Chikout

This feels like a filler week before the new edition hits. Will be very surprised if we don’t see aos2 preorders the following week.

So a random journalist on twitter just confirmed the world's worst kept secret. Saying 'just had a great day at warhammer Hq checking out the new aos boxed game'. Starter set incoming.

I think it is highly likely that the starter set will be the previewed minis including the two wizards. The dark imperium box set had two identical sprues for the primaris and death guard. This box looks like it will be the same. If you look at the sequitors, castigators, chainmail horde and not undead Skaven, they are all made up of pairs of identical miniatures. Also in the Warhammerfest displays there were alternative sculpts of most of the minis. There was an alternative nighthaunt wizard with the same mask but a different lantern. There was an alternative lord executioner, a male knight Incantor and alternative version of all the stormcast units including the warmarchine with different crew. The only models without duplicates are the two big mounted guys. Unfortunately that does mean we will get a couple of understrength units. I think GW will probably do some easy to build sets to fill out these units.

GW seems to do one major miniatures release a month. So 2018 is J- nurgle F- custodes M- daughters A- Forgebane M- Deepkin J- starter, nighthaunt, Stormcast J- Knights A- Titanicus and Killteam S- orks O- moonclan N- rogue trader and Shadespire D- Slaanesh or khorne. 40k focus Or something like that with lots of little specialist games stuff scattered throughout and a few miniless 40k codexes.

Unless there are more minis in that set than we have seen, it is not rogue trader.

Just noticed something interesting. If you add up all the minis shown on the warhammer community live blog it comes to 53 miniatures which is exactly the same number of minis as the dark Vengeance Box set. The only oddity is that would mean just one stormcast hero. Another point in favour of these being the starter set minis is that the nighthaunt side matches up exactly with the art shown by @LLV

Thanks @LLV. Getting both big mounted models in the starter set would be amazing. As for the sculpted bases I hope they are a full set like the shattered dominion stuff. I would buy bucket loads.

Mark Harrison did those beasts? I never used to be a fan of his work but he has really upped his game recently.

New Stormcast beastie in the cabinet. New black coach is huge. DId we see this unit yesterday?

Yes. Vince said on warhammer weekly that it was mentioned in the seminar.

10 is the horn on the big nighthaunt horse. 19 is the skin on one of the new aromas beasts.

https://www.facebook.com/Garro30k/photos/pcb.1797250433628878/1797248883629033/?type=3&theater There are lots more pics here including the wizards from the soul wars cover.

Surprised noone here is discussing this picture. The new picture of a female stormcast suggests they are looking at the rumoured new starter set. Just 6 or 7 hours till we find out.

Unless Skreech's friend is Amy Snuggs, I think they (the friend) are lying. ( Amy got hired by the army painting team recently but she works in Nottingham so it is definitely not her.) Only forgeworld does freelance offsite painting. The vacant position on army painting when Peachy left has been filled. They also have many other former eavy metal painters on the studio to fill in if there is a shortfall. They send certain people products at most a couple of months early so they would not have got September products yet. As for the rogue trader box I am not a fan of Nurgle but I can easily understand why nurgle was chosen. They make a nice contrast with the ornate Rogue Trader band. They also fit very well with the John Blanche style. To bring things back on topic with less than 24 hours to go before all the news drops. I think we will a fairly detailed look at the new magic book and minis, a look at a couple of death minis and a little stormcast tease. They may well unveil Shadespire season 2 at the UK games expo at the start of June. We will also see all the Knights, adeptus Titanicus, one new team for either bloodbowl (including a new elf star player) or Necromunda and a little orks tease.

The two white dwarf hints for next month are both aos related. At the end of May we will be coming off the back of two 40k codexes. I think the May 26th preorder will be Aos magic. Imperial knights will take up most of the June preorders then we will get the big aos release in July followed by Orks and Killteam. Middle Earth will be a forgeworld release like Horus Heresy so it will not take up a week in the main schedule. Adeptus Titanicus will probably come out in the autumn like Bloodbowl and Necromunda did.

