Pizzaprez

If we're talking gitmob, im going to build on your anti-gloomspite wavelength and suggest that Gitmob would be a great place to see the Grotbag Scuttlers that were mentioned a handful of times Get real weird with it; more weird than "Kharadron scraps held aloft by squig balloons" If Gloomspite is "below" emphasize that Gitmob is "above!" I'd love to see air and land vehicles, calvary like Snarlfangs, and unique goblin troops now that the "vanilla" goblins are firmly a TOW thing. I'd love a fantasy goblin Evil Sunz Clan/Kult of Speed. Spin it out of captured Gholem/Kharadron fortresses and make a destruction "weird science" faction to compete with the Skaven and Chorfs! With all their antagonists taking their respective slice of the "crazy machinery!" pie, surely Gholems and Dispossessed would need to respond with their own toys!

I agree! Gives some weight to my hopes that Gholemkind may hit the tabletop eventually! I almost wish they wouldn't have given him specific rules at all in this case, and released him purely as a hobbyist item. He is very pretty, makes sense to be limited edition, but getting hit with "get-you-by" rules after so much buildup does sort of feel silly. I get that having two "cross-faction dwarf hero fighters" might seem a bit redundant, and I have wondered for awhile why Gotrek was placed into that role instead of Grombrindal, when it's been Grombrindal's thing for a very long time. For what it's worth, it looks like Grombrindal is on a similarly sized/height base as Gotrek, so he does have a counts-as opportunity if you wanted to build a project around him for a GW game. Grombrindal is also a rare case of a character who you could probably use as any dwarf character with some light customization and it'd be in line with how he acts when he isn't projecting his god-aura and making himself thirty feet tall I suppose it speaks to a desire within GW to keep Grombrindal on the sidelines and margins instead of becoming a "face character" in AoS. Maybe, then, he'll pop up in TOW too! Maybe TOW is why he isn't getting a permanent AoS spot... Regardless, his being a solo limited edition mini with legends rules suggests, unless they do something substantially different with him in AoS as to make him unrecognizable, flags (to me) that he will not be leading a duardin soup nor will he be leading a "new" dwarf faction. Maybe the dispossessed will stick with Cities? Maybe Fyerslayers will gain a heavily-armored troop option instead? I feel like Gholemkin is more likely than a "combined" duardin army now, in any case. Which is great, as far as im concerned! I'd like to see more dwarfs, not less!

Grombrindal is gorgeous! I'll have to kitbash him with the Blood Bowl one that looks substantially more nuts Also- I've been assuming that a Grombrindal model could herald a "united Duardin" tome if they went that way; him being Legends out the gate makes that much less likely to me!

If they ever did a Vashtorr range I'd have to buy it just to paint; he's too sick. I'd be beyond stoked if Chaos Duardin looked anything like that Yessss I bought some of the old Reaper Mancubi from Doom it'd be fun to have friends for em

Gah I forgot about that, I couldn't decide if I was excited for 3.0 or let down by Broken Realms when that happened. And I liked Kragnos and that arc! Just sort of petered out with "and then Alarielle cast a gargantuan life spell so big it needed heralds to spread it" and I was like "cool! now what?" Well probably it would have woke up the Incarnates in-universe in the last leg of a Broken Realms book focused on Alarielle and setting up the major confrontation that would have spanned the Seasons of War. Season of War sure does sound like something pretty tied to Alarielle, actually. AoS had a ton of narrative momentum up until that point, and (in my opinion) has been scrambling to get back to the Malgin Portents -> Necroquake pacing since. Story arcs and whole armies being shredded in the background fits some of the weirdness of 3.0 quite well. Broken Realms being a kickoff to a beastmen-focused Season of War sure would've made this feel like the Era of the Beast edit: Broken Realms Kragnos was 2021; that's more than enough time for GW to internally realize 3.0 was going to be messy narratively

From where I'm sitting, that narrative had to eventually introduce Morghur to the setting and have some pretty big fallout for the Realms as a whole. The incarnates seemed to be something important, that were going to be built on, in a similar way to how Endless Spells helped to emphasize some aspects of the setting. GW deciding to drop beasts had to have been something they planned for for awhile internally; likely around when they were nailing down TOW's ruleset. Timeline-wise, this shaking out about two years ago feels right. That narrative just sort of faded away when I was expecting/anticipating at least one sequel. If it was a multi-book story about how the Incarnates started showing up and the Beastmen began to corrupt them into/for Morghur, snowballing into the AoS Beastmen reboot, I could see why someone saying "yo AoS team, you're losing beastmen" would result in the entire narrative getting axed. Alarielle has also been pretty quiet since the Rite of Life, which (to me) supports the perspective her and the beasts would have finally had a narrative arc focused on the Alarielle/Morghur mud wrestling match that ive been thirsting for since 2003

