Chikout

GW normally do faction specific articles in the run-up to launch so we should know one way or the other in the spring. If it is true it's in GW's interest to share the news soon so the don't spoil the hype for 4th edition.

I asked Warhammer community directly on twitter and got a surprisingly instant reply. Basically a no comment, but I'm surprised they didn't just ignore me.

I understand that this is a wishlisting thread but GW is never going to use anything but a d6 for their core games. There was an interview with an ex gw guy on the painting phase podcast who explained that GW always chooses the mass market option. My current desires are as follows: Dump battletactics. Have a selection of secondaries for each battle plan. Introduce spearhead as a format. Change up enhancements. Every general gets a command trait. Every character who isn't special gets an artefact. Every wizard gets as many spells as they can cast. Every applicable mount gets a mount trait. Make more of all of these and introduce a free tier, a 20 point tier and a 50 point tier. Dump battalions completely Roll off for turn one. Models can fight in two ranks in close combat Moving is alternating activations but if you moved in the opponents turn you can't move in yours - so all models can move in either turn but only once per battle round. Across the entire game rebalance things to have fewer attacks than do more damage. On the other hand have fewer mortal wounds and fewer ward saves. Never let rally be better than 6+

I think @Whitefang back me up was the bearer of bad news regarding BoC which is why people are hoping they are full of it. They said we'd see new ToW factions before the end of January. This was a rumour that didn't come from anyone else and turned out to be true. The actual @Whitefang has liked a few of their posts. They do seem to have some solid info. I'm inclined to believe them, but I really hope they're lying or were misinformed about the BoC stuff.

A new edition of Kill team is due out this year. I'd expect AoS 4 late June or early July and Kill team in August. There's been a rumour about Vespids for kill team floating around for a while. @Whitefang back me up Is terrain changing for the better? It's been one of the more common complaints about AoS for a while.

I'd forgotten about that. We got some pretty decent rumours from shipping manifests back in the day.

I think AoS is in a pretty solid place aside from the battle tactics. The idea of secondaries is good but the execution needs a complete rework. They need to be much more difficult to achieve and they should require engaging with the enemy. I wouldn't object to gw making the grand strategy the only secondary so long as they actually require you to play the game. I definitely think a spearhead format needs to be a thing. It's the one good idea from 10th edition. When it comes to heroes, I'm not so sure. I worry about AoS becoming too similar to TOW. Quite a few users here have found that they prefer the old world, which is fine. If you want to tinker with your heroes GW made a fantasy game for you. I'd like to see AoS head more towards 1st edition with a simpler easy to play rule set. A crazy suggestion would be to follow warcry and drop the wound roll. That would speed the game up!! ( Not actually sure that's a good idea)

No problem. That’s definitely a frustrating experience. It’s always hard to know what’s going on in these situations. Did GW print a pathetically small amount, did almost a decade of pent up demand cause demand to outstrip a pretty high level of supply or was it a little of both? Are you still unable to get what you’re looking for? Is it the new resins that you wanted? They really do seem to be out of stock absolutely everywhere．　In theory it should be easier to do another run of them than more plastics or books.

That's an oddly combative post. I'm not trying to prove anything expect potentially help people get the models they want. I've would never for one second doubt that the launch of the old world has been a success. Looking at the global stock situation it's seems that on the Bretonnian side of things, the only products that are sold out absolutely everywhere are the new resins and the grail reliquary. Maybe the tga old world community should organise something to help each other out. This is a pretty global community we've got here. I will say one thing about AoS though. Have you looked at the stock situation? A full third of the AoS product range is currently out of stock. This is a general GW problem and not an old world specific problem. Legions Imperialis has it worst of all. There's only one product currently available from the UK online store and it's the reaver titan.

What exactly are you looking for? The amount of available stock seems to be different in every region. In the US both starter sets and most of the plastics are in stock. In the UK the tomb kings box is in stock along with about half the resin kits for both factions. I wonder if GW could meet most of the demand with a bit of stock redistribution.

Unfortunately GW production doesn't turn on a dime. GW kits have a lead time of several months. All the FeC stuff including the second wave that is on pre-order now will have been manufactured last year. With the way they're set up, they don't have the ability to manufacture less of the full release if the launch box doesn't sell well. They would need to put 6 months between launch box and full release to be able to do that. If GW put in a big order for more old world stuff the day the first release sold out, we'd see that product in the summer at the earliest. Also the problems GW is having right now is not the limited to the old world. A full third of the AoS range is currently listed as out of stock on the GW website. There's definitely some serious supply chain issues going on with GW right now. If you want evidence of this look at the slaves to Darkness leak. We saw that in the spring and the box set didn't come out until October.

I'm sorry but this simply isn't true. Firstly anyone can see that AoS doesn't get as much shelf space as 40k in any GW store. The only hard data we see is from icv2 in America which despite not tracking GW store sales has AoS consistently in the top 5 best selling miniature ranges. The only way the profitability argument makes sense is if they are talking about profit margins and not actually profit made but even then it's weird. Since the price of manufacturing, shipping and storage is the same for all game system products, if the AoS and 40k team have the same number of staff, profit margins would be identical. Shop gossip and reality are not the same thing. My company would be bankrupt a dozen times over if it was.

