Freypal

Depends how many armies you want to play. You'd normally be buying a codex/tome for each army whereas this gets you rules for 9 armies. If you just want to play one army it's the rulebook plus one of these books. So not really any different to AoS/40k?

Great news

Lovely replies and insights, thanks 🙂 it's always fun to read other people's histories in the game and feelings. I'd agree on the AoS realms being hard to imagine. I've tried to base all my armies in Ghyran and head canon reasons for them to interact and work together. Just finding a decent map of it is hard enough, let alone one that is fleshed out. Exciting times ahead.

I'm wondering how other people are planning to balance AoS and ToW? I got back into Warhammer a few years ago. In my childhood I played WFB and 40k. On returning to the hobby, obviously WFB had been blown up and so I got into AoS and really enjoy it. It's been interesting seeing how the setting has developed over that time. I don't plan to stop collecting or playing AoS but I just can't ignore the pull of the old world either. My large dwarf army can finally return and I always craved a bretonnian army so that's my launch box sorted. I'm finding though I'll have a lot of crossovers with my collections... Cities of sigmar humans and bretonnians. Cities of sigmar duardin and dwarfs. Gloomspite and orcs and goblins. I guess my AoS choices were trying to recreate what I had in WFB! I'll likely end up trying to use some models in both formats but it kind of feels a bit strange to be doubling up and I'm not sure how I'll end up splitting my hobby time. Has anyone else thought about this? Or just accept I'll have twice as many armies now 😂

I dug my old tomb king skeleton troops out yesterday and I have to say I don't mind them. I agree the horses are bad, but the human skeletons... I actually quite like them 🙂

Lots to pick from on that list. I went with Trugg the Troggoth King. Really like that model and the fun details on it. The new stuff in the gitz range is all amazing though.

I hope they streamline the units too. E.g let's not have 3 warscrolls for paladin variants... especially now we're have annihilators to add to the mix.

These are gorgeous. I was planning on painting mine up in a similar theme to this! good to see some inspiration

The new Gotrek novels are very good. They're written from the perspective of Gotrek waking up in the mortal realms and knowing nothing about them. So as the stories progress he is introduced to the various factions and realms, so you learn about the setting along with him. I found as someone new to AoS they were both great stories and really useful to get a background on the setting too.

I really just want to know the long term direction of cities and dispossessed... Will they be forever there, will they disappear altogether or will they get rolled into a new faction etc... Disappointingly little in the way of dwarf rumors in general

Mixed feelings on the cities reveal and news. Great to see the human elements revamped (really like the new models and definitely something i want to get into) but disappointed with Ironweld going. As an old WFB Dwarf player I had just picked up the Dwarf regiment of renown box with a view to starting a Dispossessed force to complement my FS and KO. I really enjoyed the recent Grombrindal novel which had given me hope and enthusiasm for the 3 distinct Dwarf factions getting more focus. Not sure whether there is any point now...? Looks like half of the start collecting greywater box is going to be axed (gyro/cogsmith) so that's now a pointless purchase and it feels like there are no actual rumours on a classic Dwarf range / new army. So as far as I can see there is nothing to say this is little more than a stay of execution for Dispossessed for 1 more cycle... And then that's with an even further reduced range of models than they have now... death by a thousand cuts...? Hopefully I'm missing something...!

I was excited for the Dwarf regiment box to pick up some discounted classic Dwarfs but that discount is ... Disappointing. I would have thought for what I assume is a poor seller, GW would have wanted to make it more enticing.

And Black Templars ❤️

could this not also be... Order (KO/Seraphon) Vs Chaos Chaos Vs Death (OBR) Standalone death release? Maybe a bigger standalone refresh for FEC?

Of all my AoS armies I reckon Sylvaneth are in a really sweet spot for model and unit variety. Petty much everything has a use and there's not too much overlap. Nor are there any glaring gaps in battlefield roles. You can realistically collect all the models without going bankrupt and then you're able to actually play all of them. As to next year... I'm excited to see what they do with cities mainly but also intrigued to see if anything new comes for seraphon.

I've wondered on this too... Take Dracothian Guard... Tempestors, Concussors and Desolators... 3 warscrolls could become 1. The only rules variation seems to be down to the weapons anyway?

I've enjoyed picking up the odd issue of imperium magazine for models I'm interested in. Especially some of the bigger kits even though they're spread over multiple issues. I've pre-ordered issues with forbidden planet to ensure I get them. Like getting the contents of the old start collecting space marine box across 3 issues... So a start collecting box for circa £27. Even picking up multiple copies of the same issue, I've ended up buying 4 issues of Necron immortals. I'd planned to do the same here. The new non dominion thunderstrike models will be a pickup for me.

Nor FS, despite most of the army being made up of individual hero models... (not counting Gotrek here as he's order-wide).

I hope this is the start of some more long rumoured Dwarven goodness....

I always had a soft spot for the Bretonnian hippogryph in particular. My uninformed guess is the monsters will go... GW seemed to have put a lot of monster ideas into stormcast. A glow up of the hurricanum would be lovely. Just like what they did with the black coach...?

Be interested to see if the humans keep their large mythical monsters of old (or indeed get new and different ones). Thinking the heroes on griffon for example. Or if they'll become more "grounded" with troops, horses and war machines only. I'm hoping there's some kind of monster mount still for a bit of variety.

As an owner of a large WFB Dwarf army from back in the day, and an owner of both FS and KO.... I'd love for them to flesh out the dispossessed to round out the Dwarf line. The lore is there, they're still kicking around with it written that they're striking out to reclaim lost Karaks but they're just in the background. Armoured troops, war machines... classic archetype... think they'd complement the current armies well. Even if it ends up being a high elf to Lumineth type reboot, there's definitely space for them. I thought this had been teased at too in not to distant stories. Grombrindal and Grungni working at something to unify them... Hoping it still means some expansion of the Dwarfs is on the cards.

This is up on the GW webstore now;

I actually feel this way about Stormcast in AoS. I went all in on Primaris-only for a new 40k army and the relatively limited range of Primaris models really helped me as a casual player by limiting the options available. I've accumulated a lot of Stormcast through various boxsets and try as a I might, I just can't get into them and find the roster overwhelming and confusing. Conversely AoS armies with smaller, yet pretty complete rosters like say Sylvaneth, I really like. There's a tool for each job but it's not bloated with redundant options. As more of a collector/painter this allows me to buy pretty much the whole range and enjoy just having the models.

Quite a common use for nuln oil was for creating a nice weathered black. A lot of people paint black templar armour this way, Eshin grey, dawnstone drybrush then a couple of coats of nuln oil to darken it back down and tie it together. Looking at the new nuln oil pics above I can't see this working any more...