Orbei

Kind of with you here. I am glad CoS exists so people can play those old armies, but I really don't like those armies on the field. Cool old models but they don't make any sense at all in AoS. So we are to believe that the races mix together in these cities living side by side, yet when it's time for war they segregate themselves by race, grab their ceremonial armor from the old world, and fight in units from a bygone age? They should be all mixed together with new fancy units.

In a discussion that is centered around rules being placed behind new paywalls and hurdles it is only natural that piracy is brought up. It is not an endorsement of piracy to acknowledge that it is a reality. Alternative rules sources are readily available and one can logically assume that more people will seek them out as a result of this. That said, it's a delicate subject and I understand that it's probably tricky to moderate. It's important for the forum to not endorse piracy for pretty obvious reasons. I appreciate how open the conversation has been.

I could see it, but I like having some less "good" factions as part of order. If we're going to move anyone to Grand Alliance Death I vote DoK. They have the goth aesthetic down already, and Morathi is a goddess of murder. More murder = more death. Maybe she and Nagash could hook up and have a healthy, mutually supportive relationship. It would be positive for Malerion's mental health too, all things considered.

I would have been 100% in for an evil fishmen army! Though I do love my IDK as they are. What I'd love to see included in an IDK wave 2 are auxiliary troops from some of the other aquatic races mentioned in the battletome, in addition to fantastic underwater beasts. The faction could be an amazing menagerie of weird wet things with the aelves in control of it all.

I have no idea what a Sloggoth does and now am curious! Going to check real quick - not by buying the battletome.

And what if you are a new player who is trying to pick an army and wants to know what the models do before buying them? What about wanting to know what units of an opposing faction do? Allegiance abilities are one thing to wrap one's head around, but personally I like to look at scrolls for other armies. I am never going to play Chaos but I sure as heck like knowing what Pink Horrors, Archaon, Demon Princes, etc actually do. How else am I supposed to prepare for them? Or should every game begin with a 10 minute book study period where you hand the opponent your tome? They are saying that GW is adding a paywall to generate revenue, rather than doing so by offering customers an improved product/value proposition. Something that was previously free is no longer free. It didn't get better in the process. Yes you had to buy the battletome to use the allegiance abilities before, and you still do. Not the point. Now you need to buy the battletome just to see what things do. This has an impact on knowing what you want to buy in the first place. It also hurts ones understanding of the overall game.

This is how I make purchases as well. I recently started an IDK army. When I determined I wanted to start an army this was my process: List out the factions I was most interested in. This happened to be IDK, DoK, and Seraphon. Look at the rules and build some sample lists. What would a 2k army for these factions look like for me? I needed the warscrolls and points to do this. So I wrote a few sample lists for each of these factions, with about 500 points extra to give me some variety. Then I priced these out. I was curious to see how much each of these factions would cost for what I wanted to buy! Turns out Seraphon was significantly cheaper and IDK was about $100 more than DoK. Then I made my decision. The warscrolls were very helpful for me in this process, and I ultimately ended up buying all of the models at once. I knew exactly how many kits to buy. I also bought the battletome, even though I had already reviewed all of the rules contained within. I wanted it because I am very interested in the lore on my faction and wanted the nice book. Access to the warscrolls helped me to spend a sizeable amount on a new army. It still is as I consider expanding into potential allies. I am not going to buy every order battletome, sorry. But I would like a splattering of the different factions as allied units.

This is very helpful context that I never realized. So hosting the warscrolls on the store is more costly than potentially hosting them on the community site. A potential solution might be a master unit listing hosted on Warcom with the current pitched battle profiles, a link to the warscroll, and a separate link to the unit on the store page. This would let people evaluate the units and then know where to find them on the store. The pitched battle profile being included is just my personal wish list. It's annoying to have this separate from the warscroll IMHO.

I considered someone would mention all of those when I wrote the post, but I don't think it detracts from the point. All of those mini editions were still the same core ruleset with updates. If we count such things as a change in edition we could just as easily count the addition of endless spells to AoS or new generals handbooks as new editions. 5th edition D&D is still 5th edition, which has been around longer than AoS as a whole. Different games but I like that design philosophy much more. AoS changes way too fast and lacks a cohesive design principle because of it. This is the unpopular opinion thread though so...

Yeah, it's awful if GW lets it be awful. If they just update the rules for all factions periodically via FAQs or, preferably, fully digital rules offerings, it wouldn't be awful. It would be great! I would love this! Unfortunately we get a system reset far more frequently than every decade. Thats the thing though. D&D is a book centric game. The rules are the game, it's really the only thing they have to sell. And yet they keep a core ruleset for a much longer period of time. Books you buy are relevant for years. GW's core product is (or should be) miniatures, not books. Yet they seem to want to sell you as many books as possible with very short useful life before they are obsolete.

Consider that D&D was created in the 70s and is only on 5th edition. 5th edition itself was released in 2014 and is still ongoing. Meanwhile, 40k is in it's 9th edition and AoS, which was only created in 2015, is in it's third edition. The game changes way too fast. New models and rules for them is great! But a battletome should last a decade and be supported during that time with tweeks if necessary to keep it up to date. Core rulesets should have longer than a 4 year lifespan. Between the short lifespan of editions and terrible power creep with new releases the landscape of the game changes rapidly. Probably great fun for tournament players but less so for people who get in a handful of games a year.

Until dragons start showing up in December.