Alternative takeaway. This is really bad communication from GW. No mention of why Warhammer fest isn't happening this year. Warhammer fest has historically been thier biggest preview event of the year. Are they really doing nothing to replace it? If they are why don't they announce it now? This is also very late to announce the golden demon changes. Some of those entries take many months to complete. It is especially i bad to cancel their flagship event in an AoS launch year. They better have something special planned.

This is an annual thing. One week in February has been black library only for several years.

Yeah I agree with this. As a yong teenager I read the first Bretonnian army book. I thought it was amazing. A couple of years later I read a modern translation of Mort D'Arthur. A lot of it was exactly the same, almost word for word in places. I've read almost every fantasy and AoS campaign book since 4th edition (except the forge world one which I heard were good) and my favourite is Broken realms Morathi. Warhammer lore has always been fun, but I'd never call it legitimately good aside from the odd passage here and there.

The alternatives aren't exactly great though. Nagash has taken over almost all the nice afterlifes. So your fate after death is either to be enslaved by Nagash, eaten by a chaos god, used to expand the life of a Narmarti, made into an enteral soldier in the service of Sigmar or utterly destroyed. I'd take the Soulbound existence every time. No more aging and also no eternal torment.

Happy to be wrong about this. Is that art new?

Last week they said we'd get another story in the run-up to book 5 so I think there's nothing today.

But this isn't the problem. No range remains the same forever. Also the beasts of chaos range and the beastmen range is already different. Even the name is different. The thing people are worried about and are thinking will not happen is the BoC faction being dropped from AoS completely, since the language from the first rumour didn't suggest a refresh or even a souping was on the cards. I agree with you about certain behaviour though. That is peculiar.

There's lots of misreading of tea leaves here. All the beastgrave warbands are unavailable not just the BoC one. The unavailable kits vary from region to region, which doesn't suggest a focused effort by GW. GW is having real problems with it's shipping right now. They are no longer able to guarantee shipping deliveries of new products to flgs on time. I'm sure restocking out of stock ranges is a very low priority right now. Despite what people have said, you can go on element games right now and order pretty much the whole range. Most importantly the battletome is still available everywhere. We've seen GW pull old battletomes in the weeks before a new one appears. The rumour from 'not Whitefang' stated that the AoS range would be discontinued very shortly. I don't see any evidence of that. Of course this rumour may still be true but there is no compelling evidence that indicates it.

That's not an overhaul. It's just a new faction. An overhaul is what happened to cities or Seraphon, we got new units with new names but the inspiration from the old models is clear. We got some models dropped from the old range, some replaced, and some new units but the core identity of the faction is similar. For me the beasts situation is like this. If we get a cities or Seraphon style update, that's perfect. Everybody wins. If we get the range reduced but incorporated into the slaves to Darkness book, that's not ideal but just about ok. If we get the faction dropped wholesale at the start of 4th edition with no replacement in sight, that's a terrible mistake. The problem with the aggressive policy you suggest is that armies of miniatures aren't like other products. It took me two years to finish building and painting the soul wars box set. A 2000 point army costs hundreds of pounds and can represent hundreds or thousands of hours of work by a collector. Their secrecy about updates doesn't help. If there was more warning the cuts would be less painful. GW have mostly been very good at keeping products in stock for a long time and I hope this trend continues while still allowing for the introduction of new things. As for the High Elves there was never a high elf battletome which makes this a very different proposition. If they were going to cut BoC they should have done at the start of 2nd edition before the setting settled down.

If BoC are squatted from AoS it really would be a first for the game. We've had factions from the old world cut, we've had sections of ranges disappear like the the cities stuff, we've had battle tomes get souped, and we had factions get reimagined like legions of Nagash but we've never had a whole battletome and it's range of minis get dropped from the game. In fact the only time a faction has been completely dropped from a GW game was the squats themselves. Everything else got moved or absorbed or changed or forgotten like the sisters. It would be a bigger deal than some people are making it out to be.

Exactly. Why are they so scared of having the same faction in both settings?

Judging popularity is always difficult as GW doesn't release details. The only accurate data we have is tournament attendance and Instagram hashtags. Despite having very few new minis BoC have had a solid attendance rate throughout the last two editions. Over on Instagram there are more beasts of chaos posts than there are for Ogor Mawtribes. As for resources, I'd rather see an update for BoC than new Chaos Duardin but admittedly that is down to personal taste.

I'm going to agree with everyone else and say this is a very bad decision. Beasts of chaos are a popular faction. They have an established place in the lore of AoS. We already have factions that are used across game systems. Deamons of Chaos being the prime example. There is also lots of potential to expand the range in the future. As others have said I hope this rumour is just missing some info. I'd be ok with them being integrated into slaves to darkness, or reimagined for 4th edition. If they dump them from AoS to be used in the Old World it's just going to make a lot of people unhappy.