Pizzaprez

Jumped in to see what Chaos Dwarfs were shaping up to look like! Unsurprisingly, this list is straight out of Tamurkhan: profiles to match all the Forgeworld models along with rules for all the (discontinued, even when tamurkhan was released) older metal hobgoblins. However, I was looking to see if any hints at the future may exist: the description for Infernal Guard is no longer so tied to the Legion of Azgorh. Where before, the lore emphasized that they were an inversion of the concept of a Dwarf Slayer; discussing how dwarfs were sent to the legions after being directly or even indirectly responsible for some sort of failure. Their name, identity, and social status was taken and their armor was put onto their body while red-hot and it fused to them. The Castellans' lore used to mention how they would get to ritualistically tear their masks off and reclaim their individuality after some manner of success. The lore here doesn't mention any of that! In fact, the Legion of Azgorh is not mentioned as far as I can tell. Instead, we get the following: "Chaos Dwarfs are an unnerving sight in battle. They are brutish, grotesque figures plated in black or burnished armour of heavy plate and jagged scales, crowned with tall helms mounted with flame-tongue spiked coronas or sharpened horns. Their livery is bright and bloody, and their distorted faces, if they are seen at all, are bestial and filled with malice. Their presence is intended to inspire fear in their foes, and they have lost none of the toughness or skill-at-arms of their western Dwarf kin" That physical description is new! It vaguely sort of describes the Big Hat models, but "chaos dwarfs with sharpened horns" is not something we've ever seen on the foot troops!

Who knows! Maybe they'll go the Lovecraft inspired route and have some Deepkin find *new* gods deep in the ocean Deepkin civil war (always fun) new god(s) for their new pantheon and a new wave of deep-sea inspired units

Those Anvil of Apotheosis rules were extremely fun and did a lot to let you make your own complex characters Then they dropped the concept completely, lol. I'd love to see a book that was *just* those rules

Was great to see the Warhammer Forge stuff is coming back Makes me wonder if GW meshing together their main site and the FW site into one catalogue was to help fight against the "forgeworld isn't official!" bias ive seen off and on online over the years

Edit: Lol wrong thread sorry

Wow those are some beautiful sculpts! TOW is definitely outpacing my "models are coming back!" hype Actually, on that note, this video confirms with certainty that some of the old Warhammer Forge stuff is coming back! The Orc with the heavy weapon and command banner were WHF, as was the big Troll Hag wizard! Maybe I didn't miss out on the Squid Gobba forever after all!

I don't think I had ever made the connection between Fyerslayers and these chaos Duardin! It would be really cool to see the Iron Golem aesthetic across a whole army: I really like their vibe It would also be interesting if they went the Oathbreaker route: it'd ground the new Hashut Chaos Duardin faction firmly in the AoS narrative! I hadn't even really considered that!

Loved seeing them both interviewed, and it's really fun to hear how those hats got quite so big. It's also cool hearing Priestly's take on writing the narrative both before and during Tamurkhan: Hashut being a sneeze is extremely silly and I love it. Hearing that, even behind the scenes, Chaos Dwarfs have always had one foot planted in "grimdark slave-fueled industry" and "these dudes are inherently pretty silly looking" since their inception. Honestly, Perry's sketches of the CD infantry is pretty much exactly what I'd hope to see in a remake for them! Real fascinating stuff, and I'm thankful this video exists! It is not often at all that you see devs sit down and say "alright let's unpack the Chaos Dwarfs." I'm hoping Assyria + WH Dwarf + nightmare Hellcannon looking stuff stay as staples for them!

Those are really handy guides! I'm definitely going to keep them bookmarked! My friends have only really worked with plastic, so having a one-pager for metal and resin is extremely handy

If I recall correctly, Cities just lost their monstrous calvary; I would anticipate them getting a new kit for that in their next wave, though!

Always felt like these guys were perfect for Chamon freeguild, glad to see them in plastic!

