Chikout

This is already true for loads of stuff. Grotbag scuttlers are a good example. I'm reading Yndrasta and the story is about a group of humans that certainly aren't cities of Sigmar. There's a giant six legged bear that doesn't have a model (I wish it would) and lots of other things that aren't in a battletome. I'd actually prefer if the lore and the miniature range were separated somewhat. It allows the authors more freedom.

Ok. Genuine question. Anger at GW is warranted but is there another game company that keeps their minis and rules buyable and useable for longer?

You could quite easily make an alternative command corps with the cursed city heroes. It's something I've been thinking about doing. With a bit of light conversion you could get them pretty similar.

I agree with this. Having to make cuts is logical and understandable, but the BoC thing feels like the result of ridiculous internal politics. The whole philosophy of completely separating the two lines is exactly the opposite of what I think they should be doing.

Ok here's an unreservedly positive post. This was a big surprise. How much like actual battletomes are these books going to be? Losing these units sucks but this is more work than they ever done on retiring units before. If the initial work is good enough, it could be all you need for the edition.

Being angry at GW is fine. They're a massive company. They won't even notice. I draw the line with getting angry at other users for not being angry enough. I don't think there's much of that here thankfully, but I've been called a shill in other places simply for having a balanced opinion.

Maybe it's a bit early for this post but here it is. This situation is something that's going to continue happening and it's not entirely GW's fault. Even accounting for these cuts and the cuts from cities earlier in the edition, the number of AoS kits has grown this edition and we're about to get another 30 or so kits with the new edition. 40k is the same. Kill Team warcry and underworlds are each getting 8 new kits a year. The recent orc and goblin release had more than 20 kits not counting made to order. Multiply that by 9 and you have almost 200 kits for the old world alone. This is a major issue for GW. Their warehouse space is already pretty maxed out and their factories can't keep up with demand. I'm more than a little miffed to say goodbye to my Sacrosanct Stormcast and even more to the disappearence of the opportunity to expand my collection. I was definitely planning to buy another unit of evocators and another unit of Dracolines as I love both those kits. I only have 4 of the warcry warbands that are being cut and would have loved to get the rest eventually. I would have loved to do all those things but I also love new stuff. I'm really not sure how GW can balance things in the future. They have done a lot of one to one swaps in the past. They didn't just resculpt the tactical marine kit 5 times because it was popular. It also meant they could introduce something 'new' while discontinuing the old one and keeping the overall product range manageable. But these days people want new factions like Emperor's Children, dark Mechanicum and Malerion Aelves. That means either growing the range or discontinuing less popular ranges to make way for new ones. I'm really not sure what the best solution is. I don't think there's a perfect world where GW can add ten kits to each of the smaller AoS factions while still keeping all the old ones in stock, especially as AoS is not the most popular product GW makes. Maybe the answer is to keep the old models playable for much longer. They promised to balance the older factions for a year. Why not the whole edition or indeed forever? They can definitely afford to hire a couple more people to the rules team. Doing balance updates for the legacy factions could be part of the training.

GW already announced that Darkoath are replacing them.

I'm not exactly delighted by this but you sound like you want the community to be angry. One of the reasons I like be the tga community so much is that we can discuss things without losing our minds all the time. Downside, the warcry warbands aren't playable anymore. Upside I now have a whole bunch of alternative sculpts for my marauders. They aren't Iron Golems, they're marauders from Chamon. I might need to do a bit of rebasing though.

The dwarfs will probably be out before 4th edition so it would be weird to wait to announce those cuts. I think the Duardin are safe. As for Stormcast, I'm sure we'll see updates for the warrior chamber but I think the Sacrosanct are just gone. I really hope they are doing more cavalry. I really love those Dracolines. On the Skaven side, I think that list from @SG Warhound is looking more and more accurate. I am somewhat happy that GW are doing what I asked and doing digital battletomes. They are even keeping them tournament legal for a year which is more than they've done for the legacy old world factions.