I am pretty confident your darkling Covens army is safe. If GW want a good time to retire factions like that they would do it now with the dark Elf release but they have not. Any army that has a current place in the fluff will not go away any time soon. The current compendium armies are another matter. In the future GW may make a new free peoples battletome with new minis for example. At that time some old minis will likely become warhammer legends only. GW has always gradually changed the models they sell. The difference is that from now on there will always be rules for those old models.

I'm going to say Moonclan. Those pods at the bottom look like something you would find in a cave.

Next months white dwarf hint is “the portents unfold”. the four gamers are each painting a wizard and something secret next month. Magic supplement incoming!?!

A little pricing info for the remainder of the Deepkin. The Leviadon is £70 (not as expensive as I feared. The following week we get one shark for £27.50 and 3 Eels for £30.

With white dwarf usually covering preorders up to the week it is highly likely that the Harlequins book will come alongside the shark and Eels. That leaves an interesting space at the end of may. Are we going to see them go straight into Imperial Knights or might we get the magic supplement for AoS?

I really hope there are not significant rules changes this year. The state of the game is pretty good. The balance is a handful of tweaks away from being pretty good. We have just had 4 new battletomes tomes which all play significantly differently which will give interesting new challenges for players in the next. There are players here and there who are unhappy about certain aspects of the game, but aside from the Balewind Vortex being broken there is no consensus. If I was GW I would introduce some more optional rules for people to engage with if they wish, give Tzeentch and the Balewind a nerf and and Destruction a buff and then leave the game be for a year while continuing to introduce new battletomes. If they start changing rules for the sake if it, they may find the improving balance of the game set back to zero and they risk upsetting large portions of the playerbase. If they do want to change some larger things, they should offer beta rules for players to test as they are doing with 40k.

I think people are panicking a little too much about future releases. Tk and Brettonians are legacy armies that have no established place in AoS beyond little easter egg style snippets of fluff. I would not be surprised if they eventually disappear from matched play completely eventually. Armies that currently have faction names are not going away any time soon. A good example of this is the allies for the Idoneth Deepkin. It lists every current minor Aelf faction. There is no reason why they had to do this other than the simple fact that they want to maintain support for these factions. Gw's argument for not including rules for certain units like Vect in 40k is that people will walk into a store ask for a Vect model to go with the cool rules and be disappointed when they can't buy it. The opposite must then also be true. If they put something into a book it means they will continue to support it. So all the Aelf subfactions are safe at least until they do a second edition of the Idoneth battletome. Seraphon, pestilens etc are major parts of the setting and are not going anywhere. The compendium has been a nebulous semi official stop gap system that has been a bit of a weight around gw's neck since the beginning of AOS. Warhammer legends is GW's way of both acknowledging their history, giving something fun for fans of those old minis and separating it from matched play. Jumping from this to the squatting of existing factions is a huge leap. What I expect to happen is the continued mixture of all new factions, expanded factions, and large overarching factions which will incorporate some of the current small factions. I think they may well do a cities of the free peoples style book which will roll up all the subfactions into one as we have seen with legions of Nagash. We may well see similar books for Skaven and Destruction. If I was to look 10 years into the future, I would expect see about 30 battletomes including one book for each alliance which has a bunch of small factions gathered together, some existing factions built out into something bigger ( moonclan!), several all new factions, and some second or third editions of the likes of Ko and Tzeentch.

I still remain unconvinced that we will get a new starter set, not as a replacement for the current starter anyway. Thinking about they new additions we are expecting this year. We have a new magic supplement, new ranges for nighthaunt and Stormcast presumably with accompanying battletomes, a new season of Shadespire and a new starter set. My guess, and it is just a guess, is that we will get a new campaign box along the lines of Deathmasque (which introduced a whole new faction) featuring Stormcast and Nighthaunt. We will get a big new book to bring the lore up to date which will be the magic book, and some new rules will appear in ghb 2018.

It is still the beginning of April. Two battletomes, a death themed campaign, 2 death themed aos novels and a second Shadespire warband is pretty good. I am sure destruction players would be happy to get the same next year.

There won't be a gap. We will get Deepkin preorders on the 14th, 21st and 28th.