I agree! I feel like the Realmgates really really open up what the "scale" of these stories could be. The Malign Portents and Necroquake arcs, this big "Blight City directly invades" arc, even Alarielle's rite of Life that was sort of glossed over all could/should result in stories that could take place anywhere or in brand-new locations we've never heard of! I think it could also play nicely with the hype/anticipation cycle GW likes; have lots of short stories in between each book! Play with cliffhangers or foreshadow cool ideas that'll pan out in the upcoming book with the narrative hooks they did on Warhammer Community more often in the earlier editions 3.0 could have opened with the Dawnbringer Crusades, and they could have really leaned hard into those stories for years! With their initial terrain ideas, having the narrative entirely focused on crusades for the whole edition wouldve worked great! The initial half of the edition wouldve been buildings under construction while the Dawnbringer books are focused on foundation-setting and outposts, and you could have paired the "finished building" terrain kits with a "alright now we have some new cities, here's where things are going south" in the second half. We'll see how 4.0 shakes out narratively; it seems like stuff internally had Broken Realms get axed before it really got rolling in favor of reshuffling stuff ahead of Dawnbringers.

I'd love something like this; The current "Blight City Incursion" event in the narrative would be a great vehicle for that style of release, and they could even make most of the books self-contained stories that maybe cross over at the end: like how you got snapshots of factions that all met up for the Malign Portent in-canon fight at Nagash's Black Pyramid A book or two a year, focusing on a handful of armies at a specific crossroads due to the overarching problem. You could even just break it up by Realm and focus on a small slice of each! Have a bunch of the protagonists meet in the last book like a crossover comic to fight the Big Bad and usher in the new edition. Looking down the barrel of $150 in books in the next couple months, I wouldn't have minded doing Broken Realms or Dawnbrinders and had a much slower pace for the books

NGL, that would be an extremely fun roadmap if each encounter with the skaven worked to add some to both sides; skaven would get four or five waves of miniatures, and they have so much going on as a faction that I bet you could get a masterclan/pestilines/moulder/skyre/eshin each in a small wave and you wouldn't see much overlap.

Ah! I must have houseruled that so hard that I completely forgot it was 1" in 2.0, ahahaha

Totally fair! Treating it like a rank & flank game with some wiggle room is def the intent GW is going for, but I think I still prefer the older way. I do agree that movement trays are phenomenal for big units, but I prefer the view of more elite units having space between 'em

I'm inclined to agree; I liked the 2" coherency AoS began with. I get that it caused its own set of challenges, but I liked the look of it and it made it easy to keep my guys in coherency using terrain like the Stormvault with it's 2" wide staircases. The ridiculous conga-chains one could do isn't great, but .5" just makes me feel like one would be better off just using movement trays exclusively.

Tbh I loved all the metals from that era; some of the sculpts that got me into GW! The box art was sick bc they were cross-game models so they just said CHAOS across the front. Instantly caught my eye. Daemonettes are some of my fav miniature ladies; cool poses and great sculpts (especially, as others have said, comparing them to the other ladies of the time; see Morathi). I'm all about the miniatures being their "true form" without the magic glamor that people see them as in-universe, but I don't love the way they look at all. They lost all their dynamism in the jump to plastic, and their faces arent as cool Plaguebearers were so good their plastic pretty much just redid them exactly with some more options. Though, tbh, even looking back to Rogue Trader days Plaguebearers were pretty much one-and-done concept wise. Not that thats a problem! Khorne's bloodletters all had sick faces and cool axes; I do like how the current plastics catch the vibe from their much older models; works best for bloodletters imo Tzeentch was between eras where Horrors could split, and their "horror" models were beyond cool. Probably one of my favorite unit sculpts ever from any range; if any of y'all are looking to build some but not use their spindly metal arms (or, if you're like me, you lost a bunch of arms in the last decade or so) the current Blue Horror kit bashes perfectly with them. Limbs are perfect for it. I remember how let down I was seeing models that somehow managed to capture "constantly mutating" in a pewter toy turned into "squigs with arms" when they hit plastic

