EonChao

Not quite, AoS and 40k both share the same studio within GW (along with Underworlds, Warcry and Kill Team). That's why you hear people talk about both the main and specialist studios, there's only really two. So miniature designers in the main studio can work on all five games that fit into the main studio (I'm not sure how specialist studio divides its work force) whilst rules designers seem to work on separate games but they all report to the same overall studio head.

Sadly that's exactly how some businesses work. It's a symptom of very significant silo mentality in the business. It's less about charging each other for their services internally (that's almost certainly over simplifying it), but more about proving the value of each department's contribution. So the studios very much need to justify how much time they spend on each project, likewise the different online stores will each have their own stats regarding this. And one thing that some people hate to have in those scenarios is to have to argue about how much of a products failure (or success but usually it's due to worries about perceived failures and blame) belongs to each department involved in delivering it.

Here me out, Skaven vs Idoneth as the first set in a new season set in a flooded city. The rumour is it's some sort of jump pack hero for Sisters so that could be part of the base used to make it look like they're jumping. Honestly I'd love a more Necromunda/Gorkamorka/Mordheim themed game set in the Blight City, with each clan of Skaven represented by a different warband, that's a lot more focused on the campaign and narrative side of things than Warcry, especially with the Skaven promotion system of dead man's shoes.

You never know, they might sneak in a spare copy of Dominion into a box with the new figure just to clear warehouse space They've used Battleforce as a product title in the past for none Christmas stuff. The Christmas thing is a fairly new thing in the grand scheme of things. Previously it's been used for the start collecting equivalents as well (back in the days of 3rd and 4th ed 40k)

Birmingham has been running games in which the heroes leading each players armies can try and escape Gheist's Isle's harbour in the face of an invading army to prepare to bring reinforcements to save the city, using a board made from Cursed City tiles, which is really cool. The Derby store has updated with a description of Goblet Gate's location, trade and history. They're also having a painting contest using to determine the city guard's colour scheme with free minis to use to do so. Might be worth seeing if your local store is doing the same. To the south of the Living City in the realm of Ghyran, lies the region of Futilla Wood. The ancient trees cast long shadows and the haunted glades chime to the sound of tainted beasts. Sitting proud on an outcrop of solid Gyranite realm stone, the city of Goblet Gate guards the eastern approaches to Futilla Wood. Famed for it's fine wines produced in the rich, loamy soils surrounding the city, Goblet Gate has become a major trading hub suppling The Living City, the Phoenicium and many other great bastions of order beyond. However, the city has a dark history... Once it used to be the seat of a another master, an undead monster who was banished with sword and flame centuries before. Many citizens still tell the tale that the Goblet their famed city was named after was once used to collect the blood of its people for sinister and dark rituals. They even say that armies are mustering in the haunted woods beyond the city ready to claim the city for themselves and secure the treasures still sealed away in the bedrock and catacombs of the troubled city. Now in the darkest of nights, screams ring out once more and the city guard are hard pressed keeping law and order. People are going missing and murmurings of a dark prophesy coming true are all that can be heard in the inns and boarding houses of Goblet Gate... Nottingham's city is called Firestrike Vale.

All of the beasties in those pages really deserve to have models in AoS

Beasts of Chaos can take Slaangors and Tzaangors (including Shamans, Enlightened, and Skyfires). So whilst they were released with those armies they were also for Beasts of Chaos. The Warband for Underworlds looked great and it being no longer available is nothing unusual, all the Beastgrave ones are. The Endless Spells and terrain were sculpts specifically for AoS, so even if the Beastlord could be argued to be an unused WFB sculpt (which it probably wasn't) they definitely had time and effort put into them. Likewise we know the main studio staff were improving the overall Beastmen look from Underworlds and the various 40k Beastmen they produced. And they were featured regularly as Chaos forces in novels, instead of pushing something else instead. So it was almost certain they were considering keeping a hold of the range for AoS until something change internally for TOW.

Shuffling the Beasts of Chaos into TOW likely reduces the amount of product that they're likely to need to make as TOW is a much more specialist system than AoS with likely smaller levels of stock that need to be maintained betweened the webstore and physical locations. However I buy into the idea that they've been moved to TOW because they're the older kits. Because there's nothing to replace them then they've been removed from AoS so that each sale of a Beasts kit can be a confirmed sale for TOW metrics wise. It's stupid idea but it's exactly the sort of weirdness that a big company would do just because it makes one person higher up have an easier job. Personally I'm wondering if Beasts were meant to stay in AoS as a faction but weren't due for a range refresh until late 4th, early 5th and someone higher up told them to pull the plug now to make things easier on the finance team. I suspect it'll be a long time before we hear anything concrete though

