sandlemad

Whoa. Any further details on this out there? I recall photos of the ancient metal one, like a proto-Marienberg land ship.

Tricky one, that metalwork doesn’t look terribly chaotic. But then I can’t think of anything obvious in AoS that it does look like, style-wise… The flaring almost looks Idoneth though less flamboyant and without any scalloping.

Sergeant-at-arms are definitely new but I think the squires are the old foot skirmisher-archers. These dudes : Their background shifted around from edition to edition (as did the background for the mounted yeomen), sometimes they were higher peasants, sometimes they were squires. Depended on how strict that edition was re: knights and bows, and how it viewed the progression from squire to knight errant to knight of the realm. The mercenaries are an interesting addition as I think in 6th ed Bretonnia were one of the only armies in the game, alongside daemons, who couldn’t take units from the Dogs of War list. Too dang honourable.

Vampires stay winning. They really do have a lot of special characters but this is a great sculpt. Still a little bit of Egyptian flair but that Nulahmia aesthetic looks decently defined - following their queen and their god, they love their big hats - and offers a nice alternative to the also brilliant Vyrkos aesthetic. Cool background too. Not just fleshing out Neferata with a lieutenant but giving her some character as a manipulator, and one with a former time-god as a pet.

Those are better minis, yes, but there’s zero chance that GW would ever take that approach. Where would the profit be? Better to sell minis they’ve already put the design effort into and get that market, however small, for relatively low effort. Also more generally, while TOW is fundamentally not for me, I don’t think there’s much benefit in canvassing hardcore AoS players or AoS-centric social media to see if they’re going to pick any of this up.

Never quite understood why High Elves were such big sellers. Not that they were bad or anything, they had some classic Jes Goodwin fleshed out background and design, the widespread attraction just isn’t as obvious to me as for Warriors of Chaos, the big armoured easy-to-paint dudes. I guess folks really like their classic elves? Their rules were frequently quite good too. Skaven were supposed to be a pretty big seller as well and they certainly had powerful rulesets.

I dunno, it’s overpriced in the sense that everything by GW is overpriced but for comparison that heresy box has a little over half the miniatures of the tomb kings one. And a bunch of the tomb kings are cavalry and chariots. Of course the issue is that this box is built around the chunky old Harryhausen skeletons…

Dragon Tomb king 40 spearmen 32 archers 16 light/heavy cavalry 3 chariots Been a while since GW made a box this big, at least for a non-starter kit.

That looks skaven. That dented round brass look with riveted seals is fairly common in their range for Skyre stuff.

Happy to see new Ahriman and Mike Brooks orks but pretty underwhelming stuff. No votann novel well over a year after their introduction as a faction. Has anyone read The Hollow King? I quite like John French’s other work.

That book is very neat for a skaven tome, not scratchy at all. I could believe a skaven pestilence mini having some Nurgle icons in their book but when it’s all Nurgle, without any rune of the Horned Rat, a daemon seems more likely. Epidemius could be a good one indeed given that he’s still resin but then the arm seems rather skinny too. @MarkK Good catch re: number of fingers.

That little frill of spikes or flat pointy things is odd. Almost tucked away behind the fur, so from the front of the mini would be behind the wearer’s head. Maybe a bit like some of the vampire armour? The swallowtail purity seals should be distinctive too, though they don’t scream vampire or krieg.

All timer brilliant art, from the 6th ed peak of dwarven aesthetics. On the cover of the first army book I got, so I’m unbiased. Also amusing to see it take up a chunk of space on an article about magic, hell yeah dwarves.

Given the jankiness of the pipe and the presence of flames, I think the suggestion that this is something related to Cawdor or the Redemptionists in Necromunda is probably spot on.

Excellent piece on the FEC background. I like the reminder that the delusion can be more than “Bretonnian stand-in”, and can stretch to include nature loving monastic pacifists like Gristlegore, or the sun-worshipping priesthood of Blisterskin. Cool to see Varshorn make a return too, some good explicit anti-Nagash civil war stuff there. Also this: One trick is to think about what the knightly equivalent would originally have been, as the titles adopted by the ghouls are often perversions of Ushoran’s original courtiers. The moniker of the devoted steward Livbelcé has been denigrated over the years into the odious Lord Liverbelch. Crakmarrow? Never heard of him; surely you’re referring to the noble Duke Krakmarra, one of our liege’s most worthy hunting companions? is exquisite.

Agreed and the RL medieval inspiration makes it all the more important to WHFB, the whole extremely grim plague-ridden Europe thing, they’re a vital part of the nasty, spiky religiosity of the Empire. That new role they have in AoS, where they’re a vital part of reclaiming land through bloodshed, is really quite different. Notably they’re sort of part of the state apparatus and directly aligned with the efforts of the cities, unlike in WHFB where they’re a dangerous, uncontrollable grassroots religious thing that is frequently not aligned with the official church of Sigmar. And then they’re a touch more high fantasy through their magic/holy blood being instrumentalised for magical land reclamation. In AoS, they’re more of a plot element or part of the working mechanics of the background rather than something key to the tone of the setting, as in WHFB, if you get me. They’re not doing the same thing with flagellants and yeah, I think they’re slightly less important even if they’ve been given this mechanical role through the dawnbringers stuff. Wouldn’t mind seeing them expanded but they’re a different beast.

