Dawi not Duardin

Hey everyone, I think I have got into the "how to develop dwarfs" debate 3-4 times in this thread over the last year, so I thought I should expand on my thoughts when it comes to the Fyreslayers quite a bit to start more discussion. Hence, I posted a new thread over on the Fyreslayers subforum for speculations and suggestions for how they may be improved. Maybe we can take this discussion there? The thrad is available here: Sorry for the shameless plug, but I thought it would also be a nice segue to let this thread go back to its main topic: rumours. Whereas this discussion clearly can go on for a long time!

A lot of people are very critical of the Fyreslayers. In particular, many are critical of the models, but some are also critical of the lore. For me personally, as I was just arguing back in a discussion in the rumour thread, I think they come off as a little bit too single-minded and shallow. I do appreciate that the different lodges have slightly different roles to play, and I like the Magmadroths on top of the familiar slayer aesthetic, but not much more happens than that... This is such a pity as I am a huge dwarf fan deep down. I want them to do well, but they could be so much more than they are. Still, conversations naturally pop up very often about how the Fyreslayers can be improved. Hence, I thought this might be worth a topic on its own. So let's speculate a bit on how they might be improved and make some suggestions. I hope that it can inspire people to think more about how to make Fyreslayers fun. (Just speaking for myslef, siimilar threads have really contributed to my enjoyment of other aspects of AoS in the past.) In the ideal case, perhaps someone at GW even might read it and take inspiration - but that's of course high hopes indeed... Anyway. Just to get the ball rolling, here's a few dimensions in which it would be fun to see them developed. Feel free to add your own suggestions, criticize mine, come up with new domains (or argue that they already are fine in some of them). --- Lore: In my view, they need a shake-up. We need to see them get less single-mindedly focused on reviving Grimnir. Here are a few suggestions for that: (1) Gotrek the anti-theist starts to lead them as some sort of messianic figure. He could inspire either all or a few of them (perhaps ideally the latter) to leave Grimnir behind. Perhaps those Fyreslayers might even start to hang out more with the similarly anti-theistic Kharadron. (2) Another - not inconsistent - possibility is that they actually succeed in resurrecting Grimnir and he starts telling them to do other things than to dedicate their entire culture to resurrecting him. Perhaps he will say it was his plan all along to go away for some time, like Grungni. Or he might tell them to ally with the other dwarfs. Or Sigmar. Or something. (3) One thing that would be fun to bring up more is their 'slayer' aspect rather than their 'fyre' aspect. In particular, it would be fun to see the lodges that have worked with chaos take up an AoS equivalent of the WHFB Slayer oath to atone for their shame. Then maybe the other lodges can proceed to build more normal civilizations, whether inspired by Gotrek or Grimnir, whereas these ones more explicitly act seeking their doom to atone. Or maybe the others even will become a Destruction force? Or a Chaos force? A natural lore development would be to see Fyreslayer society make progress but some of them explicitly rebel against Gotrek or Grimnir and maybe start to follow Hashut. Their fanatical manner of worship does in fact seem to fit Hashut better than Order... (4) Drop the patriarchal bits. Give us slayer queens. Seriously. (5) Another way to tone down the 'fyre' bit and allow for more diversity would be to start to associate them more with other realms than Aqshy. You can easily imagine Deathslayers, Beastslayers, Lifeslayers, Lightningslayers, and so on, with slightly different cultures and aesthetics from the Aqshy ones. I guess it is canon that they exist in all realms, but their aesthetic is very Aqshy-focused. It would be fun to see the concept expanded beyond that. Perhaps they could even be called Realmslayers and we could say that the Fyreslayers were the first installment? (6) While the Kharadron typically have taken on the more pragmatic, realistic, and scientific sides of WHFB dwarfs, the Fyreslayers have taken on their more esoteric sides: the religious/spiritual and rune magic aspects. I think it'd be really interesting to see these emphasized much more. Develop a rune magic system for weapons. Give them a full magic phase with a lore of the runes. They could have some crazy rune-tech implemented in their gear: in war machines, steeds, armour, etc. And perhaps Fyreslayers from different realms can tap into runes from different winds of magic. (7) Similarly, I think we also should nuance them by adding more