Honestly if you speak to anyone currently working in, or formerly in, head office, and even on a retail side of things, Age of Sigmar vastly out performs the last years of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Whether or not TOW will outperform it eventually remains to be seen but probably not with how inaccessible the game is for new players. It's great it's back but it still has a lot of the issues that WFB had. Wasn't it also mentioned in Dark Harvest that Kurnoth is stirring in his "death"? I'm not 100% because it's been a while since I read it but it rings a bell. GW's main issue over the last 5 years has been production capacity. They just can't keep up with it demand for most of their products. Much as I hate the line being culled, this is part of the solution. It hit Space Marines last year, it's hitting Stormcast now, the Beasts and Bonesplitters stuff is being shuffled around. People can't afford everything but there's enough people in the hobby now to buy most things. AoS doesn't sell as well as 40k but that's honestly a boon to us. I like the fact that I can still find the FEC box if I look for it, unlike the newest Kill Team one which already might as well not exist. How GW sees it is all that matters. They sold more of it than any other box set. If those sets didn't sell outside of that then that's inconvenient but it still outperformed every other fantasy big box, they just need to make sure they get the balance better this time. And you won't see TOW catch up to AoS anytime soon, it's not new player friendly in anyway. It might outsell Warcry and Underworlds but it's targeting a different target market to them. Likewise 30k won't ever outsell 40k. It does really well from what it seems but it's also probably produced to a much smaller quantity than the average 40k release. It's not an "anti-consumer squatting move." Products have a shelf life and get removed from sale after a certain amount of time in any hobby. When their main issue recently has been production capacity, removing a bunch of older kits so they no longer have to worry about stock probably is an overall consumer benefit on the industry side of things, even if it sucks that we've lost a bunch of models. It'd be anti-consumer if they weren't providing free rules to allow people to continue to using all these models. And remember they did the same with a bunch of Space Marine stuff last year. Some of it got replaced but plenty didn't.

Something to be clear on, it's not a few designers daring to break the boundaries of older stuff, it's all of them. All of the studio staff, in each studio, are fans of Warhammer through and through. They both want to shape it with new creations as well as capture their vision of older existing things and so you get some things that are very strikingly different from what's come before, like the Warsong Revenant, Shadowstalkers, Ossiarch-Bone Reapers and Corpse-Rippa Vulcha, as well as stuff that plays it very safe like the Boingrot Bounders, Grimghasts and Fyreslayers. But either way you'll often find that someone who worked on one think doesn't fit the feel of that faction was done by someone who has had their hand in other models for the faction that you love.

Warcry and Underworlds are both handled by the same studio as AoS, sculpt wise at least. If they're making things in that, especially in Warcry, then it's with a view to use it in AoS. There may be exceptions (and the Sylvaneth are the biggest of those with how diverse the model types are in it even by Warcry standards), but their designing them from Heart of Ghur onwards with a vision for how they fit into the current AoS armies rather than just being explorations of the niches of factions like Warcry 1.0 was for Chaos Underworlds probably isn't in danger. It seems to sell well and be fairly popular event wise. From a design perspective it's a useful testing ground for new sculptors and existing ones to flex their muscles and make some truly inventive new models. I do think they'll move away from including them in the Battle tomes, but they'll still likely get datasheets or have equivalent models in AoS you can use them to represent. Warcry is a bit more uncertain, it seems to be less popular but I think that's why they've moved to the new smaller boxes model with both it and Kill Team. Again it's a useful tool for releasing new units for AoS factions that aren't getting a major focus this edition as well as building hype towards upcoming releases. Like Kill Team it's also probably a decent driver of terrain sales. Depending on what targets they have for it and how important they think it is to have a fantasy skirmish game to not lose sales to the many other ones in the market, it's probably safe. TOW has no effect on AoS resources, separate studios are handling the models and separate studios are handling the rules. The main thing seems to be the supposed siloing of factions to make it easier to track metrics. Like the old resin Maggotkin sorcerer they're probably ideal candidates for making a new hero release to go with a new battletome. I think they'll be safe for now until they do that. That said the Myrmourn and Grimghasts both occupy the same space but with the new regiment system you could see those characters work with those units better in regiments instead of awkwardly being very similar The treelord base thing is because it was a WFB kit, so there are people who brought it and still have it on a square base in their Wood Elf armies. Sales wise they're going to keep them separate though and the Treelord does fit the Kuronoth Hunters/Revenents feel much better than the Dryads. If the Dryads were going to go then they just had the best opportunity to do so with the recent cull. Wood Elves are bound to be no more than a year out for TOW and they were happy to remove the Branchwraith

The Sephulchral Guard were sculpted by the same person who did the Skeletons for Cursed City which defined the look for the late 2nd ed refresh their standard kit got. The whole thing was a process in updating those kits for the new setting I believe.

I was clarifying what they normally do so we don't get a deluge of posts from less aware users also claiming the other characters only available in the Vanguard boxes have "disappeared" off the webstore. There's also been plenty of times that stuff has been marked as sold out instead of temporarily when it's just being repackaged too. If you'll note in my post I did clarify that I'm certain both are getting replaced.

