Pizzaprez

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

It was one of the things that set AoS apart for me as a fantasy setting tbh and it attracted me to check out the game to begin with. Never loved the empire, never loved that Bretonnia wouldn't take tanks, never loved that a staple of the state-of-the-world in WHF was "all the races hate each other and think pretty highly of themselves." I loved that the End Times used that to tear the entire planet apart. The books went out of their way to say "yeah if it wasn't for these prejudices at this moment, things could have been different! Anyways they were racist/bitter so..." For AoS, a game that decided to lean more into hope than despair narratively, the idea that the races were friends was an instant point of appeal to me, and (again) hearing that "Elves, Dwarfs, and Humans all get along now! Their shared experiences has resulted in new and interesting cultures! Here is an army that is home to all the stuff from the world-that-was, recontextualized into an AoS force." The idea that I could have Dispossessed, Wanderers, Sylvaneth, Kharadron, and Azyrite humans all living together was awesome! I bought "normal human" miniatures for the first time ever! I actually bothered to start mapping out the fanfiction part of the Realms where My Dudes lived and fought! Then Cities got the first of two major culls since getting a battletome and my interest was hit hard. Who was to say they wouldnt finish off Helves next book? Then they did! I sincerely doubt the Steelhelm army will ever offer that level of miniature and narrative complexity.

I hate that that is really the truth of Cities as a concept. I liked it being a metropolitan conglomeration of all kinds of things one could see in any given city. "Steelhelms; the army" does not have nearly the same appeal to me. Really sucks that GW couldn't figure out what to do with them or, worse, decided to string players along for a decade on purpose. Bc like I'd still like a swifthawk chariot, if only as a hobby project. I don't think I'd be so bothered if I didn't really like some of the narrative of the now-axed factions. I liked the idea that the Swifthawk faction were the realms' mailmen!

Ever since Cities has been a (very bloated) army range, I honestly hoped that they would handle any "warscroll consolidation" efforts with multiple kits per warscroll. Basic and Heavy infantry, Basic and Heavy ranged infantry, (same options for CC and ranged cavalry,) default hero, engineer hero, wizard hero (mounted & unmounted on calvary and monster) would have covered a lot of the options that were hit with cuts. A couple esoteric things like steamtanks and hurricanums notwithstanding, I could have been happy to see the multiple subfactions united under some common warscrolls. Like, i get SKU's are a concern, but I'd have loved to see Dispossessed, Human, Wanderer, and Delf versions of infantry/calvary/hero units. Or even just human/dwarf/aelf! If you want "steelhelms" you can choose one of the options or mix/match. If you want units that "feel" like duardin or aelves instead of "city" versions, that'd have been a great way to encourage allies with Fyerslayers or Daughters

As much as I'd selfishly like to see a rerelease of the older VC skeletons, the new TOW stuff has been gorgeous and I still really like that the game is bringing both OOP and new stuff back to the tabletop! It'd be cool if they wind up expanding on some of the smaller stuff like Border Princes; upgrade kits could be cool for that sort of thing. Though outside of Space Marines they don't seem to last on the shelves for more than a fistful of years