cavalry and monsters. One thing that admittedly does make Fyreslayers unique is that they are dwarfs who ride monsters. It is easy to think that you could add more droths. But why not think bigger than that? Even if you just want fire-themed monsters, you can easily think of stuff like dragons and phoenixes. But expanding them from one realm to others would open up a tremendous amount of options for different animals and monsters too... The void is the limit if you think of them as realmslayers rather than just realm of fire-slayers. (Or, honestly, why not even have Voidslayers aiming to travel in space and slay space monsters?) In sum, I'd like to see the following things done with them. First, ideological/political/religious nuances between them, leaving room for conflict, drama, and different points of view that doesn't just stem from sheer rage (points 1-4). Second, more nuances to their everyday life that allows them to develop more complex societies and militaries (points 5-7). --- Special characters/warbands: IMO this is a great way to bring flavour to a faction. You can start to see more of their lives and struggles by naming some units and characters, and have their special traits reflected in the models. I would personally like to see at least: (1) A named fighter lord who is the epitome of a traditional army. (2) A named female lord who represents how their traditional society is involving. (3) A named runesmith-type character. (4) A named monster or monster rider. This may alternatively also be an option for one of the above: it would make sense to have any of them on droths, but you could also easily imagine even more esoteric mounts for a runesmith. Why not on a phoenix, for example? (If elves get hammers in AoS, we should get phoenixes!) (5) A named doomseeker/atoner-type character, to give us the traditional Slayer flavour. Perhaps they are ashamed of having taken ur-gold payment from Chaos, or perhaps they are a Runefather whose lodge has died because he wouldn't let their daughter take the throne. This one should however be on foot. (6) You could also use named units or warbands to represent unique groups of Fyreslayers. There could be trollslayers, chaosslayers, giantslayers, or whatever depending on what they aim to slay. This would also be a nice wink to old-school WHFB. --- Models: Well, I want all of the above. 😛 But what is particulaly important here, too, is differentiation. This is a familiar concern among most Fyreslayer fans: even those who like the core idea think there are too few models and they are too similar. (1) We need models with other weapons than axes. (The new guy with hammers is a step forward here.) (2) We need more long-range weapons. Could be either machines or guns, it doesn't really matter. Just anything that increases versatility. (3) We need an armoured elite unit. Just runes in their flesh makes them look too samey. Give the hearthguard and a bunch of characters plate armour, I say, to make them stand out from the Vulkites. (4) It would also be fun to have a smaller skirmisher berzerker-type unit (5) Female dwarfs. Just do it. Everyone has wanted them for at least 20 years (when I was into the hobby as a kid). There is no excuse to make the Fyreslayers a flanderized patriarchy. Granted, I think they were originally written to be contrased with the matriarchal DoK. But AoS needs to go beyond such shallow concepts for small armies to make them more interesting. It is the diversity of units and concepts and ideas that makes, say, Lizardmen or Stormcast compelling. (6) We need more size differentiation. Chariots, cavalry, machines, large infantry, monsters... You name it. I am however not a terribly big fan of golems or elementals for the mid-sized infantry, I think those come off as a bit too generic fantasy. Maybe living ancestor statues with bound spirits of dead dwarfs, I could see that working as it still feels pretty Warhammer rather than DND. But mostly I would personally aim to expand on machines and monsters. --- In-game mechanics: I don't have too much to say about this - I should leave that to more competent players. But it seems pretty obvious to me how some of the changes above would lead to news here too. Adding a new runic system, new runic tech, monsters, and special characters or warbands would immediately lead to more diversification. What I like about this in particular is that you could make the Fyreslayers play a little bit more like how the Chorfs have played than how traditional Dwarf armies have played: you could have potent magic, movement, and differentiation between chaff and elite units in the army (though no slaves, of course). Much like how the Kharadron completely uproots traditional dwarf playstyles by being super mobile, you could have a more versatile magic dwarf army like this. --- In sum. These are some thoughts off the top of my head. What are yours?

