The Brotherhood of Necros

Even the dragons are being positioned as inherently evil creatures, from the way today‘s article was written. 🤨

I agree, and I think they made the right choice for the game. I grew up with WHFB from 5th edition and am so excited for its return. I’d still love to read novels about those times, though! And for all that it sounds like AoS on the surface, I don’t get the same feeling from AoS. I’ve no real attachment to the setting; I don’t care about what happens or feel the threats. I’m not sure I could put into words how or why, though! Even on the grand world stage of WHFB’s Great Catastrophe; it was just that: a world stage. One world, so carefully nurtured and shaped over millennia, and vulnerable, brought almost to the point of ruin beneath a sudden tide of Chaos that threatened everything. The stakes were tangible. The slann, few even then, and irreplaceable. Precious, in many ways, and selfless. Everything has a last stand feel to it that (to me) still feels intimate and close and more relatable than AoS has ever been (to me). The Age of Chaos in AoS is just so huge a concept/event as to be meaningless, I think. It’s lost on me. I can’t frame it. I’m building up a new Lizardmen army for the Old World and I can’t wait for the PDF! EDIT: I wonder, too, if it’s something in the fact that WHFB had these epic roots, which are now largely lost to the modern setting. Perhaps I appreciate its more contained fantasy feeling, it’s street-level dramas, because I can see what was lost, and vice-versa. If the gods were all still walking around and making mischief in the current timeline, like they do in AoS, there wouldn’t be anything epic or poignant about the catastrophe because it’s no different to any other day, and I wouldn’t be so in awe of it. So WHFB has nuances and changes in tone that I don’t necessarily get from the more one-note AoS.

I wasn’t sold on the description of this invasion as being our Horus Heresy or Siege of Terra, even if I get why they’ve chosen it. To my mind, that kind of epic storytelling has to be the Great Catastrophe and everything surrounding it. Continent-spanning wars. The elves, dwarfs, and Lizardmen at the heights of their powers, standing fast against the sudden onset of Chaos. Slann, calling down comets and raising mountains. Armies of temple guard holding the line. Grimnir, facing off against hordes of daemons. The dragon emperor and his children defending what would one day become Cathay. Everything the elves put into desperate action to stem the tide… I want novels about the slann turning their mind to the continents and pulling them apart. The wars against the native species and all their ancient civilisations. The dragon ogres making their pact. A race retreating from oblivion at the hands of the saurus to the depths of the sea. Aenarion’s many battles. The ancestor gods. The fall of the gates and how each race was impacted! Getting goosebumps just thinking about how awesome and sublime and epic it would be! I appreciate that’s going too far back for the game, practically speaking, and isn’t inclusive of all the modern-setting armies people still play with. But I can’t see the Siege of Praag as coming anywhere close to those events, even if it was undeniably important.

Going by the size of the new Dawnbringers vampire model + wolves/bats contents, and based on previous Dawnbringers box prices, is anyone able to estimate roughly what they reckon the Soulblight Dawnbringers box might RRP at?

I think a new Space Marine squad dropped 🤷

Do we have any rumours for when the next Dawnbringers book will drop? I need that vampire and that snake in my life 😍

Or, if you’re a Chaos spawn, an arm?

Same — I can’t stop staring at it and am already planning an army around her haha! I’ve always loved representations of vampires that capture their undead-ness; vampires who more closely resemble the bloodthirsty corpses of old folklore, as opposed to vampires who just look like beautiful humans or even elves in some representations. (And the less said about sparkly teen vamps, the better.) Her stance, her expression and the way they have painted her (skin tone, face, eyes, pitted armour as if ages old) all call this out, for me at least. She looks quite like a cold, reanimated corpse, which ticks all my boxes. It’s probably why the Necrarchs are historically my favourite bloodline — they epitomise this stuff. But there’s something equally monstrous about the Lahmians when they’re looked at this way; the gifts of their blood are so much more frightening when they’re less a result of natural beauty and more a manifestation of their dark, preternatural will. A Lahmian might have been a beautiful woman (or very occasionally, man) when she was turned, but she’s become a soulless blood drinker all the same, blue-skinned, cold to the touch, and quite feral in her bottomless hunger. The way I like to see it, it’s the peculiarities of her bloodline that make her so supernaturally beguiling, irrationally attractive, able to literally command a man or woman to strike down their neighbour in the heat of battle or follow their new mistress from the field into servitude… I am going to build a Lahmian-themed army from the back of the 6th edition book (the appendix lists) around her and I can’t wait!!! ps. I love snakes haha

WOW. My jaw literally dropped. I am IN LOVE.