Yeah there’s explicit representation of Kragnos on some Kruleboys minis - the belcha banner, the scarification on the killaboss’s steed - but the shields are just in the fine old tradition of grotesque greenskin faces on shields, banners and other reliefs. A lot of their design language is developed from the old GW orc look, pre-Brian Nelson’s lantern-jawed overhaul. The Kragnos references are really a light touch on top of that. In the background too, the Kruleboys are as much (more so, really) opportunistic followers of Kragnos than actual faithful worshippers. Even at its best, greenskin workshop is about bowing to who’s the biggest and mightiest, and the Kruleboys seem to be considerably more cynical about it and even consciously try to steer him (Gobsprakk is the best at this). They’re happy enough to emulate his face in some of their art but if another big alpha monster took his place, they’d probably just shrug and get on with it.

Oh that’s certainly plausible. It’s a low paid job and they’re not treated amazingly by GW so you get this turnover. James Hewitt left GW either shortly before or just after the launch of Adeptus Titanicus, which he designed, so it’s also worth bearing in mind the lead in time on these things. I think the guy who painted that Grey Knights special character said it was something like a year and a half from it leaving his desk to being released. Applies even more so to sculptors and probably rules writers.

What’s their track record like, in terms of stuff they correctly predicted? I’m not saying they’re wrong about everything, god knows specialist games has had stuff happen close to release before - the whole Adeptus Titanicus product line and business model shifting shortly after its first preview, the Legionis Imperialis rulebook being pulped and redone - but saying that the entire rules for TOW were written in a single afternoon sounds like an huge exaggeration at best, an outright fabrication at worst because yeah, that’s just not possible. For comparison, Gorkamorka is considered to have been the most rushed ruleset ever done by GW. Andy Chambers wrote that in 8 weeks in a desperate hurry to have something ready for the xmas launch and production block. And like TOW, that was using an existing ruleset as a base (Necromunda) but for far fewer factions and with far less ‘stuff’.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the new FEC will permit a much broader range of army builds than currently exist. It’s going from a range based around 2-3 kits to one based around 5+ kits, with additional heroes and SCs. I’d anticipate an expansion of the flying circus build to include the new bat-knights, some sort of elite build based around crypt guard and horrors, maybe a herohammer one to represent maybe Summercourt. If someone wants to avoid the old ghouls, it’ll most likely be viable.

A bunch of good minis but yeah, the Summerking is an all-timer incredible mini. Hulking monster, perfect heavy fur cloak with creepy heads and faces, but moreover look at the way he holds his sceptre and gestures with his other hand. It’s delicate and refined, whatever he’s doing with it, despite everything else. The face too, there’s some intelligence and noble anger there. I think the Death range(s) might have the highest proportion of absolute bangers tbh. It’s where the technical excellence comes out but also where the positive influence of Dark Souls on GW’s creative juices is clearest.

Grand Justice Goremayne isn’t far from some of the other noble titles but the article seems to talk about him as a particular dude, one associated with the ‘New Summercourt’. It’s distinct from the way they talked about the Gorewarden last week. He could be something like a travelling judge, dispensed by the Summerking to the courts of his various feudal vassals.

Exquisite. This is exactly the sort of visual representation folks have been asking for with the FEC: the delusion but manifest in gore. Can you imagine what it sounds like when he turns his head and everything jiggles…

The Bretonnian connection is definitely thematic rather than ‘in-universe’ so to speak but it’s definitely there, even if mostly in the form of cheeky references and pretty clear Easter eggs, like those which @Ejecutor shows. I’d also throw in the broken sword on the Arch-Regent’s belt as very similar in style to those in the post-6th ed. Bretonnian range. That said, I’d agree with @Neil Arthur Hotep re: the background references through the delusions. They’re more general chivalric knightly touchpoints rather than anything too specifically Bretonnian… but as it’s all deliberately campy, effusive, OTT stuff, that does line up well with the deliberately campy, effusive, OTT portrayal of stereotyped medieval France that made up most of the Bretonnian background. RE: the Estalian link, I don’t think so. Rather I think the bone ruff is more of a general indicator of noble European finery. It’s a bit like how the Royal Beastmaster has some fancy cords/tassels (I think the proper term is aiguillettes) on his chest but fashioned from entrails. Could be a sign of GW trying to widen the breadth of references beyond medieval knights and into a bigger pool of aristocratic cultures, though again they’re pretty clearly just there to be riffed on. Although if we did have a character called, like, the Infante des Menudencias or something, I’d be here for it!

In the spirit of Bretonnia, I could see these dudes being Men-At-Arms (armed with some weapons and protective gear) and the regular crypt ghouls being recast as the peasant levies.