Part of the charm of the OG Slayers, IMO, is also that they clearly are the dwarf version of 80s punks, much like how the dark elves were the elf interpreation of 80s goth rockers, chaos is very 80s/90s death metal, etc. Basically, a lot of early Warhammer concepts are pop culture references that are rather dated by now. Though, as you say, they are clearly funny. I guess part of the problem with the Fyreslayers is that they don't have a contemporary cultural reference like that, whereas the Kharadron in fact do. My take on them is that they are internet atheists drawn to an extreme, complete with libertarian capitalism and a denial of the power of the very gods they see in front of them. They clearly suffer from a kind of scientistic hubris. Which reminds me of old-school GW satire, and which is just as delicious as Gotrek's 80s mohawk.

I read (well: audiobooked) the Grombrindal novel a few weeks ago. It didn't help when it comes to the Fyreslayers. Nor does how they are portrayed elsewhere, such as in the Gotrek stories. The more I read about them, the harder they are to engage with. Ordinarily, I am into any dwarf faction. But this one is really hard to care about... ...but it doesn't have to be that way, of course. If you compare the Fyreslayers to the Kharadron it is truly night and day. The Kharadron is a concept that has a lot of depth to it: they have really interesting philosophical and historically informed ideas that lay a backbone for the faction, ranging from their capitalism to their adherence to the code to their stance on gods to the conference of Madralta. Just the name "Kharadron" is so much better than "Fyreslayers" - the latter isn't even good English. As far as AoS goes, IMO the Fyreslayers are then a swing and a miss whereas the Kharadron display the setting at its very best.. The Fyreslayers need reimagining. Though deep down, of course, I do think all duardin dawi belong together...

Reflections on the new Fyreslayer short story: Sorry, but they are just too boring. I want to like them - they are dwarfs, after all - but they just feel too flanderized. Fyre-steel, fyre-ale, magma-holds. Who cares? It is just way overdone and way too cartoonish. I just can't see how the Fyreslayer concept is enough for a freestanding army. People rightly compain about the lack of models, but honestly, the problem isn't necessarily just with the lack of sculpts but rather with the lack of nuances and in the concept. It is literally all just fire fyre & flames. ...at least the artwork of the guy with the hammers has eyebrows, unlike the model. The face looks much better. ...but they really need someone to tell them to do exactly what Grungni did with the Kharadron: go out and be a bit more creative and independent and come up with some ways of living that aren't so single-minded. Maybe Gotrek the anti-theist will teach them that? Or, plot twist, maybe Grimnir actually planned to die all along to teach the Fyreslayers independence, just how Grungni abandoned the Kharadron, except Grimnir failed massively where Grungni succeeded?

I see your point here, I agree that that is how they are written in AoS. I just finished the Grombrindal novella that features some Beastclaw Raiders more prominently than Grombrindal himself, and it's emphasized a lot there. But then again, surely there can still be some physiological variation once we start to explore the ogres in more depth. To compare, take another example than the dwarfs: AoS elves. You have eyeless elves, snake elves, beast elves (kurnothi), and so on on top of the the more physiologically standard ones. AoS in general seems to open up for a lot of mutation and variation in this regard - the realms all seem to semi-mutate various groups to fit them. (Perhaps AoS magic superpowers evolution?) Some thinner order-aligned ogres could easily fit right in, IMO.

Getting a lot of that vibe from all the new CoS miniatures too, not least the first few infantrymen! Our man on the left here, in particular, feels like a Nobby Nobbs or Sgt Fred Colon-type character. He tries. He really does. In his own way.

If you go even further back to stuff like Golgfag's mercenary ogres, they weren't that heavy-set. They were always into eating, but the thicc boi aesthetic comes from relatively late WHFB (7th edition IIRC?). Presumably these Sigmarite ("2nd generation") ogres don't have that much in common with the wilder kinds, a bit like how Dispossessed are rather different from Fyreslayer and Kharadron dwarfs. It makes sense that there'd be both thinner and thicker ones.

It's hard to know where players stand on which models they prefer, so I won't touch on that. But, speaking for myself, I feel very torn on TOW myself, too. I like the idea of having it back but simultaneously you want a setting where the timeline currently is active and where new things can happen. Prequels aren't terribly engaging. In that sense AoS feels more compelling now. Also I think the new Lizard, Chaos, SBGL etc models they have released recently are far better than the old WHFB stuff, so even as an old player I'd rather use those than old models. But then again, there are also some old models - often metals - that I prefer to current ranges: Longbeards, Ghouls, and Savage Orcs immediately come to mind here. What setting or minis ultimately will be best depends on what they decide to expand on in the future, I guess... The point of the speculation is just based on lacking trust in them based on past experience. They are obviously willing to throw long-time players under the bus in many ways, whether by squatting their armies or the entire setting they are playing in. What they say about the short term won't guarantee how things might go in, say, 5-10 years. Now, true, I am speculating here. Nothing suggests that they will do this again. But, simultaneously, nothing suggests that they won't. It's dangerous to trust GW too much in the light of their history. Hence, we have reason to be a bit wary of where they might go. That was what my post was supposed to convey. But as it isn't strictly speaking a rumour, I'll be quiet about it (in this thread, at least) from now and on.