I sort of get that, if successor chapters didn't exist. Like, why couldn't my pretend neon green Skrunkmarines be Blood Angels successors who specialize in motorcycles? If I wanted to play some games as Death Company and some games as White Scars, it's wild that GW wants me to buy two armies of marines just so I can paint them different colors. If GW makes their most recent marine book objectively better than the other flavors, maybe they should have reconsidered making half of the Warhammer 40k armies marine variants that mostly share kits? That sounds like a GW problem, not a hobbyist problem. Personally, I find the notion I can only use certain rules if I paint my space marine kits a certain color insulting, and I feel like it goes against a lot of what makes tabletop games appealing. But GW not wanting their players to use their armies in more than one book/setting/game system is absolutely not going away based on current trends; no idea if the colors thing is still relevant in 40k but it grossed me out real hard.

oh yeah it was thankfully very short-lived in AoS; iirc it mostly impacted Kharadrons. The color scheme stuff was always crazy silly to me in 40k, where there is an in-universe explanation for some pink dudes rocking Ultramarines rules with the concept of Successor Chapters; some of which look/act next to nothing like their parent chapters. Like, if you're not seeing the Death Company on the field i'd be hard-pressed to assume Lamenters were a Blood Angles successor at a glance.

Love the Hammers and their "big golden boy" vibe, loved that the Sigmarines had a color scheme that took the blue/gold of the Ultramarines and swapped it. I really liked that parallel tbh especially as, narratively, the Stormcast were the inverse of what a super-soldier could be in a Warhammer setting. I also like that their becoming morally two-dimensional was seen as a flaw by much of the people in the setting However, I dislike whenever GW puts a "if you want to use X rules for Your Dudes, you gotta paint them 'right'" rule in place and I didn't love the over-reliance on the Hammers from the perspective of they were generally the "most important!" in a story and most of the named Stormcast characters came from their host. I feel like half of the named characters could have been from smaller/purposefully obscure stormhosts. Ionus Cryptborne is cool and all, but I think it could have been more interesting if he was a brand-new guy from a brand-new stormhost that has entirely disappeared due to something happening during their reforging. That new stormhost could then have become the face of the ruination chamber

I'm holding out some hope we see some really phenomenal stuff come out of the chamber instead of the "not-paladins" we're getting so far. I like the service-dog grandkids but I loved the paladins

For Chorfs, they are pretty much the same thing! They'll likely have fire or flames; Tauruses, while it's never been represented on the model, are so hot that it is problematic to be close to them and they breathe fire. Since Horns of Hashut still have Bull vibes and Hashut is still their patron god, I would expect "problematic heat" to still be somewhere in the range, likely in a more visual aspect than in the past. There were two forgeworld sorcerers with fireballs, the K'daii, and the Magma Cannon previously that had "burning" as a major visual staple. Horns of Hashut each have a flamethrower-wielder in the unit, so I'd expect fire to stick around. Slavery was never directly represented on the tabletop with a kit: Hobgrots are slave-drivers and slavers, Chorfs use slavery but "slaves" were represented by O&G kits. I'm not so sure we'll see slavery directly represented on the tabletop in 2024; I think Horns were whipped up to fulfill that role instead. The miniatures themselves have scarring, their helmets are fused to them ritualistically, their original cultures have been completely replaced by the Chorf monoculture; I'd be surprised if they made a worse slave unit when Skavenslaves are potentially in question as "will they even exist in 4th?" Industry will be part of their vibe on the tabletop. Their two "teaser" units have featured grenades and flamethrowers; things unique to the setting so far. The only places of interest that have been mentioned as their have been industrial fortifications, and their niche in the chaos roster is "the guys who make the cannons." Mutations/barbarians is def the Slaves to Darkness staple We don't have much about their deal otherwise, but "bulls" will be there. Hashut is still a bull-god, the Horns all have bull iconography, and "bulls" are very wrapped in the faction identity; I'd anticipate some sort of Bull Centaur unit along with their Great or Bale Taurus as character mounts. Also the Lammasu, originally from Assyrian mythology, is a bull-creature that has been WHF'd for the Chorfs. With the Horns and Hobgrots, we have a pretty good idea of what direction a chorf release could go edit; also I love the nucasts, the emotional support grandson is a great idea

