmar book looks like it will have, a lot of, the existing Wanderers units in. Good, I like that, it can stay around. Then let's say they, as is being hinted at, release some next level animal/beast Aelves models they could have a standalone Wanderers book too, with the new and old models (with the old ones still fine for your CoS army). And lets say the new models are some kind of Wild Hunt fauna like equivalent to the Sylvaneth flora, perhaps tied in some way to Kurnoth, then then next Sylvaneth Battletome could also allow you to include a select few units of them (and of course vice versa). Or when Malerion's Aelves get released, obviously they have their own new models, but also can include select units, the snakes say, from DoK and from some of the thematically appropriate Cities of Sigmar units, without overwriting or invalidating those books. Likewise when Grungi pulls his finger out you could have a new Duardin book, that gets new core models but also, again, allows you to take select Kharadron, Fyreslayer, Cities of Sigmar units, without those individual books being discontinued. You could do that with so many of the factions, and to me makes perfect sense if you want to maintain such a huge range of factions to make them playable across different, thematically appropriate armies. To my mind whilst too many Battletomes has obviously problems, the real issue is supporting all of those with models. They can pump put 4-8 books a year without it killing them or us and would be much tighter and lore focused than just the Grand Alliances with the big benefit that players wouldn't have to wait years and years before new models are released that can fit into your existing armies.

Also whilst it's not a 100% match and comes up a few inches short, 2 x Kill Team/Warcry boards is close enough to be a good size for a Meeting Engagement game. If people are getting into the hobby via that much tighter game then as/if they start to expand their collections they'll have the perfect setup (with loads of terrain too) to transition to a 1000pts game and then beyond that too.

At the end of the day the best thing about this hobby is that if you have a vision for how your dudes/dudettes look, and you want to follow your own crazy ideas, which imo Freeguild/people/cities is PERFECT for, then it’s all embracing and in fact the crazier your ideas the more likely to held up as exemplars of the craft. I mean of course it helps if you’ve got some mad skillz but COME ON just look at these absolute beauties!

Honestly now the dust has settled if I was a StD/Everchosen/Darkoath player I’d be quietly, counter-intuitively perhaps, happy. July, & lot of August will be all about Warcry. Which like it or not is bringing out a load of models you’ll be able to use, even if right now they’re not particularly optimal £€$ wise. We also have at least 2 more warbands to come, one of whom would seem to be a more elite choice. August/September - probably the release of the two BTs we’ve seen, with possibly terrain & spells for both. PLUS the new Underworlds boxset with what looks like BoC vs. what is possibly new variation of wood elves. Plus going by the usual schema there will be 2 more warbands out before Xmas (of which of course 1 could easily be for you). Sept/October - at some point looks like we’ll get a versus box with the new Ogor king in, around then we’ll also probably get the Mawtribes BT with maybe spells/prayers/terrain and maybe an extra small release of models. Oct/Nov - Most likely another battletome which increasingly looks like it will be for this new Death faction. Most likely an expansion of Deathrattle, possibly some new skeletons of some kind but sounds like definitely one kind of Mortarch level model. Nov/Dec - some big box game for the Xmas market plus the battleforce sets. PLUS we’re going to have one major release this autumn for sure with Sisters of Battle for 40k which will suck up a lot of space. if a Chaos undivided tome had been announced then honestly you’d most likely be looking at the spells, terrain, new hero model at most route. Much more likely then you’ll get more of a Gloomspite treatment in the early new year slot with a much bigger new range of models. The initial Warcry warbands will have been out for some time by then too so I’d expect them to get reboxed in AoS packaging, without cards etc and be cheaper. Or they’ll do sone kind of ‘Cultists of Chaos’ boxset so you can pick them up even cheaper. of course annoying if you’re a kind of ‘I have 500 million points of chaos warriors and I won’t play anything else’ kind of person but every single thing I’ve read and understood since I got back into this hobby is that that isn’t the kind of person GW is focused on now. I suspect their kind of ideal player is someone with several different armies on the go from random warbands to 500-1000 pt forces to 1 or more bigger setups. with so so so so many factions, even after the wave of consolidations, if all your eggs are in one basket you’re probably always going to be waiting and frustrated. They’re giving us lots of different ways to play to dip our toes into new & different factions. Of course that makes financial sense for them but I’d say it’s a much better, & healthier, way to engage with the hobby from our side. anyway just my random musings on the matter. I’m looking forward to building up a little Darkoath/StD force myself so this gets me much more excited about the possibility of a bigger release with lots of new amazing models.