Sounds cool; the miniatures for AoS are consistently gorgeous (personally, I even like the Fyerslayers; AoS is my jam aesthetically) Something logic-challenging sounds sick if it's a concept for new stuff! Silent People got a WD callout relatively recently, Tzeentch got a downgrade when their kits first went to plastic and I'd love them to CHANGE that, Realms/Hungry could circle back to Ghur's Incarnate narrative now that they had some time to rewrite it without Morghur. Also could be Ogors; I'd prefer the Gorger kit to be a harbinger of a range refresh instead of a Beastlord olive branch on the way out I'd be shocked if GW chooses to put the Azgorh range into plastic. At the time, they sold so poorly that FW didn't re-press the moulds when they broke. These guys are based on the Infernal Guard; anti-slayers who are forced to lose their identity and be bound in their armor due to a perceived failure. Could be that they were a strategist who blew it, it could be that they worked for a sorcerer who fell out of favor. Also, part of their deal is the FW Chorfs had 'lil demon horns that the Infernal Guard had to get sheared off. I'm hoping they keep their devil horns, and a new foot troop shows 'em off. One of my complaints about the FW range was a lack of over-the-top moustaches, facial jewelry, and expressive face sculpts. I'll cry if that's the case; I honestly think the Big Hats being silly + the faction's extremely grimdark lore and machinery was a reason they've had an online presence for so long despite often not being terribly playable. A common complaint about the FW range was how small the headgear was, and I (personally) didn't love how toned-down their machinery was when you compared it to the FW 40k Daemon Engines they were releasing for Vraks around the same time or the Hellcannon from a few years prior. If the new stuff lacks hats bigger than the dwarfs wearing them, I'll likely try to source some of the older sculpts to scavenge hats from! A dude in a 10ft tall hat with the world's scariest cannon at his back is my mind's eye version of these guys,

It'll be interesting if they get any measurable data to support this trend. For my own self, I genuinely plan on dropping GW games. The models are nice, but tbh the toys are what got me to set foot in a GW store at 13 when I thought it was some sort of fancy chess game. Once I realized it was a physical turn based strategy game that you could completely decide the aethetic of the army, I was in! Because that project sounded cool and the game sounded cool in theory. I've always found the games to be very rules-complex, often not for the best. Can't pretend like I won't buy Chaos Duardin when they drop, but I also can't pretend I'm not typing this with the One Page Rules' ArmyForge studio open in a second window. Keep an eye out for "Bad Dwarfs" on the community tab soon when I'm done wrapping things up. If I own the AoS Chaos Duardin tome, it'll be because I found the hype-box to be cost-efficient on the models alone. The setting, stories, and toys are what brought me in, and other game systems are the only reason GW might get my money moving forward. I don't really have interest in another three dawnbringer books despite liking the lore; I'd rather spend that $150 elsewhere. I was into AoS because the narrative felt relevant and had an impact on the tabletop: endless spells, new terrain, new armies arriving in-universe right before they hit stores. All that drew me in and I liked it much more than the "let's write new stuff into the story" when the story was paused at five second till midnight. "All the Sacrosanct went to Azyr and out of the battletome! All the beasts of chaos........................ went home!" is not even remotely what I was anticipating would be the state of AoS almost a decade into it, and it's made me realize that whatever narrative-driven stuff was happening in 2.0 into 3.0 was a temporary wave of lore/tabletop synergy, and we've moved back into "Kaldor Draigo is the BEST grey knight! He's always been here, just like the baby carrier dreadnoughts!" style writing to justify new toys. IF I get the 4.0 box set, it'll mostly be to help my friend get some cost-efficient rats. I might flip through the narrative in the core book, but I now have quite a few AoS books I am now much less interested in collecting as a series.

Even at my most cynical, that 4chan leak seems pretty silly. The Chaos Dwarf bit alone feels wrong; working with the TWW crew to bring Azgorh to Total Warhammer, releasing the Horns and Hobgrots as extremely obvious Chorf teases, and bothering to include them as a Legends army for TOW when they were barely a thing for the majority of Fantasy all points towards "GW would like to sell some Chorfs in the near future" How could they possibly decide to lay that much groundwork and then decide "wow we chose to sculpt these brand new figures as racist caricatures" when, if we assume the Perry twins acted in good faith when they sculpted them, they were never intended to be offensive to anyone. And, frankly, the Perrys have enough good-looking historical sculpts under their belts that I doubt it.

