sandlemad

Eh, I do get why they’re working this reforged death company/slayer/flagellant angle, it’s been in the works as even by the end of 1st ed the reforging flaws were introduced to make stormcast less boring. But it really is very obvious angle to take and to my mind the whole “half-mad suicide troops seeking absolution in death” thing is maybe the most played out trope in GW’s IP. Maybe the execution will save it but eh.

I thought that at first too but I think this is more like regular manufactured strips rather than spikes and hide, like a ghillie suit. IG snipers or ratlings, maybe.

The slight scrappiness of it with the tied away gear makes me think guard rather than marines.

I could imagine the Eshin side of things effectively being reduced to the current plastic assassin and a single unit of skirmishers. Something like reimagined gutter runners, maybe even using that name, with the night runners being entirely dropped. I'd be very surprised to see plague monks dropped. Yes, they don't hold up amazingly, but they were central to an older battletome, have a WHU version, and figure prominently in the background. Censer bearers, sure, could imagine them going. But plague monks staying gives a solid, low-effort (from GW's POV) Pestilens subfaction of monks, catapult, plague furnace and plague priest (using the plastic dude from the furnace as a spare). That's the kind of 'coasting along' behaviour GW's exhibited before and seems plausible here, even if Skyre/Moulder mad science take precedence for this revamp. I'm very interested to see how Skyre Acolytes figure. It was always an odd fit, merging the old globadier specialists from WHFB into a junior warlock-engineer role. I could imagine this being separated out somewhat, maybe with a 'Warlock-Globadier' as a new charcter type and the acolyte role being assigned to artillery/weapon team supervisors or as some sort of pistol unit.

I’m intrigued by the tension here between “BoC are so unpopular that they are getting squatted from AoS, with all their minis going to TOW” and “BOC are so popular that are getting a complete and total range overhaul, with all their minis going to TOW”. Admittedly this is coming from the (rather frantic and wildeyed) discourse here rather than the originating rumour/speculation, but still.

This is kind of what happens when rumours are thin on the ground, the rumour thread starts looking around for AoS ranges to cut or squat. Whether it’s orcs or beatmen or dwarfs, it’s a weird learned behaviour that often reflects the users more than GW. Half trying to read tea leaves, half a strange anxiety about ranges ‘not fitting’.

These dudes are brilliant. The plastic dwarf lord was a contemporary but even from the sprues, it’s apparent that these guys blow him out of the water.

Great mini. Very Dark Souls/Hieronymous Bosch/John Blanche in style. In-universe, could work well as a knight-Templar of Morrda, or a knight from Lethis in Shyish, or just someone who likes crows. It’s a great look and some fun diversity. Nice kroot too, just a basic carnivore but fine active pose.

Always happy to see more space dorfs but the questoris knight is a curious one. The kit’s only a decade old but it is one which has gone through, I think, 2-3 revisions to include additional sprues and options. I wonder if this could be an attempt to rationalise it, load up the sprues more tightly to accommodate all the stuff and maybe include some of the technical gains developed through the other more recent knights

By contrast the prices for those tomb kings are incredibly good, and for minis that are considerably better than the new resin one.

Oof, that’s unfortunate… and tbh gross and difficult to look at. Are you going to bring it back for a refund? Pretty clear casting error there.

Slightly off topic but other Chaos Dwarf aficionados may also get a kick out of this brilliant interview with Rick Priestly and Alan Perry where they talk about the origin of the dawi-zharr. Of particular interest is the hilarious anecdote about the design process and why they have such big hats. You get to have both Priestly and Perry's perspective on their boss, the recently deceases Bryan Ansell, pushing and pushing for the hats to be bigger, and how Perry took a certain approach to dealing with it.😀

It’s good, nice to see Astreia get fleshed out with some personality and background. Knowing she is from Settler’s Gain and her father was a lensman under the Lumineth is interesting.

I quite like that about Bruckner's demigryph. Wrong is exactly that, it's head is huge. A nice reminder that even as noble beasts and symbols of the Empire, demigryphs, hippogriffs, griffons (whether one head or two) ultimately are theorised to be weird mutants whose origin can be traced back to chaos.

RE: the Luminth river warrior-monks, looks like their helmets establishes the river spirits as horse-like in some form. Not hippos but a more literal 'river horse'.

Yay kroot and the prospect of more kroot.🙂 That’s the winner here for me by a country mile. The croneseer is a fantastic sculpt though. In a sense she’s a bit like Ushoran: a character that offers an alternative to the narrative dominance of their faction leader. Folks are finally getting at least something of the Death civil war they wanted and now it seems like you have a mysterious alternative to Morathi-Khaine being the only game in town for the disaffected DoK, who so far have only been mentioned in the background.

Damn, that’s quite a bit more than I expected. A new head for the giant, a new carrion mini, a more functional scorpion. Cool.

I liked his pot belly, reminds you it’s orcish and not just a skinny dragon.

I would imagine that they’re comfortable using this older wyvern for promo shots one way or another. Pretty sure that they’ve shown the old Bret battle standard bearer, which has also been replaced (in that there’s the new resin one).

I agree but would note that in fairness it does go beyond Kragnos. It took us about almost 3 editions to get Stormcast characters with any personality or interest at all, and there's still plenty of factions with either no characters or no character who are not originally from WHFB. Don't get me wrong, there's tons of good characters - almost every character in Death and Destruction for one - but for a long time it was not an unreasonable attitude to hold, at least to some degree.

That was the case for metal and resin minis, though plastics were sculpted at three times the scale (before the adoption of more CAD and such). Here’s some for the old SM veterans, as shared by Darren Latham on twitter:

This dude's an interesting one as he was actually resculpted slightly between being previewed (a painted mini and all) and being released as a games day mini. The older version only had the lower pair of horns, had a more conventional round helmet, and lacked the big skull-pole. Can't find a picture but it was a better mini imo. All part of the lineage of 'chaos champions looking badass dual-wielding axes', going back to Slambo. RE: the Bretonnian lord, good mini. Face isn't great but that's mostly the sculpting around the eyes.

This. A new verminlord seems unlikely as well, given that the current one is an End Times mini. These seem doubtful.

Daaaaamn Ushoran is creepy

A combat patrol “fixed list” game mode for AoS could only be a good thing imo