Something like a setting reset isn't *entirely* impossible. First they tried once, with Storm of Chaos, but retconned it. Then WHFB blew up anyway with the End Times, giving us AoS. But now with TOW on its way back... To be clear, this is 100% not a rumour, just speculation, but it's hard to put it past GW to drop a 'rocks fall Archaon wins, everyone dies, time is an eternal circle so we need to restart the setting from a point where Archaon hasn't won' kinda moment on AoS to reintroduce TOW as their main Fantasy game. From a financial standpoint, I guess their reasoning could be that AoS made a lot of old-school WHFB players invest again in new armies. But now dropping AoS for TOW could force AoS players to invest in new armies, on top of new sales from returning WHFB-ers. (To be clear again, I'm not sure if that is what actually happened when AoS launched. But still it's hard to put it past GW to reason that way.)

Hard agree. It's not clear to me why the alliances were supposed to be necessary in the first place. They limit creative potential and lead to pointless bickering about which factions truly fit which alliance. Why can't there be some Fyreslayers who have gone all the way from being mercenaries for Chaos to actively worshipping it, for example? Or Beastmen who have decided to follow Kragnos rather than Chaos? Without the alliances, this would look much more straightforward. Perhaps there were some reasons to make use of the alliances to link up factions when AoS was broken down into lots and lots of tiny (sub-)factions, as it was at first, but now that they have started to be fleshed out more, the alliances just feel arbitrary.

Their recent lore mentions how some of the more progressive among them have started to allow for fire fyre queens. It seems like a no brainer to add some female ones in. GW could even have thrown us a bone and given us a unit of them when this recent lore shift happened. Theory: I suspect GW originally intended the patriarchal Fyreslayers to be the counterpart to the matriarchal DoK back at a time when AoS armies were very much based on broad concepts rather than having a lot of depth to them. (Slayers and Witch Elves had a lot of counterpart-like properties back in WHFB too: both were semi-barbaric, close combat oriented warrior cults who liked showing off skin for some reason.) But as AoS has developed, you would want to see more depth in both of these early armies, so both would expand from their early rather monolithic shapes. Though of course showing that the Dawi are bright enough to open up for equality deep down while the Elgi would insist on keeping one gender oppressed does sound very appealing...

Same. Honestly, the eldritch space tech AoS lizardmen are among GW's coolest releases ever. It's conspiracy theory-level ancient aliens riding chariots of the gods old ones and dinos in the very same package. 200% crazy awesome. And the recent wave of models is absolutely stunning, through and through... It's so good it's tempting me not to main dwarfs anymore, and I've mained dwarfs since the first time I read through a list of which Warhammer armies were available when I was 11 years old. Really hope the next dwarf update, whatever it will be, will deliver so I will feel less unfaithful!

I guess this is a bit off topic in the rumour thread, but there's an issue here with Gorkamorka and the Chaos gods all being elemental rather than ascended gods. This seems to make them equally (un)natural since they have appeared in the same way. Maybe it is the ascended gods who are natural, whereas the Chaos and Destruction gods are the unnatural ones? (Even more scandalously: maybe this means Gorkamorka should be counted as a Chaos god, deep down?) But I prefer your idea a lot to that, as running Chaos and Destruction together metaphysically muddies the waters between Chaos and Destruction again. One thing is for sure though and that's that GW would to well to try to make more sense of the metaphysical/theological/natural-historical fundamentals of the setting. The more questions we get answers to here, the more interesting the setting gets. Really wish they'd publish something that systematically addresses these types of issues: we are here because we are nerds and nerds want to understand how things work!

Bolded sentence needs much more attention. That is such an excellent idea. It's really hard to explain why Orcs and Ogres and Trolls are on one side but Khorne and Beastmen and Skaven are on another, as things stand. But natural/unnatural is a great way to cash that out. It would finally give us a way to differentiate Destruction from Chaos: basically, Destruction would be natural disasters, Chaos would be unnatural disasters. Someone call GW!

You may also be interested in this thread from last year. It really helped me think through and put my gripes with AoS into perspective (and made me stick around on this forum!). FWIW, I still think there is a bunch of unclear things about AoS. But by now there's also enough stuff that is crazy awesome to keep my attention. It is probably unfair to judge it - as I was originally doing - on its weirdness regarding issues where we don't have very good answers about this world either (e.g. the nature of the soul, how the soul relates to the physical realm, the nature of the fundamental substance of reality, etc...). Though I really hope GW will address those types of issues in more depth in future releases.