I agree! A Magamadroth and Great Taurus are two very different "fiery beasts," and the rest of the Chaos Dwarf range *should* have enough unique detail in their armor, vehicles, weapons, and vibe that they'll look pretty distinct from Fyerslayers despite both of them being Dwarfs. Sort of like how Lumineth, Dark Aelves, and Daughters don't really step on each other's toes Honestly I'd expect him to be a full blown god out the gate, albeit one that they try to actively ignore because he's the god of "stuffing demons into machines" and the other gods probably don't want to risk getting stuffed in a machine themselves I'm curious if they decide to link them *at all* to 40k's forge of souls in the realm of chaos. Both factions are big on trapping guys inside painful constructs, so I wonder if they won't do anything at all with that, even as a lore footnote easter egg type thing

Skaven are set to be gorgeous! Id love to see plague monks in the new style; nurglitch is cool I could see this being true *if* the Old World Chaos Dwarfs on the table was them bringing back the Forgeworld line, which would require a few new resin moulds because iirc two(?) of them broke. If GW was looking at putting out something like what came out of TWW for their plastics, there *would* be a lot of toe-stepping there in the Infernal Guard, characters, and "big cow" mount. If they go with the staple cannon/mortar/missile options with "something else" (train theme, siege tower, whirlwind, skullcracker) for AoS, it *would* be pretty similar except one is a train I'm hoping to see stuff that looks closer to the TWW bighats; I like blunderbusses more than fireglaives. Honestly this could be completely true and not have a huge impact on what comes from AoS chorfs

This new system of a hero + a couple units could absolutely be a patch for that; it'd probably be easier to balance than all the city subfactions. At this point the GW-sponsored tabletop is what it is but I hope the narrative doesn't wind up focusing exclusively on human sigmarite cults and the human side of cities. Like, Duardin should have a place outside the footnotes saying "they build things!"

I agree, though if Duardin don't have much of a presence in the Ironweald wave I'm not holding out hope. As it stands now, the Duardin holdovers are covering heavy infantry (CC, Ranged) and the airborne warmachine roles. If they drop beefy human foot knights, I can't see them keeping the dispossessed in the army. I could see, long term, GW encouraging kitbashing the TOW range to "represent" the people of the different cities on the tabletop instead of making some units duardin and some humans; foot knights, phoenix temple, and longbeards are all pretty much the same thing if we're simplifying stuff and I could see GW simplifying the range to be one race. I agree, a hopeful setting where differing peoples can and do work together to become "more than the sum of their parts" is really unique for a fantasy setting. Everyone lived together, made mistakes, and became refugees or recluses. All those societies were all unique mixes of races! It made for a setting where anything felt possible to me, moreso than the World-that-Was. Every question you asked in that second paragraph is a compelling narrative hook, and I'm let down that those sorts of "fantasy race team-up's" are seemingly no longer the focus as those models go "back where they belong" after a decade.

If only GW had, like, some sort of game system where one could play as any of those subfactions as an army on their own. It could even have square bases and take place in the world-that-was! I bet the TWW would be stoked about WHF hitting the tabletop again.

Ah no see they really needed the warmachines to help with the reforging process! You can just proxy is as one of the other warmachines Stormcasts have access to in their battletome!

This! There are no viable options save cooperation or giving up your soul entirely to Chaos. Where in 40k do you hear about, in the current time period of the setting, Space Marine chapters made up of Chaos Space Marines that were honestly really sorry and want to do better? AoS, to me, had two poster factions; the Sigmarines and the Cities. The Sigmarines, as the posterboys, represented that this is the ouroboros WHF sequel. 40k was "fantasy in Space" now AoS has some "40k in Fantasy" vibes. I liked them, and what they represented for the design philosophy of the game. The cities represented the narrative differences between AoS and Fantasy: the Fantasy world died bc all these people couldn't get along, and now this setting will die too if their ancestors can't cooperate. If Imperial Guard can carry/justify 108 unique SKU's in the store, all for "humans with guns" and 10,000 small tank variations, I'm not sure why GW decided to justify culling Cities down to 48. Probably because someone realized "we can drop all these, not bother trying to learn how to balance them, resell them in TOW 'for the fans!' and railroad people into our reboot version of the faction" Like, I doubt Cogforts will even be a 1:1 replacement for Steam Tanks