Ledgington

Lumineth as the Autumn Order tome wouldn’t be surprising, as they’re the only Order army without a 3rd edition tome or an update in White Dwarf. They don’t really need any more single heroes other than the River and Zenith mages. But at the very least I’d hope they get a new cover… If River Temple is coming it would likely be three kits like the Mountain and Wind temples. A mage, a unit and a sprit. It wouldn’t surprise me if Tyrion doesn’t make an appearance until quite a bit later as I’d hazard a guess he’s more closely related to the Zenith temple who were described the least in their first tome. The Zenith is likely the most important temple. The Zenith itself appears to essentially be were the light of Hysh comes from, so basically the sun of the Realm of Light. And there’s evidence to suggest that Tyrion is associated with sun symbols and a phoenix in a similar fashion Teclis is associated with a moon and the Celennar. A phoenix would make sense for the Zenith spirit. Tyrion first woke up alone in Hysh and wandered to the realm edge communicated with a mysterious being there and then woke up with Teclis back in the center of the realm. The being was likely Asuran who in the Old World was the head of the elven pantheon associated with a phoenix, holy fire and was married to the moon goddess who made Teclis’ staff. However saying that, I could be completely wrong. And I’d be up for a huge new wave with all of that.

Not to mention the Black Coach

Dale Lucas… His book ‘Realm Lords’ was pretty lack luster. Do I allow myself to get hurt again in the vain hope that he does a better job this time? In order to explore more of Settler’s Gain and get to see interactions between Lumineth, Kharadron, Stormcast and Daughters of Khaine, it’s pretty likely I will…

Strange that Season of War: Thondia has a code in the back but there’s nothing in the app to be unlocked with it. Maybe they are planning a Path to Glory app?

There’s a Van Denst short story on the BL as part of their annual celebration. It’s pretty good, makes Doralia look like a badass and gives a little flavor as to how the Order of Azry operate. Perhaps more interestingly, it ends with a short extract from ‘Hallowed Ground’. I’m definitely excited to get my hands on that novel now

Replace ‘GW’ with Teclis. Don’t you see? That’s the Idoneth lore you’re living it

Not to my knowledge. But the storyline in AoS has been moving fast, it’s been centuries since the realm gate wars already leaving little room for established mortal characters like the Van Denst’s. I’m not sure if the time between the necroquake and Broken Realms has been directly stated anywhere but the plot appears to move at a rate of decades. Where was Gelan sounded like he was on his last legs at his introduction. So maybe the plot is going to slow right down from now on. But I wouldn’t be surprised if his kit got turned into a generic witch Hunter kit (similar to the Malign Portents kits). Which still leaves room if he is popular enough to turn up again later. Witch Hunter Stormcast would be pretty cool after all. Edit: just remembered Prince Jordain from the Realm Slayer audio play. He was a mortal who died and then came back in the second Realm Slayer as a Stormcast, so apparently doesn’t take too long to reforge someone

I completely agree with you. At least it was better than the Lumineth’s first novel ‘Realm-Lords’. That read like the author had read the battletome, made a check list of things to reference and ticked them off during a very generic ‘get McGuffin and stop ancient evil’ plot line. Blind kings was an odd misstep by David Guymer, although he’s generally a good writer for AoS (see ‘Champion of the Gods’) so I’m hoping he’s done better with Kragnos.

I think the novel results from the start of the Era of the Beast revolving around him. A lot of the disappointment around him came from many assuming he would be a Kurnothi or BoC character at first, understandably. Personally, I feel his general background and character works for Destruction as a whole; it’s better that the entire grand alliance doesn’t revolve around green skins. His design has grown on me, he just needs some fleshing out and more exciting motives. I don’t see any problem with GW hopefully attempting to do just that. He had a bad war scroll in Broken Realms. It’s gotten better. He mainly buffs charging, so he’s alright in Beastclaw Raiders. Sadly Kruleboyz have no cavalry (aside from the Great nashtoof), so he’s still not a great fit there. Definitely an expensive model. The thing is, as with all GW’s big centrepiece models, they will continue to tweak them until they’re good. I got him for £65 due to my mad eBay skills and precisely because he isn’t very popular right now. I mainly want him to paint and play some narrative games. However, I predict a time in the future where he will have decent rules.

I’m also really looking forward to Kragnos’ novel. Which is strange, considering I was as equally tepid to his reveal as most. However, he’s been growing on me as a character recently, and I’d be interested to see him get more fleshed out as the Era of the Beast gets going (at last). The Van Denst’s book ‘Hallowed Ground’ has piqued my interest too, not just because it’s by Richard Strachan, but because I enjoyed their characters in Broken Realms and hoped we’d see more of them. AoS’ story seems to move so fast I don’t expect human characters too stick around very long (unless Gelan is going to end up as a Stormcast). I’m hoping both books will flesh out the fallout of the siege of Excelsis more than Broken Realms: Kragnos did on its own rather than skirting around advancing the plot like the Dominion novel did…

Winter, Idoneth Spring, Daughters of Khaine Summer, Sylvaneth Autumn = Lumineth 3.0!!! Year of the Aelf, baby!