Interesting perspective. I'd say it's a bonus for app or magazine users, but in this context of this thread the warscrolls are no longer free. Out of curiosity, you're saying you would just use the old warscroll if you didn't buy BR Morathi? How would you feel about an opponent using outdated scrolls? Or, for that matter, how would you feel about an opponent using the newer rules without a physical copy of the source material? Personally I want the game to have the most up to date ruleset for both armies. I also have no intention of buying white dwarf, subscribing to the app, or buying mid-release books like broken realms. It's easy enough to get access to the rules without those sources (they read the whole book on YouTube for example) so it's not as though the rules are secret. I also don't care if my opponent has the original source material for his army. Players will get the rules one way or another. GW moving in this direction is a poor business decision from my point of view because it forces them to go to outside sources instead of their website. Anti consumer or not (I think it is but many people here don't) it definitely places a new barrier between the players and the rules and makes things overall less convenient. I see that as negative for the health of the game.

All of Death will soon be souped into Legion of Nagash 2: Electric Boogaloo. But seriously, bring on the soup tomes. GW's model of focusing on a few factions each year and then forgetting about them for the next few years is made worse by having a dozen and a half mini factions. They can soup my guys with whoever they want if it means they get more frequent attention.

Very confused by this. You say free warscrolls has been a change for the better, which I am with you on. How does monetizing them not mean that free warscrolls are gone? How do you feel about warscroll updates? Let's say I buy a $123 leviadon. Well unfortunately it sucked until they decided to update it in Broken Realms. Should I not be allowed to use the model in game now unless I buy that book, which I otherwise don't give a hoot about? I find it to be absurd.

This so much this. The way that GW handles tomes is essentially the worst possible model. They're stuck in an 80s release model in 2021. Battletomes released every 3 or so months, an faq after, and then minimal thought given to that faction for the next few years. Power creep is constant. The factions need to be balanced and updated at the same time. This would be easy if they went to a fully digital rules model. Books should be for modeling or as collectors items, not for distribution of rules and updating factions. Unfortunately this is baked into the companies entire design philosophy and business model. Focus on one faction heavily, build hype to sell models, and then move on to the next faction.

Is there a single other Warhammer dragon with ears? Or is this cute little totally not a bat the first. Do dragon ears turn into horns as they mature? Do they develop scales around the same stage? Are all bats really just baby dragons? Is there a cocoon involved?? So many questions!

Those are some big, silly ears for a dragon. Surely it's a baby terrorgheist.

They should rename the grand alliances. No more Chaos, Destruction, Death and Order. Those are confusing to new players as they don't accurately represent the factions contained within. I suggest Evil, Wacky, Goth, and Everyone Else.

I get where you're coming from here. I don't expect my take to be popular. That said... Dissonance, AKA Chaos. Sounds like putting them all together would result in a pretty chaotic situation! Though Chaos in Warhammer isn't really chaos, it's Evil. If I didn't know better I'd say this guy is an aelf! Maybe he is under that helmet. Can we trade Lumineth for him? They like cows so maybe they can soup with BoC...

There have been enough comments in this thread about disliking elves that I'll go ahead and state the opposite. I love elves, they are awesome, and they are not in any way overrepresented in the game. Elves are a classic part of fantasy and Warhammer elves have always been interesting takes on them. The three WHFB factions we're so important and distinct that I cannot imagine the game without any of them. AoS aelves are similar in that regard. We don't even have very many of them... Lumineth, daughters, IDK, and the old stuff in Cities. IDK and DoK are both tiny factions in need of a second release wave. Sylvaneth don't really count at this point, they're their own thing. Aelves are basically equally represented as greenskins between the 3 ork factions and Gitz. Yet every time a new elf is revealed some people lose their ****** complaining and it's tiresome. My opinion on chaos is exactly the opposite. There's way too much focus on chaos. Beastmen are interesting as their own thing, and I appreciate Skaven and Chaos Duarden (eventually) as their own factions. But each of the 4 gods having their own distinct armies is just too much bloat. We have 4 demon armies, slaves to darkness, the belakor faction, the first prince. Why does every chaos God need a dozen named characters? Why do we need more chaos models than death and destruction combined? It's cool that these things exist already and people can enjoy those armies. But I think GW can cool it on new Chaos god-specific stuff for a loooooong time. If they have an itch to make chaos things, do the highly demanded chaos dwarves or give BoC updated sculpts.

It's not enough that Chaos steals the Gitz spider theme, they have to steal the bad moon from them too?

Games Workshop should sell painted models. Not every model or most models, but some models. The most significant barriers to entry for this hobby are the high cost and the need to paint. Some people don't want to paint, don't like painting, or are intimidated by painting. While the core of GW's products line should remain unpainted, unassembled plastic my suggestion would be a limited range of 'battle ready' minis. Start with maybe 2 factions (say stormcast and orcs but whatever) where a small selection of the range are sold in a basic tabletop acceptable color scheme. There should be enough available that one could field a full army of battle ready figs if they want. They could then sell a little painting pack with everything needed to paint more figs in the same scheme, so people who start with the painted ones can gradually expand into painting. Edit: Not sure how I managed to turn half of my post red. Lol

In a fantasy setting where humans represent maybe 10% of the population they seem to represent 99% of death models. I've never noticed any skaven skeletons or zombies and they're supposed to be the most populous race. Almost seems as if Death goes out of its way not to raise any skaven! Or dwarves, lizardmen, ogres... hmmm... Death MOST racist alliance, perhaps?

He's probably chaos, sure. His proportions sure look aelflike to me, though, and his aesthetic doesn't look like anything in the current chaos line. He really reminds me of the old dark elves. Spiders would make sense as a realm of shadows thing and be a neat answer to Morathi's snakes. Mainly I just like him so I'm hoping he's a Malekith elf. Wishful thinking!