mawhis117

My understanding from a Whitefang post back at the beginning of February was that it was Garviel Sureheart that was going to die

She's mentioned in Dawnbringers 1 as the person who instructed the Varanguard to make the Heralds of Nurgle spread the Shudderblight Plague. She's also mentioned in a short story in a recent White Dwarf. Overall, she seems to be a senior member of Archaon's inner circle. She is described as having Black armour with Gold Trim and a spear that has neon flames bursting from the head.

They've already done Plague Monks for Underworlds, so I would imagine there's a pretty good chance of a full unit being in the works foir release at some point: https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/wh-underworlds-skabbiks-plaguepack-2023-eng

If they're planning to reveal 4th Edition at Adepticon in 9 days, we should get a Dawnbringers 6 reveal this week, right?

Phoenicium is more likely

Sigmar Lied!

Sounds like a reference to the reforging process.

What would people vote for as AOS Book of the Year, out of interest?

The full rumour was that Chorfs weren't going to be in TOW because they were going to be released for AOS instead. It didn't outright state that they would be their own full faction, but it was implied. It's also worth pointing out that we've already just had a "Breather" edition, given that the last new AOS faction was Soulblight Gravelords at the end of 2nd Edition

Can't see that happening. The Starter box factions need to be easy to paint to a reasonable standard by inexperienced painters - not too much fine detail etc. That's why they always use Space Marines and Stormcast. Neither LRL or Slaanesh fit that bill

Exactly. The only new kits that BoC have had would be the Herdstone and the Beastlord - neither of which fit Slaves to Darkness

Which Beasts of Chaos kits would be getting moved to Slaves to Darkness? Can't see how that would make sense. As others have said, this feels like someone gathering together scraps and making a patchwork quilt

Yep. It'll also be interesting to see whether BoC show up in Dawnbringers 6. With the Changeling showing up in the Dawnbringers Chronicles Story we've seen every chaos faction except BoC and Slaanesh get mentioned in the narrative. Slaanesh isn't going anywhere either way, but it'll be another bad omen if BoC don't at least get a mention in the Dawnbringers Narrative

The Fact that Dispossessed and Delfs are still in the CoS book indicates to me that they're both probably safe at least until CoS get another book in a few years. Wanderers (Welfs?) and Phoenix Temple going is a stronger indication of what's coming in the near future IMO - Kurnothi as a AOS-ified version of Wanderers, and a Phoenix Temple replacement for LRL, probably including Tyrion.

There's another, longer story about Mannfred trying to steal Arkhan's stuff while he's dead temporarily by breaking into an old tomb only to have a flood of iundead rats come flooding out, with green light emanating from deeper in.

I was intrigued by this short paragraph at the end of Dawnbringers 4 entitled "The Embergard Visitation"

This makes a huge amount of sense to me. Not only does it replace BoC in a more copyrightable way, but it gives Destruction a non-greenskin faction that can be run alongside Kragnos and resemble him aesthetically. The Last Dawnbringers book contains a scene in which the Kruleboyz deliberately destroy signs left by the Drogrukh saying where they went before Kragnos can see them. It also doesn't prevent you from producing other BoC-like armies as well - Gavespawn, Dragon Ogors, etc are all still on the cards if they want them to be.

There have been a couple of REs that seem to point towards Nurgle recently, and this feels like another one

Going from memory, but I think the rumour was that they were made for AOS to prevent them from being used in TOW.

I don't think it's a question of being unloved. We know that GW write and sculpt years in advance of the release dates, and I can remember hearing rumours about a tug of war between the main and specialist studios over Beasts of Chaos quite a while ago. If they are leaving AOS, then GW have known that for a while, and have been planning accordingly - there are multiple ways that a replacement faction could be introduced later on down the line.

It's weird - all of the lore development around BoC has been with Ghorraghan Khai, Morghur etc, and yet all of the world building in the last BoC battletome went in the exact opposite direction - focusing on The Sire of Ruin, with Gavespawn feeling like an afterthought. Of the Four Sub-factions, only Gavespawn don't get a named leader, and the leaders of the other three sub-factions have The Sire of Ruin's mark branded into their flesh. It's one of the reasons that I'm inclinded to believe that BoC are going - the whole faction feels unfocussed.

TOW also seems to have tipped the scales. it seems clear that they've made a decision for whatever reason to keep the two separate as far as possible, and TOW got BoC

Great to see TOW avoiding the high fantasy aesthetic of AOS that so many people on TOW Facebook seem to hate. Sensible, Grounded things like this are clearly the future

Beasts of Chaos as they exist in AOS feel like a soup-faction to me anyway - if they do go, then GW could create at least three new factions from them if they really wanted to. Firstly, You have the "mainline" Beasts of Chaos, who don't worship chaos and want to destroy civilisation. You could quite easily replace them by bringing the Drogrukh back to destruction, which would have the added benefit of fixing the issue of Kragnos not really looking like anything else in his Grand Alliance. Ok, this wouldn't be Chaos, but it would still look and feel a lot like BoC. Then you have the Gavespawn, who the rest of the faction see as insane. This could quite easily also be it's own faction, and the lore, such as it is, seems to be developing in a way that indicates that Morghur will come back. Then lastly you have the Dragon Ogors, who have some really great lore about their grudge against Sigmar for being kicked out of Azyr. A faction of big stompy chaos monsters might go down quite well.