let's just say i hope you warmed up before making that stretch.

So far we've literally just seen the covers and a paragraph of news about them, honestly I'd say that news about terrain or endless spells for both will come at a later date. These books might not be out for a couple of months so not point giving us everything now. And who knows, whilst I doubt there will be a huge range of models released with these there nothing to say that there won't be at least 1 or 2 new heroes. Going by the rumour engines there's likely to be some new Wanderers models at least, I'm holding out now for a genuine multi-species Cities of Sigmar Underworlds unit but let's see. I think this is all good, they couldn't just bin the entire old Empire, Dwarf and Elf ranges as much as I'm sure they'd like to have. This gives people with those armies a chance to refresh them, liven them up with some stuff they wouldn't have bought before and hopefully, if it's not asking too much of them, enjoy playing with their toy soldiers. And importantly it also clears the decks, so any new Light/Dark Aelf, Duardin and indeed Human ranges can be completely their own AoS thing without having to take into account 30 year old aesthetics. Orruk soup, again seems fine to me. Neither range is exactly overflowing with options so again I'm sure there will be new models along at some point but at least now what people have will be more suited the latest iteration of the game, and again if you have the option to grab some other units and play with them. And if it's upsets your delicate Orkish sensibilities to mix the factions then just... don't. Nice Ogor btw.

Oh god thank you. I managed to work out 720 ways to get 6 singles (1.5%) all by myself, and then as soon as I began to figure out anything else I had an incredibly visceral Proustian rush followed by something fairly close to a panic attack as I felt like I had gone back 30 years and was stood up at the front of a drafty classroom about to disappoint, for the nth time, my structural engineer father.

Thinking a bit more about the Warcry AoS warscrolls. Again I have no problem with them being relatively low powered, they represent your basic on-the-road-to-damnation people, will each have some flavourful trick and look great, so an army with a few different units of these scattered amongst your basic chaos warriors and Darkoath barbarians will look great. Keeping the stats fairly uniform across the whole unit, to me, makes a lot of sense too. Some of the Underworlds units are a right pain with half a dozen different weapons slowing things down, and this doesn’t penalise you for creating a more varied warband for Warcry. BUT being pretty basic they’ll be losing models fairly quickly but pts wise they’re cheap, so to be effective I’d imagine you’d want to run them at least at double size if not more. If they’re going to be €40/$50 a box though I’d have thought that’s going to put a lot of people fielding them in decent sized numbers. So maybe once the initial Warcry rollout’s done & the Everchosen/STD/Darkoath book gets released they’ll get reboxed in normal AoS packaging without the extra cards and whatever and be a bit cheaper, otherwise hard to see them being super popular which would be a huge shame. ————————————————— ANYWAY! Predictions for today... Underworlds - Season 3 name reveal, hint at new mechanic & 1 warband reveal (Aelves). Warcry - reveal of one new warbands, I imagine the Aqshy ones. Random - some new spinoff game for Xmas that no one expects. AoS - Wanderers BT & a new model or two revealed; something to move Soul Wars story along, hint of new Death faction perhaps; hint of next versus box maybe making it obvious which, at least, one of the sides will be if not revealing models; a random character model shown off; an incredibly annoying and cryptic 30 second trailer for something that gives absolute nothing away apart from a random awesome sounding word; most, if not all, the above to be completely wrong; and finally salty reactions.

