Neil Arthur Hotep

I agree to an extent, but from the perspective of GW as a business all their games need to grow and attract new players to justify their existence. That can mean different things for different games, of course. I imagine GW would be happy with Killteam not being a huge seller on its own if it acts as a pipline into 40k proper, for example. What that would mean for TOW is a big question. Maybe growth for TOW means "a sufficient number of WHFB players return and some AoS players get a TOW army as their second game". But if that is the plan, then it is predicated on the profit margin of the game staying high because the market is small. In terms of models, that probably means keeping a lot of old kits in production for a long time to keep costs down and pricing new character kits as "enthusiast" models (forge world prices). I don't know about you, but I am not really blown away if that is the perspective. It's better than nothing, and having OOP kits available again is pretty nice (definitely picking up some of those 8th ed Tomb Kings kits), but it doesn't exactly make me want to jump in with TOW. I think a lot of people were hoping for something resembling the level of support that AoS gets (like, appropriately scaled to what is feasible for a side game). Consistent smaller army updates, refreshes of old kits, cool narrative campaigns with new kits, that kind of thing.

I think @Flippy's post was a jab at the age of the Tomb Kings skeleton kits. It's actually my criticism of the TK and Bretonnia relaunch, specifically: Those two factions desparately need updated plastic kits. Other factions that will be making their return (High Elves, Wood Elves, Orcs and Goblins...) are much better off in that regard. Many Fantasy models still hold up. It's just that TKs and Bretonnia are largely not among that group.

After TOW news I always take a look at Warhammer Fantasy groups and content creators to see what they have to say. On the WHFB subreddit, people seem generally excited about the rules reveals and the contents of the Tomb Kings box. There are some people voicing their disappointment that the old skeletons were not updated, but there are also a bunch of people saying they like the old sculpts. The real question, of course, is how many people would be wishing for a return of the 5th ed skeleton kit if we had actually got an updated TK kit instead (I suspect it would be a vanishingly small number). Still, the reception among the target audience seems positive right now. The big question in my eyes is how TOW intends to grow its player base beyond established WHFB players that have not moved on to AoS. Currently, we are looking at a game with more difficult rules, worse sculpts and probably more models needed to play compared to AoS. The old sculpts and number of models especially are something I view as barriers to winning over current AoS players: They are informed enough to know that GW could do better in terms of sculpts and they know what they are getting themselves into with 100+ model armies. That leaves the question of how to attract completely new players to the game. It seems to me that TOW would have to do so on the strength of its IP (old world setting) and maybe price point (if they make it cheap). GW can't just keep pandering to WHFB player nostalgia indefinitely; it's not a recipe for sustained growth. I want to see what they do to bring new people into the game after the inital launch period is over.

I struggle to see it as anything but a cold-hearted business decision. Putting old kits back in production is free money in so far as it makes additional profit from molds that have already paid for themselves. I understand that reusing many old kits might have been a necessary thing to do to get the TOW project greenlit at all, but "Hey, look at all those nostalgic models" is just post-fact marketing spin, IMO.

The guys to the left of it in the group shot? Those are the regular Tomb Kings skeletons, I'd recognize that weird ballet pose anywhere:

That amount of models is straight up insane. I remember when I started Tomb Kings with their battalion box (16 Spearmen, 16 Archers, 8 Cav and 3 Chariots) and the amount of grey plastic was already completely paralysing to me as a beginner. I cannot imagine building 60 of those old skeleton kits in the year 2024 and not immediately losing interest.

They are so bad that even five years ago I opted to put them all on Nighthaunt horses instead of building them straight. And five years ago I still thought Reaper Bones stuff looked pretty good.

New FAQ for Cities, apparently, but I cannot tell what has been changed.

It does look a lot like the Soul Shepherd's censer.

I really want that Ophidian Archway, but not enough to pay eBay prices.

POV: You are riding a chaos dwarf motorcycle.

Maybe some cubic metallic mineral deposits could be a good visual cue? Should be fairly easy from a hobby standpoint, too.

Going to go with Tahlia Vedra for Cities of Sigmar representation. Hope she has a chance!

I would have said Hysh, because to me Hysh always has this feeling of ancient civilizations lost to time. I don't know if that is just me, though, but I always imagine Hysh as being filled with the ruins of all kinds of ancient cities that nobody remembers the names of anymore. I think its the lore connection to philosophy and the kind of sterile feeling you get from the realm that makes me think of the ruins of ancient high cultures. Maybe for this picture it is the bright sun and white stone that do it. Although any realm can have any type of geography, of course.

My suggestions would be to put Blizzard on the Alchemite instead of Levitate if you are playing with GHB stuff. Otherwise, I think Transmutation of Lead still makes a little more sense on him than Levitate. I would also suggest that you cut the Gravetide and promote one of the non-hero Luminarks to Battlemage on Luminark for the extra order and extra cast. Non-hero Luminarks cannot issue themselves commands, but they can make use both of Unleash Hell and the Return Fire order, so the extra 30 points for the Battlemage get you a lot of good stuff.

