Neil Arthur Hotep

I think this is more or less the most plausible explanation right here. GW plans their releases pretty far in advance, but not decades in advance. The decision to remove Beasts from AoS was probably made before the announcement of the TOW core factions in May last year, but probably not long before that. This is conjecture, but I think Beasts were in the same boat as every other old WHFB faction for most of the lifespan of AoS: The plan was probably to update them eventually, but there was no clear time line beyond the current and next edition at any time. TOW getting greenlit made it a necessity to divide factions/model lines between the two games, due to the GW-internal separate profit sheets. I imagine it was at the meeting where this was discussed that the AoS/Citadel team decided that they'd rather give away the BoC line and focus on building another original faction in the future, or something like that. I don't think there is a long running conspiracy and re-distribution of BoC models to other factions or anything like that.

I agree, factions that are legacy in TOW don't have to worry about being removed from AoS. The path for legacy factions to graduate to core faction status is by having their old kits re-released instead, which I think is very possible for Vampire Counts. They have a bunch of old models that some people might want.

Yeah, I was also thinking that it sucks that we have to consider which model lines are safe or in danger at all. It's one thing to note "models that are originally from WHFB are going to very likely get reimagined at some point", but the whole Sacrosanct thing really is a big detriment to the community trust GW has been building the last few editions.

It's a Lord Solar kitbash

An Arch-Cavalier and Freeguild Marshall on Chamonite Cog-Horse

You see a lot of new players asking about optimal weapons for models and worrying about "would you have a problem if I build x but use y rules?" online, though. Perhaps irrationally, since weapon options very rarely did anything significant or when they did the optimal choice was obvious. Plus, as you said, the WYSIWYG police won't come to your house and confiscate your models, anyway. But it is a thing I have seen casual players struggle with in the wild, nonetheless.

I think I'm just kind of burnt out on micro-optimizations. I used to spend ages building characters in RPGs, carefully thinking about every small decision. Before I actually started actively playing, that is. It made me realize that none of those decisions mattered very much except broad strokes once the dice hit the table. The truth is, I don't feel super strongly about this choice, though. I just want either a real choice or no choice. If they had kept separate warscrolls for double hammers and hammer and shield, that would have been impactful enough to justify it for me. It does run up against the realities of painting and modeling units, as I described above, but it's fun. Not the old "swords are 3+/4+, hammers are 4+/3+" design though.

I agree with you and everyone else who likes the idea of having different weapons and loadouts in the rules also reflected on the models. It is cool, in theory. In my experience, it almost always runs up against different barriers in reality, though. People build and paint models one way and then just tell you "these guys have swords but I'm using the spears warscroll, actually". Maybe it's because of a rules change, maybe it's because they built 2 min size squads but now want to try running reinforced, maybe swords just look cooler. And I think everyone agrees that it's unreasonable to expect people to buy, build and paint another unit just for a +1 to hit. Personally, I am more glad that I will get the skip the 15 minute "loadout talk" in future games than I am sad about the loss of fidelity.

Certainly a big change. Looking at the Tomb Guard with shields that I have been proxying as Grave Guard with great wrapons for the past edition, though, I know it's not as big a deal as it feels at first.

Yet, reading most of that I feel like I know exactly what it means. Damage and health are extremely intuitive: You have health, you take damage. Skull ability? Bad stuff that happens when you take damage. Big number on a spell ability? Must be cast value. Wizard (9)? 9-cast wizard. Rampage is just monstrous rampage. Only power level is unfamiliar, really. Of course, I am only able to understand it easily because I know how AoS works and what Nagash's warscroll did before. And I am sure there will be some new wrinkles when the full rules are out. Monstrous rampages seem to work differently now, for example. But as far as intuitively and quickly communicating info, I think the new warscrolls look pretty good.