Especially not with boxes full of those TK Skellies and the likes💀

This is exactly how I feel, too. I’d sort of made peace with the fact that they probably weren’t going to get those awful sculpts replaced, but seeing them all stuffed into the flagship box for the army, I just can’t believe that’s what they’re going with.

I getcha. It would have to be CRAZY cheap for me to consider it. And even then, I would just be doing it for the dragon. As in, no matter how cheap the box was, those old skeleton sculpt aren’t sculpts I would use. They were bad decades ago (!) and the standard today is so much higher. Why not put forward a box of updated sculpts that genuinely excite people? A box that even old-time players will look at and think “I need those new skellies — they’re insane!” We know they have the talent. And you can’t say they haven’t had time! For the first time, I’m understanding people’s concern about them cashing in on nostalgia. That is the only reason I can imagine them thinking they can reproduce those awful old sculpts and assuming people will be excited about them. Perhaps people will fork out for the box to get the dragon, but will they be excited about the rest of those skellies? The rest of the box? The launch? I don’t know the first thing about producing a wargaming product that will sell, but this just doesn’t feel right. (And to make it perfectly clear, I so want The Old World to be a success and for lots of ranges to get exciting new minis! For me, at least, the nostalgia is returning to the setting! Not its oldest, jankiest plastic sculpts…)

Surely… no one is going to buy that box? (I am exaggerating but I can’t imagine many people will?) I love WHFB. I grew up with it, and I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting than to return to it… …but this is not the way 😔

I feel like we can see the bone of its forearm?

I think someone on here suggested there would be 13 factions represented in total, and they listed them all out in emoji form, although I wouldn’t be able to cite that.

It screams-screams Skaven, yes-yes! But the Nurgle symbols do seem to throw a rusty spanner in there…

I had to vote for the slann. 🐸

I’d also love a reimagined Tomb Kings army but made from ghouls! A Bliskerskin offshoot in Hysh, whose delusion and “culture” has been influenced by the whispering of a Lahmian at Neferata’s behest. Some cruel joke of hers. Slavering Tomb Guard. Monstrous carrion! Abhorrents dripping in Nehekharan-inspired finery: gold death masks and ancient wrappings. Those new bat cavalry mounts pulling chariots. A twisted Sphynx, huge and bald and covered in Ghouls like ticks…

I also loved this note. I think it plays wonderfully into the idea of damsels I was requesting — I could see them all perceiving Neferata’s handmaidens as our damsels of old; otherworldly priestesses to a mysterious Lady. That the court might hang on her every word as prophecy or wise council just makes it all the sweeter when you imagine why Neferata has dispatched her beguiling no-good-doers there in the first place. I could collect a FEC army with a Lahmian “damsel” right now just thinking about it 😅

The second piece of art especially… Just wow. Is that a Thomas Elliott piece? He will be sorely missed 😭

Is… is that an aelf with a beard? 😱 I’m gonna guess… Darkoaths 🤷

Before I go to great lengths to convert some, do we know of any rumours about potential new Flagellants sculpts on the horizon?

I love the idea of turning the dragon into a crocodile. I love the priest and the boat-howdah and all the little bits like the scales/Feather of Maat and of course the cat, who will be joining my Basth-themed Casket of Souls! I will probably get one for all those reasons, but I don’t think the whole model works together as it was intended.

Very cool story!

Even though I’d love Ushoran to have agency, it would be so fitting for that agency to be delusional. Not to speak of how it mirrors the Bretonnian’s unwitting obeisance to a greater power. Poor guys can’t seem to catch a break 😅 Could the courts pay homage to, and respect the word of, their own Flay Enchantress, not realising she’s the mouth of Nagash all along? 😂