Could be neat! Historically hobgoblins had calvary, infantry, assassins, and ranged stuff along with a trash tier warmachine

I've played since launch after a years-long miniatures hiatus; I loved the idea of the End Times *finally* happening and moving on to a sequel setting, esp with the free rules. Early lore was super vague, but it picked up in 2nd edition and I got very attached. I liked Broken Realms and was eager to see how Season of War played out. Blood in the Badlands, Storm of Chaos, Lustria, etc were some of my fav WHF books. Love the setting, love the models, lukewarm about the rules and GW as a company

I mean, light thought experiment though; Beastmen were one of the last WHF armies, released in 2010. Fyerslayers came out 2016. Both had an initial starting size (Beastmen were bulked by being a fantasy faction) and both have received *barely anything* else since they arrived to AoS. If Beastmen got the axe this year, getting relocated to TOW, who is to say Fyerslayers won't get the axe for 5.0, to make way for identical units representing a "united Duardin" along with the free city dwarfs' warscrolls. Sure; you could proxy your Fyerslayers for that new army. But like... that sucks? To have GW admit "yeah sorry, you probably shouldn't have got so invested there" Part of where I'm coming from is I've been on this end of things a few times in AoS alone but like to have a whole army that's been supported with multiple tomes and whole narrative arcs get cut like this because someone at GW hyperventilated about Beasts being in two games is stupid.

For Warcry, it impacts me personally in that I'm using the miniatures for a different game system. But, for me, my main gripe is that Horns were one of the poster factions for the Gnarlwood arc of Warcry: the arc *Warcry is still in.* Like the narrative there didn't even make it out of the woods entirely before they dropped em. Iron Golems and Unmade, while I love the sculpts, were the original Warcry poster factions from years ago: I actually don't have as much of an issue with phasing those out. In fact, if (instead of this) they said that older/less popular Warcry warbands were going to start rotating in and out of production like Underworlds I actually wouldn't have any issues with that at all. Like you said; only so much shelf space. My issue with "just proxying" the entire sacrosanct chamber is that they're supposed to be wizard-types. I agree that they really should have come up with a better idea than "wizard potion guns that look a lot like the preexisting guns" so they *could* be distinct, but they're still a unique thing rules wise. I would not have had *any* issue if they kept *some* sort of profile for "liberator wizards" even if it was just an upgrade like Chaos Marks; then Stormcast really would be a 1:1 mirror to Chaos Warriors. Give "liberators" or whatever a wizard, hunter, default, and berserker "mark" and you could rotate the *entire Stormcast range* if you wanted. As it stands right now, GW really would only encourage me to buy the *most recent* thunderstrike stuff; how long will "guy with sword" last when "new guy with hammer and shield" is also on the table? One edition? Because soon we'll just have to have another Stormcast chamber. Skaven are different to me because the range is finally getting the "Age of Sigmar update" and, unlike cities, the only toes to step on there are their own. But, even then, I know a nonzero number of people have Skyre Acolyte armies.

I think axing the brand-new "Hashut human chaff" and the entire beasts of chaos range just to include "some beasts" clogging up the plastic Chorf release is both the worst case scenario and just as likely as anything else. Someone at GW with sand-for-brains thought "both settings should only have three main chaos factions! that way they each get saddled with one of the historically less popular ones!" while rapidly dipping chicken nuggets

So the MVP move is to time travel back to 6th, 7th, and 8th edition fantasy and choose Bretonnia! With so many editions with a 6th ed book, surely they'll get something cool in the sequel setting! Right?