Eh? These have been released after the GHB is out so not sure why you’d think they’re not valid. Anyway good to see they’ve kept the warscrolls for the new warbands pretty clean & simple for AoS. Whilst nothing to get super excited about at least that makes them easy to use rather than having a myriad different weapon profiles to think about, solid rank & file options for StD. All makes perfect sense to me, these aren’t meant to be la creme de la chaos, just bozo ****** out for a good murderous time. Nice & interesting but very much your basic footsloggers.

Haha, oh man, you're livid, think how the people who have spent months on it will feel. Ah well, ****** happens. I once printed up 10,000 flyers for a club night and only realised when I got them back that I'd forgotten to put the date of the event on them. I'm sure it won't ruin people's long term enjoyment.

UNLUCKY! Just one more and you'd have been able to activate your most powerful special ability on the forum.

this is really going back into the stinky mists of the past but certainly in 3rd edition fantasy Chaos Goblins were a thing (in fact a couple of them graced the actual cover of the main rulebook and were getting a right hammering... literally), basically I think they were just normal Gobbos that you gave something like D3 mutations too (ahhhh the realms of chaos mutations tables, now those were fun...). in fact I'm sure in the 3rd ed. bestiary it actually says Goblins are particularly susceptible to chaos mutations but a lot of wine has passed under the bridge since I last read it so take that with a pinch of warpstone. at the same time in 40K, I remember I had the 'Ere We Go' or 'Freebooterz' books for Space Orks and you could field mercenary units of Khornate Stormboyz, essentially I think in the fluff they were Orks who got a bit too into the whole Stormboyz thing and were considered a bit odd. As Warhammer was pretty explicit with its political/social satire at the time and Orks were, then, essentially a pastiche of 80s football hooligans the Khornate Orks were ones who took things too seriously and went too far, I guess a kind of joking reference to hoolies who went full moron and ended up in far-right Neo-****** outfits.

I think making them one use/time bonuses is good, at least then it's fun and done. Something defensive feels less likely to upset thin skins too, rather than a bonus D6 mortal wounds or something that could see someone lose a favourite model. So something that gives a save feels more friendly, 'at the end of the battle you find buried deep in an ancient barrow, a relic from the age of myth, the fabled Plot Armour of the Duardin smiths of yore - you get a one time 2+ save against any attack on your general'... Or even make it more fun and random, 'Lo you hath discovered Samanzidat's Amulet of Transdimensional Sundering - your general can play this card once at the start of any of your opponent's combat rounds and instantly move D6 inches' Or play up the narrative side of it and that the games are linked and have had some effect on each other. So something like giving them one free drop during setup in game 3, to represent how the winning general has shown tactical superiority and won greater control of the land throughout the campaign. Or you get one free 'ignore battleshock' to represent how your troops respect your general's skill and ferocity in battle. Or your general's successes have inspired the population to rise up and fight for him but it will take some time for the peasantry to beat those ploughshares into swords, in round 4 or 5 you can expend a command point to bring back a unit that has been destroyed (or if that's too much, make it on a x+ roll and/or the returned unit has to be battleline and/or comes back at half strength etc etc).

Yeah have to say now we've got a lot more info there's just one big question left that's got me all excited to figure out. Will 'the internet' blame GW for ruining Warcry with a long & sustained roll out of entirely optional new rules packs and 'money grabbing' expansions... or for ruining Warcry by releasing everything at once and so not showing enough 'long term' support by releasing new stuff every other month? Choose your own miserable adventure!

As long as they hurry up and announce Idris Elba as Eisenhorn & Scarlett Johansson as his plucky Primaris Space Marine sidekick i’ll happily wait however many years it takes for it to come to a screen.

@Elmir Not sure if it’s been revealed anywhere yet, had a look and couldn’t see, but I would put at least £1 on it being 22”x30”. That’s certainly what it looks like (and is the Kill Team board size), so two of them and job done for a ME game. hopefully, like most the KT ones they’ll also have designed them (& expansions like the Mausoleum board) to line up and blend together.