So cool! You can really tell that they wanted to nail the "flaming ghost" look down ahead of an eventual hexwraith refresh

Gosh I'd be over the moon to see the Warhammer Forge model range back in rotation!! I missed much too much of it; I'd even spring on the realm of battle tile at this point hahaha. I think the Chaos Dwarfs are likely to be no-shows: GW is cooking something plastic for 'em, and quite a few of their biggest models were abruptly pulled from the store when their mould broke and the kit wasn't selling well enough to justify remaking it. Some of the best work GW has put out to date imho; I don't think I disliked a single thing from the range. Even if not all of it was "for me" it was all excellent

Yeah trying to get someone new to try the game with me, even after i've poured through the books and feel like I get it, was a lot of "uh let's not worry about that today; let's just fight toys" There is so much to wrap your head around before you even start putting together an army list that I feel like it's overwhelming and sometimes offputting: I gotta tell my friends they need to buy the core book, their book, and have a pretty good understanding of what list building looks like all as a barrier to them figuring how to budget throwing money at little toys. I really wish GW kept something like the 1.0 one-pager available alongside regularly updated free warscrolls. Make the books narratively focused with maybe battleplans and path to glory and only update them when you want to revisit writing new narratives and making new art for them. Maybe keep the core books the lore dumps they but with whatever GW wants to make the competitive-focused "advanced" rules. Keep the GHB as-is for the tournament scene with competitively-focused battleplans and such. One optional core book each edition, a period GHB, and optional books for every faction would be awesome. I was deeply saddened when GW axed the free warscrolls: reminded me of when their website was stealth updated to not have terrain crafting tutorials anymore. AND I would be happy to buy more battleplans and scenarios for a game my friends could get into for only the cost of the figures, tools, and paint. My friend group is all child-free adults, but GW prices are "luxury item" tier and we all need to budget for the little figures we like. The price of the books alone is prohibitive, let alone the density of the rules they want you to use.

I'm in the camp that I could see this as a misdirect: Zenestra is "real weird!" and I could see her getting a chapter in which we're told exactly how she "dies" but "the wheel must ever turn" or something and she just rolls in to Hammerhall later to explain that they failed in person. I could see her continuing to be important alongside a flagellant refresh! Vedra isn't going away: Hammerhall is the protagonist city and she is now the main human character from it. She might lose, might get injured, but she's sticking around for a bit. Death characters, like Nagash and Arkhan, often have had multiple ways of cheating death even before their most recent demise. Nagash has evolved to something terrifying, even before his death, and I could see GW keeping him "dead" and rewriting his god miniature to be a puppet or avatar instead. Arkhan as "skeleton with hat" is probably actually dead forever, and will almost certainly eventually get a new Ossiarch body. He'll probably be member of the Null Myriad; the legion he is in charge of who also happen to be black like Arkhan's title

Not to be horribly negative, but I had a similar experience. AoS 1.0 was great. FREE rules! Easy to understand! FREE rules! Once they worked through some of the silliest rules, like actually shouting at an opponent, 1.0 was fantastic. The entire WHFB range ported to a new game with (in my opinion) the best parts of Fantasy and 40k without the "fat" of 50,000 weapon profiles or a trillion special rules in an index. I loved the warscroll system and the fact that I could encourage my friends to get into the game with a $0 book tax. 2.0 Was solid: I liked the tweaks and, though I didn't love the increased focus on battalions, Endless Spells alone were worth the upgrade. I feel like AoS could've hovered around 2.0 for quite awhile tbh. 3.0 GW lost me. Game will get updates to the core rules every less-than-five years and all the armies will need new books. Dropping a 3.0 tome that was a glorified FAQ+1 foot hero aint it for me, especially when that cost isn't offset with pages of new lore and art. I didn't love that the last fantasy Bretonnia book was almost a decade old but I also didn't hate that I wasn't always anticipating buying a new book that, in 2024, is the same price as a brand-new videogame. Without the new art or lore, I can't justify budgeting $60 for an FAQ. Endless spells and faction terrain are seemingly on the chopping block after being dropped for a couple years now, and the one billion commands/battalions/specific small things you need to keep track of had led to me just scaling the rules back to closer to 1.0 to play with new players and actually just play. I saw someone with a detailed printout checklist of all the things their necrons could do in each phase of a turn for 40k, and I feel like AoS is pretty much there too. When I gave OPR a fair shake/read, it is way closer to the "beer and pretzels" game AoS started off as: and that was the game that brought me back from my almost decade-long hiatus in miniatures games. With my friends finally ready to play miniatures games with me, I don't feel great pointing them at Age of Sigmar: the book tax alone is enough to make me chew on encouraging GW games. We're starting with Frostgrave and maybe OPR later! Age of Sigmar continues to be my favorite fantasy setting: cool narrative/worlds, fantastic toys to build and paint (some of the best EVER that GW has made!), but 3.0 was a big step towards making the game closer in complexity to 40k, which I don't love. I'll still be there day 1 for the Chaos Duardin book; I want to read it!! but I can't say I see myself buying that book a second time.