£130 is pricy, but not terribly surprising when you compare it with Kill Team: Chalnath’s £105 price tag. The boxes have roughly the same amount of models, books and counters the difference is Chalnath’s rather sparse and dull terrain and the amazing terrain in Red Harvest. You’re paying £25 for the terrain. It is a decent chunk of plastic but it depends if that’s worth it to you. I really like the look of the set but I’m definitely going for the 20% discount. GW would have to offer a pretty amazing preorder bonus to get me to order it from their website. Also I think some of the quarrying terrain would look amazing on a board based in any Realm save Azyr. Personally I didn’t pick up Catacombs because I didn’t want anymore of the terrain from the starter kit and I wasn’t that interested in the war bands. I just bought the Catacombs specific terrain, broad and book on eBay. If GW is producing a 2.0 rule set for WarCry I hope they focus on sorting out the balance issue that comes with the number of fighters/activations. Maybe add more thralls based on grand alliance that every war band can use. And a little extra complexity wouldn’t hurt while keeping it simple and fast paced, maybe something in the vain of Marvel Crisis Protocol (a nice system, but marvel superheroes feel a little creatively bankrupt to me. Plus I’m not sure how they’re going to keep it going once they’ve worked their way through the 50 Marvel characters anyone cares about).

After thirty years the HeroQuest Barbarian finally found some trousers. I’m just so proud of him

I can imagine the limited edition models are actually quite difficult for GW to design. Imagine they did put out a new maneater, but as a one day preorder and then everyone who missed out on it would be stuck with the old finecast models. This form would be brimming over with negativity about what an awful decision of GW’s that would be. Maneaters just need a new permanent kit. The choice has to be an example like a Primaris lieutenant or Knight-Questor exactly because they aren’t desperate for a permanent update. Vampire lords are another good choice because they recently got a new sculpt and the Underworlds warband essentially gave them four more. It’s nice to see AoS get more varied examples and moving away from two new Knight-Questors a year that no one uses. However, anything else would have to be something that doesn’t desperately need a replacement like an Idoneth tidecaster, Sylvaneth Arch-revenant or Ogor Tyrant. Something that you won’t miss too much once it’s gone.

The GW email from yesterday referred to the new warband as ‘Darkoath Warriors’, so I don’t think they’re Khorne specifically

I wonder if the name ‘Slaughterborn with greatblade’ would suggest you can equip him with different weapons?

Big sword chap could be the guy hiding in the back of the Harrowdeep artwork

Yeah, something like that could work. I’d still like something more off the wall like an interesting Death or Destruction warband to go with the Order warband we got in Catacombs

If that was done right that could be a nice addition to the rules and help balance the game. Although personally I still think Varanguard would be a boring choice. WarCry isn’t supposed to be the elites fighting, it’s supposed to be scrappy warbands with maybe one elite fighter as the leader. Something like spider cultists are much more interesting. As nice as unmounted Varangard would be for StD players, I’d prefer they be added outside of WarCry

They also explained it all in the product description for the books. It really wasn’t sneaky at all. And again, the first book is still valid if you’re not using the Wind temple

I don’t think it’s terribly likely that varanguard would be the opposing side in Red Harvest. At least not a full warband of them. The sides in these boxes tend to be a similar size and one varanguard should be worth several spider loving cultists. Plus there’s the problem that as the rules stand in WarCry, competitive warbands are filled with cheap fighters the give you more activations. There’d just be a warband of four varanguard drowning in a sea of giant rats, aetherwings and pot grots. And it would be horrifying….

Lumineth were a very small line before the second wave, so it could be argued they did need it even if it came unexpectedly quickly after their initial release. I think a lot of problems people had with the second tome could be alleviated with a small amount of product research which is something that anyone concerned with how much they’re spending on a hoody should be doing anyway. But I agree with you. Lumineth are good where they are for the foreseeable future. In the ‘Era of the Beast’ I’d really love to see some beastie releases, big BoC and Skaven line refreshes, a wave of Kurnothi for Sylvaneth and maybe some releases with big monsters for other armies. Like sea monsters for Idoneth and land beasts for Ogors. Even with little to no evidence of any of that happening

The second battle tome was just the first with the added material from Broken Realms: Teclis for people who didn’t have the first battle tome. If you didn’t want to run the Alumnia or Helon nations or use the spell lore if the Wind mage or Teclis you never needed to buy a second book and could have run a Lumineth army using only the first battle tome and the errata

Yeah, I don’t think there will be another for awhile. Tyrion is supposed to be heading towards Ulgu, which would be a big lore event as it was established that gods of light and not supposed to be able to step foot in Uglu and the Malerion can’t enter Hysh. And in one of the short stories Malerion was just planning on continuing to play it nice with Tyrion by gifting him the remains of a mountain spirit recovered from Shyish. It’s possible that would be more like Gordrakk heading towards Azyr and take a couple of years to manifest if it ever really does. Even if the Shadow aelves get a release sooner, which the Harrow deep rule book seems to hinting at. I’m still not sure why people are so salty about the second Lumineth release. Broken Realms: Teclis was more like a supplement to the first tome and includes a bunch of new lore and cool extras like the Settler’s Gain rules. It didn’t replace the first fully, it just added two nations and a spell lore, the warscrolls were available online, frankly so were the nations and spell lore if you knew where to look. Plus all the rules are on the app now which is currently free, at least for beta.

Lumineth are my main army. I too wouldn’t really mind if there was new lore and cool models to go along with a new book. I don’t need to buy them all at once