madmac

In one of the more recent Grombrindal stories, the White Dwarf is going around re-opening Dwarf underworlds and looking for Valaya at the same time.

There was an interview with some book outlet, no hope of finding it now, but it was regarding Chronicles of the Wanderer. Anyway, they were talking about how the series got started, and David Guymer said he got an email from GW back in like 2019 about whether he was interested in writing some White Dwarf stories to go along with a new Grombrindal model release...One that's still suspiciously missing after all this time, mind you. So I think there's a shot.

They never put two heroes in a box set. If one exists, I'd assume just the Astrolith Bearer, maybe the Starmaster instead.

Makes sense. I assume we'll see the next "Broken Realms" before the end of the year.

Whitefang revelations while I'm typing this aside, I just think of it as us not understanding how long the timeline is. Remember Sylvaneth getting a Revenant Archer in the second season of Underworlds and now just barely getting that as a unit last year? Ditto for Snarlfangs long long transition between concept/underworlds model and a real thing. Or Malerion getting teased since literally the beginning of AoS. His coming is inevitable, the when is...who knows?

Horus Heresy (the books) are slowly grinding towards completion as far as I'm aware, and right now the HH team seems to be sprinting to get out as many plastic replacements of resin models as they reasonably can. I can see a future where HH gets rotated out of focus as a largely complete model line while Forge World shifts their attention to TOW.

Kurnothi get mentioned in the new Sylvaneth tome, they have a little section about them. It basically suggests that they're descended from Wanderers who stayed hidden in Ghyran instead of fleeing to Azyr, which is new lore. It also says some of them take on a beastial aspect and wear lamentiri but the Sylvaneth "do not speak of such things". Edit: I should also point out that while the new KO tome ramps up the hype factor for Gholemkind considerably I don't believe there's a single mention of Grotbag/Skygrots unless I missed it.

Yeah, I was gonna say, if not those two tomes what else? GW can maybe squeeze in another week of filler/side game content, but the next notable 40K drop is Ark of Omens Farsight, and they just dropped the previous Ark book last week. There's not actually a ton of announced/unreleased content queued up right now.

Yeah, it looks potentially interesting on multiple levels. Though as someone who did read the Blacktalon novel way back in the day, I'm mostly just curious if they've retconned her backstory or not, the trailer doesn't drop any hints one way or another.

The SC Dragonriders let you field an understrength unit alongside the hero build, so it's not without precedent.

The one thing I will concede to people waiting for TOW is that GW seems to have moved to a monthly dev diary schedule this year, which could be taken as a sign it's getting closer. Certainly we get more Old World news than we do Dawnbringers, anyway. Fitting it in this year still seems hard to imagine, though.

I'm not much of a Chaos guy, but I picked up Beastmen as a "way easier than Aelves" painting project a few years back after breaking an elbow, and I've enjoyed them a lot. Lorewise, I like that they keep drifting further away from the umbrella of the Chaos Gods into being their own thing.

I mean if you don't like the models of course you don't want the box. If you do, it's looking like a pretty good pick-up. Me personally, I don't need it, but it is giving me the motivation to dust off my old Dispossessed models and start giving them a battle ready paintjob.

Yes, but last time it was just a GHB thing at a time when GHBs were full of disposable add-on rules that were never revisited, we didn't get dedicated mercenary boxes.

I'm not bothered because the two that interest me (dwarfs and sylvaneth) I already have the models for so that's just new options for me to play with. For people who don't, I expect these boxes to be rather good deals, dispossessed are absurdly expensive to buy at retail prices. Unlike the first wave of mercenary companies, I don't expect any of these models to be squatted in the near future, most of them are brand new, and I don't expect the dwarfs are going anywhere either.

Considering half these boxes consist of brand new models, I think they're all fairly safe. More like these are models people don't buy normally because they cost way too much individually. Depending on what these go for some of these could be a real bargain.

I mean I like dwarfs too, and also elves, but you don't see me campaigning for Sylvaneth and LRL to get souped together because Tyrion is gonna get remarried to Alarielle or whatever. I'm more than happy to enjoy different flavors as their own thing.

KO Ships with Fyreslayer runes: Yuck Flying FS with KO riggs: Yuck I think you just don't get what people like about the existing dwarf armies...

Currently, KO get a new hero, and Fyreslayers get a new hero. If souped: Only one of them gets a new hero

This is certainly true on the other side of things. One of my armies is Fyreslayers, obviously I'm always hungry for more Fyreslayer models it's an incredibly rare thing, whereas for me Stormcast are just a side project that I deliberately keep very small and focused. I'm sure Stormcast players who buy every release exist, but they probably don't also run a bunch of side armies. I do think in general that the bigger an army range, the more likely most players are to build a themed list rather than trying to collect the whole thing.

Well sure, that's the psychology behind it. As far as the original worry that it's going to lead to armies ending up with 25 heroes and no new units eventually...I would assume that hopefully no one has to go that many editions without a real update, right? If things get that bad that's not a failing of the pity hero system, it's a complete failure by GW to support any army that ends up in that state.

Yeah I would not be entirely surprised if this happened eventually, just not until either Ironjawz or Bonesplittas gets a new model wave.

I don't think GW cares that much to be honest. What's the make or break difference between 24 armybooks and 26? If we're assuming GW is adding 12 new armies for a total of 36 than sure, it matters. Fudging the numbers here and there by +/-3 honestly doesn't move the needle either way. As for your specific examples, all of those are terrible and a lot more players would be angry than pleased if it happened. I play both KO and FS and I'm very happy keeping them separated thank you very much. Beastmen and STD both just got completely awesome and separate tomes that really nail down the thematic differences between the two armies. I'm yet to see a single person who actually plays FEC begging to be souped with SGL, etc etc. Who cares about getting a book a few months earlier when it's as souless as Warclans is?

Or it means that your book is playable as long as you play a completely different army with models you don't own that your army just got souped with. I'm not that worried about it in any case, I think most of the soup talk is just residual paranoia from 2E where it did seem like everything was being souped left and right. Since then though, who else has been souped? Literally no 3E army has been souped yet, and the claims of inevitable souping get weaker with every new book that comes out. The flipside of that of course is that 3E has (so far) not added a single new army, unlike every previous edition. Personally I just think it means things are stabilizing. We have most of, not all, but most of the armies that GW intends to support for the time being and brand new armies and major reorganizations of existing tomes is going to continue to be a relatively rare event, like it is for 40k.

Frankly, that kinda of role would better fit their design and lore than their current status as cheap chaff anyway. They've always been this unit that's supposed to be slapped down on the table in big numbers to hold objectives and stuff but, like...you can barely fit a single MSU arkanaut unit on a frigate, man. Where exactly are all these hordes supposed to be appearing from on the battlefield? A single reinforced unit is enough to risk overburdening an Ironclad.