Nope, the Frigate and the Ironclad are behemoths but none of them are artillery

Oh thank you, forgot those

They do go through phases of removing the characters from the Vanguard boxes from the webstore to encourage people desperate to buy them to pick up the box. There's plenty of others like it right now, the Isharen Soulscryer, Fyreslayer Battlesmith, Melusai Ironscale, Magister on Disc, Knight of Shrouds, Branchwych, and Mortisan Soulreaper are all in the same boat. That said both the Grey Seer and Vanguard are certainly getting replaced with new models One of the things I noticed when going through the path to glory campaign stuff happening in stores is that despite there being a point for painting a piece of artillery, there's strikingly few within AoS. I think it's only Cities, Lumineth, Ossiarchs, Ogors and Khorne which have any after the purge, so hopefully Stormcast get something if only to keep some variety in the game.

Cursed City, however, seems to still be in stock. So for an extra £40 you can get some zombies and skeletons, plus a few meddling sigmarites/brave champions of order

When I spoke to my local they said it was fine to build and paint stuff I already had at home in my pile of shame/opportunity. I just had to bring in them or photos of them to prove I'd built and painted them. The only thing required to do instore was to play the games there (mine is just doing 600 point Path to Glory ones) but the staff said if no other players were available when I was they'd play against me.

We're not really debating how accurate he is on the nitty gritty side of things, but whether he has actual sources. The evidence points to yes and the only things he's been inconsistent on is the smaller details. The Ancient was mentioned in B&C list but it was pictured in the codex despite it being a conversion which is practically unheard of in modern GW so an understandable mistake for his source to make depending on where in the supply chain they are. It is a Votann vs Brood Brothers kill team, he just had the wrong info about which Guard kit was getting the update. Likewise he said he'd heard Terminator lord which was incorrect but he still had the correct info about both them getting two new figures over one and that there'd be battleforce boxes in each, and for the Orks and Custodes (even getting it right that the Ork one would have a Stompa in it which I don't think anyone would have guessed).

I know they're a Great Horned Rat cult but there's crossover in their methods and how Nurgle works. I'm thinking with the rise of Skavendom and the asscension of the Great Horned Rat into full Chaos God, it means the other will want revenge. Nurgle manipulates Clan Pestilens to spreading a new disease, that infects even Stormcast, but the ruse is revealed when the plague also decimates the Skaven armies across the realms

Beasts of Chaos is an option so everyone should put it to show we want them in AoS

Just a thought, what if the reason the Plague Monks aren't being replaced is because there'll be a big focus on Nurgle in the end of 4th edition's campaign. Of the four Chaos Gods, their faction needs the most attention in terms of expanding it, and a major plague would be something that Death can take advantage of and push back against which leads to the rumours of Death being a protagonist part of the new narrative. It wouldn't be difficult to do an Ironjawz size release with a new priest, new monks, new censer bearers and a couple brand new things. They just need to keep the few plastics in circulation to keep them relevant, like with the old 'ard boyz. I don't like the guy, and he was wrong plenty of times in the past, but the last time he got something wrong was the Black Templars Ancient and that was based on a photo of a conversion in the codex that was leaked to him so would have seemed completely credible.

Plenty of them start off that way but the biggest ones like Valrak and a few others do have genuine sources. The ones who don't quickly disappear as they start making incorrect guesses based on community hopium.

Employees will rarely admit to big things like that if they aren't public yet, if they even know at all. It sucks but they know they'd be at risk of losing their jobs. That's why some people leak things, to get an outlet for stuff their excited or concerned about. If a company is a bit more lax of rumours you might get the odd tease but it will almost entirely about something positive. I've been fortunate enough to be friends with people working both in the studio and the community team over many years of gaming in the East Midlands and I think I've had at most... maybe 3 hints about upcoming releases in all that time at. And one of those was knowing a very believable rumour being passed around was wrong. The rule of thumb is you don't ask about these things, because if you learn about something big like a new game or army, or something being removed from sale, and it gets out, then you potentially cost your friend their dream job. And if you do find out something then you keep it to yourself. This is why you had so much radio silence about Cursed City, people knew what went wrong but because GW weren't saying anything as a company no one wanted to stick their head above the parapet and risk losing it all over a game that wasn't available anymore. Something as big as ranges being removed from a flagship game... that's the sort of thing that they'd really crack down on due to how negative the PR impact is from it.

The Mortal Realms and Stormbringer magazines might count here. Whilst not published by GW themselves they do have a bunch of lore included in them specific to themselves. Off the top of my head this includes a full campaign using the models in the magazine, in universe documents about the undead and beasts of the realms, narrative about battles involving various factions that might or might not be in the army books and, certainly in Stormbringer, a new City of Order that the narrative focuses on a little.