I'm with you 100%. I liked the new Thunderstrike stormcast! I was looking at buying some current liberator heads to kitbash with the new stuff bc I just don't love the helmets. You know what I was going to use for backing them up? The sacrosanct range. Like my Cities project already went from "Phoenix temple + wanderers + dispossesed + stormcast + humans" to "humans + stormcast" to "maybe humans" because I won't be able to buy or play Dracolines soon. Like, maybe cities will get a heavy calvary I'd be interested in building, but AoS armies now have a less-than-a-decade lifespan. It used to just be some models. Sure, yeah, I don't think I'd mind that answer for a reason to update/replace their models but the profile and role in the army being completely cut is not it imo. No one would reasonably tell Space Marine players that the 40,000 small variations in their units could be handled with counts-as i know space marines are finally getting fully primaris'd, and will be in a similar situation regarding legends, but they're getting updated versions of the old stuff: Sacrosanct arent being moved to 30k or TOW; they're just getting dropped. Like, 100% of "wizard stormcast" are going back to Azyr and are leaving no tactical equivalent behind? Nuts. I wanted my force to be led by a Stormcast warrior-wizard. Instead, I'll be buying nothing.

With my collection of old-school guys, Big Hats, Azgorh, the Hellcannon, and now Horns of Hashut I have five different iterations of this faction that have not once overlapped. Crazy stuff. ah yeah it is a Tzaangor; who is an Arcanite exclusively now I hate how accurate this is; bye ghosts! If the other half of the 2.0 posterboys already got axed idk why I'd expect Ghosts to have so many variations of a theme

Ah! Very envious of you there! I missed picking it up on eBay before they hit TOW and the book like tripled in price. I always liked the Chaos Dwarfs, even when they were already running an "out of date" book when I discovered them as a teen. I liked them enough I wanted to see 'em on the table, even if it was mostly losses. Part of the appeal of a miniatures game is "these are my dudes; i made them!" and I plan on riding that crew through highs and lows in balance..... but you can't get too much lower than "deleted entirely." Can't exaggerate how disappointed I am with this part in particular. It was the narrative beat I was anticipating the most. Morghur was shaping up to be an antagonist for the first time like ever outside of "this dude in the woods is bad news!" Like, I don't even care about the setting much at all anymore. Can't see myself even finishing the back half of Dawnbringers; what's the point? There isn't actually a plan for the story.

Difference is Chaos Dwarfs were a White Dwarf-published supplement that then got "get-you-by" rules alongside lots of other armies in the Ravening Hordes book and then we nuked from orbit by being the only Ravening Hordes faction to never make it out of that book again. Technically, the army was (theoretically) never actually dropped. It was just so un-updated running it was not ideal. Tamurkhan sort of helped things, but that was back when people hyperventilated online about whether or not forgeworld was "official." They made the jump to AoS with their Forgeworld list, but got "not quite deleted!" with their own get-you-by list for AoS that was axed. Really it wasnt until the WHF -> AoS jump that I ever saw armies that had their own self-contained books start getting deleted from both the store and the game altogether. White Dwarf Presents: Chaos Dwarfs was a unique case of a whole race/faction existing in a semi-official book; usually it was stuff like the Storm of Chaos mashup armies or unique stuff from supplements like Lost and the Damned or, more recently, the Legion of Grief. Always sucks when the characterful subfactions get dropped. The only other army I can think of that's like a whole faction gone forever was the Vampire Coast subfaction but even then most that stuff was "Vampire counts but wet" outside of like the cannon. GW has really never dropped Codexs, Armybooks, or Battletome armies before AoS and its a garbage approach. Looking back on years of 40k, it was super normal for armies to have a few variations of a similar thing; it's trash that Darkhoath is (long-term) replacing the Warcry stuff. Unless the Darkhoath Marauder unit is so flexible with gear options that it could represent all the Warcry stuff, it sucks. GW has never gone back and deleted an entire subfaction of Space Marines within two editions. Maybe their unique and special book, but not the models from the rules and setting. "all the sancrosanct went to azyr! you can represent this on the tabletop next fall by putting your miniatures into the trash." Like, any other miniatures from GW I feel the need to buy will almost certainly never be used in a GW game. I never thought I'd miss when I could run 6th Edition Bretonnia in 8th Edition Fantasy. If constant iterations to the game means it's impossible to keep the factions in-tact..... maybe slow the roll and make a game that actually has legs enough that it won't need an almost complete reboot in three years.