I only have one Stormcast, a Knight-Azyros: I convertes him for my Cities back in 2nd edition when he gave all ORDER units +1 to hit. He has been on the shelf for all of 3rd edition, but when I get an opportunity to proxy him for something, you better believe he's coming back.

Reroll 1s/failed/all, mortals on the wound roll, mortals in addition?

Hoping for a Cogfort leading a Steam Tank regiment, actually.

Hopefully they can make this a reality with the new modular rules thing they are pushing. They should absolutely separate their "matched play" and "tournament" modes. My #1 biggest wish list item! Can't wait to see it if it's real. EDIT: Also, all the leftover Empire stuff in Cities will very likely get a replacement instead of being removed outright, so I'm not too worried about those models. The Hurricanum kit is not even in TOW, I think it's actually treated as an AoS kit. Here's some cool art of it which acts as an illustration of the realm of heavens on ageofsigmar.com:

I see a distinction between fully supported armies like BoC. Boneslitterz and Sacrosanct chamber, and models released in side-games like Warhammer Quest. I don't think it's fair to call anyone who engages with the crunch of the game a WAAC player, either. It already kind of sucked in the last edition when Gorslav and Torgilius were temporarily very good in Vyrkos to have to tell new players "you will need to buy this huge bundle of other models you don't care about if you want to run these guys".

They are great as variant sculpts. My current Cities battlemage is Octren Glimscry and I converted up this guy as a Necromancer or Vampire Lord stand in at some point:

Honestly, it's probably better this way. All of them being in this super expensive bundle while being also tournament legal always had the potential to cause an unpleasant pay to win situation. I wonder what that means for continued rules support of Kritza and Annika, though. They were officially AoS models first (even though they were very likely sculpted for Cursed City).

Whoever it was, I remember the evidence was reliable and concrete enough for me to change my mind about it, even though I was initially skeptical that BoC would be removed and argued against mentioning all the points that make their removal so shocking right now. There is a big difference between High Elves being phased out for Lumineth and BoC being phased out for nothing.

I didn't believe it when it was just Honest Wargamer Rob talking about it. Because he's not a reliable source, usually, and he's a bit of a Post Hoc Andy, always saying he called stuff when one of his wild theories turns out true. But we pretty rapidly got confirmation from Whitefang and others. TGA internal, the writing was on the wall from that point. Of course, that's a pretty niche subset of people, so Redditors not being in the know is not surprising. If you only know about Honest Rob's prediction, then you would remember that he was pretty sure Beasts would be souped with S2D at the start of 3rd ed, as well.

I would bet that Orruk Warclans is the only allegiance that exists next book, with Kruleboyz and Ironjawz just acting as two keywords in the same army. We already know list building restrictions are being removed. Makes no sense to silo the two remaining Orruk factions for no reason.

Hi, welcome to AoS! There Ossiarchs have what is called a "Vanguard" box, which is a faction starter set that comes with a discount. They have also had a few other bundles over the years, which you can find by searching for "Ossiarch Battleforce". Those are bigger limited run collection Games Workshop puts out for different factions every year around Christmas. Be aware that we are currently only a few months away from the next edition of the game (4th edition) which will update the rules for all factions. That means nobody can currently give you any advice on what models are good/fun to use/worth buying. But on the plus side, you won't have to buy a battletome (army rulebook) to play

Recognizing that something is wrong even if you are not personally affected is the essence of morality. Not sure what point you are making here.

I honestly think it's quite remarkable that the 1st ed Stormcast look so dated already. There have been some rapid redesigns in early GW history, but I would not have expected it on what is effectively the 9th edition of their fantasy IP. And it's also really interesting that it happened to their new poster boy faction. Other early armies did not age nearly as badly. Well, except Fyreslayers maybe.

They will have rules for the whole of 4th ed, at least.

I could imagine that the long-term plan for Beasts was originally to update them at some point in the future of AoS (out of obligation), and that the AoS team changed that plan when the opportunity to pass responsibility for them along to the TOW guys came along.