Said it before and will say it again. It should be Ogors and Halflings, not Gnoblars. Feral halflings. Who have their enemies for second breakfast.

This is genuinely chaotic. Chaos dwarfs confirmed. 🥲

Yes, to be fair a lot of current AoS sculpts (and very late, End Times-era, WHFB sculpts) are extermely good. It's hard to see how they'd improve on the Idoneth or the new SBGL, for example. Better hope they improve what needs improving and not other things!

It wasn't uncommon for metal minis to be replaced with other metal minis representing the same unit back in the day, often with immense improvements. Compare the Longbeard models below - the updated 6th edition metal Longbeards are IMO the best GW infantry models ever. They went from cartoons in 4th/5th edition to being truly impressive. You can easily imagine similar improvements made to a lot of current models, such as the Fyreslayers. I wouldn't be too worried about the future.

Do you even have a skull unless you're a Warhammer fan?

I'm not a mod, but please mind the tone? The amount of sarcasm and personal attacks here is really, really unnecessary. We're talking about a fantasy wargame. It's perfectly legitimate to prefer separate dwarf armies, a unified dwarf army (my preference), or a legion of the first prince middle-ground configuration. They're just preferences for super-arbitrary options, and all are much better than having zero dwarfs at all. So. Any real rumours?

Very interesting question being asked here! IMO lots of AoS factions would do well with a few more named characters or units. They add a lot of flavour: both when you use them and when you don't use them, since you have to make a deliberate choice to choose something else. This forces you to pick some other theme. I would like to see at least 2-3 named characters for each faction in each book. Fyreslayers, DoK, Gitz, Orruks (especially Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz), FEC, Lizards and Beastmen are among the factions that would benefit a lot from this. So, when it comes to the Dawnbringers, what can we expect? Sadly, we can expect way too little, as GW's track record with special characters is a bit spotty. But I would like to see this, inspired by the different types of Sigmarites: 1 military/melee type leader (probably some successful 'self-made man' type general) 1 religious type leader (I'm thinking something Volkmar-inspired here, though obviously not Volkmar himself) 1 mage type leader (think Balthazar Gelt or Thyrus Gorman... though interestingly both of them seem to be Stormcast!) 1 witch hunter type leader (and this we may already have got with the ven Densts) ... and ... 1 dwarf character (to give us some guidelines about how dwarfs working with Sigmar think) 1 elf character (to give us some guidelines about how elves working with Sigmar think) But probably we should not expect all that. Beyond the ven Densts, we will be lucky if we get more than one of the military or religious ones.

I'm the second type of old guard too, but a bit torn about TOW. My story is that I have been restrictive with AoS spending in part in the light of the possibility that TOW might end up replacing it after all, essentially having the company do a massive U-turn. Warhammer is a huge investment in terms of both money and - maybe more importantly, in this stage of my life - time, so it's something I'm worried about. Hence, I feel this article is really aimed at me: they are trying to say that AoS is going to stay as their main fantasy game. But that, too, feels weird. AoS has novelty and better minis, WHFB has better atmosphere. But if they are saying that WHFB still is essentially dead, we are just playing "in the past", so to speak, it's not as inspiring as AoS after all is when it is at its best and crazy things keep happening. IMO the obvious business-meets-lore move for GW would be to say officially, and clearly, that the Warhammer universe is set in an eternally recurring loop of universes that expand and contract and replace each other, with just minor variations between them. Then AoS and pre-End Times WHFB can both be at the current edge of timelines that can be expanded on in any way they want, just in different sub-universes among an infinite set. That way we can have the cake and eat it and even bake new ones if we'd like.

That is quite possibly right too, admittedly. I quit for the first time around Storm of Chaos in late 6th edition and haven't really kept track of Warhammer between then and the pandemic. What I do gather, though, is that the factions became rather flanderized in the last few editions: instead of being written as rather intelligent civilizations with their own quirks, they started to get written as extreme versions of themselves. For example, my beloved Dwarfs seemed to stop using swords, spears, maces, etc., in favour of only axes and hammers for close combat fighting in the last few editions. This is pretty hardcore but would also be kind of stupid of them. And then having the Empire becoming rather purist would fit that writing too. It'd be good if AoS could avoid that: one way to make the civilizations more grounded and realistic in an often somewhat too unrealistic setting is to have them be pragmatic enough to engage with each other.