40k: Votann/Ork Mek/mounted Kroot guy 30k: Space Marine/Solar Auxilia walker/Solar Auxilia command banner guy AoS: uh aelf(?), nighthaunt (cairn wraith?), human(?), aelf? lantern looks lumineth, human w/ topknot on horse: sounds Chaos Marauder coded to me! Hopefully they'd get new infantry too bc their horses still hold up Excited to see the previews! I like the Aelves conceptually and I'm hoping we see some of Tyrion sometime. I know the End Times are often criticized online, but i loved 'em and the elven narrative arc made me love the warhammer elves/aelves and their pantheon of gods: I'm excited to see more of them!

This was great! Loved hearing what they were able to recall about them; sounded like they all had fun with it Would love to see a reboot range look a lot like Alan Perry's sketches there

Not to mention those plastic dragon wings he uses were the thing for adding wings to miniatures when I first started the hobby; I remember the splash the LotR Balrog caused when there was a second set of excellent plastic wings in play!

I would love this! A full-on "Grungni's back!" army with him or Grombrindal would be so cool

Just looked into the Rootkings: literally the fanfiction "ghyran duardin" I'd been kicking around fanfictioning in my head for my Human/Wanderer/Duardin Free City up until Dispossesed were looking like an endangered species. That project is likely going to be on hold for a minute until this Cities wave 2/Old World situation shakes out. But once I'm working on it again I'm 1000% trying to make Root Kings, way too cool. I think Dispossesed are on the outs for sure. I would sincerely be shocked if GW threads a way to keep any of them in AoS at all. Initially, Cities was like five flavors of "warrior leader, wizard leader, strong and weak foot troops, something ranged, something mounted, something[s] unique" Now all of that has been set aside for the Nu Humans, who are almost a 1:1 analogue for the WHF humans. I cannot see GW introducing a new heavily armored troop for more than one race within a faction. I can absolutely see GW encouraging Cities players to pillage the "new" Old World range for proxies and such. I think Dispossesed will exist in the margins of the setting; relying on passionate hobbyists to put them on the tabletop If Duardin got dropped tomorrow, the helicopters would be the only niche without an almost direct parallel. I think the human wizard from Chamon with the buff-cubes in his cauldron was it for me: he occupies the same sort of narrative/strategic space as the Duardin priests iirc. I'd love to see a couple duardin and aelf figures included in every Cities unit, even if just as body types. But, since that hasnt happed outside of one Aelf headswap, I'm lowering my hopes for Cities staying as a mixed-race model range. I'd anticipate a new steam tank and new helicopters to share in an Ironweld aesthetic, and I would bet that any strategic roles solely occupied by duardin right now (like heavily armored foot troops) are due to be replaced in wave 2

That's extremely exciting!! I'd love to see some Kurnothi Duardin ngl, I love how many narrative paths that could lead to!

I agree! Khorne, to me, has always sort of been in a weird place with his "I hate magic" slant: guy has so many magitech demon engines and I remember the hoops the narrative had to jump through to have "Khorne demon summoners" in the 40k Siege of Vraks story. I felt like that weirdness was only exacerbated in AoS by Khorne's "not magic" blood rituals and Endless Not-Spells Leaning into mesoamerican blood ritual aesthetics is an extremely neat angle to take them! I remember that same warband had a smith with an anvil chained to his back that stuck out to me as particularly cool: I think it was his not-bodybuilder physique

1) They exist 2) Alarielle sent them to Beastgrave to stop the curse that's leaked out of Shadespire from spreading across the realms and, secretly, Skaeth hoped he and his crew could kill the mountain itself: an act they feel would remove an evil from Ghur. That is literally it as far as I know. Are all kurnothi fawns? I have no idea: the aelf from Cursed City was supposed to be a "kurnothi exile" and she has antlers and aelf feet instead of hooves. Leaves room for all sorts of neat ideas; I'm hoping they lean into the fawn-aelf vibe

Warms my heart to see another gargantuan map of the Old World where the Dark Lands are clearly visible yet absolutely nothing from the Chaos Dwarfs are labelled as even existing at all Won't have too many releases like that left in the grand scheme of things, with Chaos Dwarfs set to actually get into Age of Sigmar they likely won't be forever in the margins for much longer! Also it makes the expensive blanket easy for me to swerve!