Can anyone tell from the article how many spells a high level wizard will be able to cast? As I understand it, a level 4 wizard will know 5 spells and cast at +4. But how many of those spells will they actually be able to cast per turn?

This is the second time I hear people talking about taking multiples of the Command Squad. I think there is something to be said for it. 3d3 healing doesn't sound like much, but I remember the Legions of Nagash days where you would frequently stack a lot of incidental d3 heals into a unit. If you get them "for free" without having to cast a spell or give a command, those little heals are actually really impactful over the course of a game. After sitting down and really looking at the command squad, their wounds and damage output are actually quite good for their points. You can definitely get away with treating them as a front line unit instead of a pure support thing that needs to be screened and protected.

GWs battletome schedule is kind of hard to make sense of. Sometimes factions get three books in three years, like Lumineth, and sometimes it takes 5 years between battletome updates, like Seraphon. I would say it is possible that we see another CoS book early next edition. Maybe even next year. During the design interviews they talked about not being able to fit all their ideas into the first wave, and while the Freeguild does not exactly feel like half an army the way Lumineth did at first or Kruleboyz still do now, you can definitely see pieces that are still missing (Ironweld stuff, Devoted to Sigmar, Greatsword-equivalents...). Recently, GW seems to be more willing to do supplement pdfs, so I am hoping that is the way they go with updating CoS. Maybe an early battletome in 4th edition, and then supplement updates to elves and dwarves over time.

The forked parchments really do indicate that these are Cities of Sigmar. No idea how a burning skeleton impaled on a bunch of pipes fits in the range, though. Maybe it's a warcry warband of fanatical weirdos?

I would also predict a restructuring of the Skaven faction. And that would probably result in a bunch of kits getting removed without a real replacement, as well. Just look at Cities: The Freeguild used to have three variants of Guard and Greatswords, now only Steelhelms. They used to have Crossbowmen and Handgunners (and arches in the before-times), now only Fusiliers. Demigryph Knights, Pistoliers and Outriders, now only Cavaliers. I personally welcome the move towards fewer redundant units and I think overall it is good for AoS factions not to cling to the units established by WHFB forever. But because that is the current mode of operation for GW, I think we whould expect Skaven to lose a bunch of kits, as well (although hopefully picking up some new stuff along the way).

I think this is quite likely, especially given how early in development they were when they announced that TOW was in the works. They were still in an extremely early part of the project when they made their announcements regarding Kislev and Kathay. I don't think they were straight up lying about those factions being considered for TOW. I am sure they actually wrote rules for them just like the articles said and worked closely with the Total War: Warhammer people on their development. But of course, working on these factions as part of the TOW project and actually committing to putting their models into production are completely different things. Even though we knew about the development of TOW early, for a long time the shape the game would take was really unclear. I definitely think a scaling back of the scope of the game happened at some point, but then again the original perfect vision for the game (all factions supported with new kits) was never all that realistic in the first place.

Without wanting to be contrarian, I find it hard to suggest endless spells right now because endless spells have been so unstable when it comes to their rules this edition. Their points change all the time and their rules change with every General's Handbook it feels like. Plus, it seems really hard right now for non-magic-focused armies to make good use of endless spells at all. I agree with @Landohammer, above 80 points just slap a Gyrocopter or some Aetherwings in there. Otherwise, maybe going for a triumph instead is not so bad.

I saw some people speculating that charging a unit that fell back after combat would immediately restart combat in the same turn after last weeks article. This article seems to suggest that this is not the case, and that the fight would continue in the following combat phase.

I voted "no". I don't see any narrative groundwork or marketing that would suggest another new army before the end of the edition. At least, that's what things look like right now. Maybe after FEC are out and the narrative of Dawnbringers VI is known, things will be different. However, if Skaven are indeed the 4th ed starter army, that should be a pretty big release, so I don't know if there is even room to fit another big model wave in between now and Summer next year. Separately from that question, I think the order of likelyhood for new factions is like this: Chaos dwarves (have been mentioned in a lot of battletomes over the course of the edition, Horns of Hashut exist) Destruction army (Drogrukhs? This is the Destruction edition, after all, and Kragnos is looking for them as part of the narrative of Dawnbringers) Grungni dwarves (The return of Grombrindal and Grungni was a big plot point in Broken Realms, but so far nothing has come of it) Malerion elves (Did you know that 99% of gamblers quit just before hitting the jackpot?)

I have a hunch that there was a fairly significant disruption of the AoS release schedule during year 1 and 2 of 3rd edition. Nothing concrete, of course, but I think Cities was supposed to come a lot earlier (their pre-release periode was super long for no discernable reason) and I think that at least one more Season of War with another Incarnate was planned for Gallet. Plus there was the long content draught in the beginning of the edition. I think that is part of the reason why we are now seeing a lot of fairly significant releases very close to each other.