That's more than half of my Stormcast and a third of my slaves to darkness armies gone. I'm pretty surprised at the severity of the cuts.

There's very little concrete data. The only things I can find that are quantified is tournament data and Instagram activity. In the latest woehammer stats Stormcast are back as the most played army despite not being the strongest. Interestingly Stormcast were the most played army from launch of first edition until they were dethroned in second edition by Skaven. Instagram is a weird one but it does give an idea of popularity. As it's tags on photos it's mostly saying which factions have been painted the most. When it comes to tags it's not even close. Stormcast Eternals have about a third more posts than the next most popular faction which is Skaven perhaps due to their name not changing since the old world. To give a comparison to 40k, there are about a third more uses of the eldar hashtag than Stormcast Eternals. This all does suggest that Stormcast are popular but to what extent that is a catch22 situation is impossible to judge.

I think Stormcast make a good starter faction. They are a relatively low body count army that is easy to paint and should also be fairly easy to play. Here's what I'd like to see though. My perfect world is a new edition every 4 years with Stormcast in the box but a mid edition battle box with all new minis for two factions that aren't Stormcast. That way you get 4 factions with the big box treatment and Stormcast get updated every 4 years instead of the current 3.

Lots to unpack here. Skaven are winning the popularity contest because they have been waiting ages for an update and now many of the new models will be useable in the old world too. I chose Skaven even though I’m a Stormcast player who is very much looking forward to the new models. I have shared this a few times but if you head over to instagram you can see how many times a particular hashtag is used. Stormcast externals are number one but Skaven are the second most used hashtag. I have a feeling this is going to be a very popular box set which makes me worry about availability. As for the new force organization system, I’m seeing some weird takes. No unit in the game will be auxiliary only, especially since they’ve already said that certain key heroes will,be able to take any unit. I can see an interesting tiering system for heroes now. You get low level specialist heroes that are designed to be power paired with particular units. You get heroes that help to emphasize a particular theme, a Skyre hero with skyre units for example. You get heroes that emphasize a particular play style; a fast hero that can take fast units. You get generals who kind of work like before; they can take what would have been the old battleline units. Finally you get the special characters like Teclis or Gordrakk who can take anything. This is all just guesswork but it seems a logical way to go and helps to give heroes more diverse roles.

The only example we have so far is Lumineth. There are already three ways to have wardens in a regiment and we haven’t seen all the heroes. Almost all armies have more heroes than non hero units so I’m sure there will usually be more than one way to get the unit you want in a regiment. I feel like most people won’t be getting many auxiliary units unless they want to get weird. In a hypothetical paring you could have a warlock engineer and 4 doom wheels in your list without going outside a regiment. Your only issue might be if you want a bunch of doom wheels but don’t want any Skrye heroes.

The new system sounds potentially interesting. I hope the incentives they mention encourage players to continue to use regular units. My worry about the sub factions is the loss of lore. I don’t want to lose 4 pages of lore from every battletome. I hope they keep them in even if they don’t have a place in the rules.

The real question is the scenery. How much of it will there be and does that mean fewer models? I could imagine a couple of sprues of scenery and a similar number of models to the Soul wars box.

I don't think any of this is reliable. Some of it is probably solid guess work but noone even knows what the next faction is or what new models are coming. The other rumours we've had have mostly proven false. Did anyone predict Youngrim? It looks like they've got things sealed up pretty tight over there.

I disagree with almost all of this. First of all you don't start the hype train with your best thing. Even then this model has generated plenty of interest. The liberator video already had more views than the Abraxia video on YouTube. I like the relatively neutral pose. I'm not sure why you think he's waddling. This is a model that looks like it could actually walk, rather than getting his pteruges (thank you for that word ) caught on everything. I much prefer the chainmail. I I'm painting some Vindictors right now and it's also much easier to paint. It does look very similar to the Vindictors. Stormcast are an army that I think should have a fairly unified look to them. There's definitely an argument that this should have been a dual kits, but I'm hoping this kit will come with plenty of bare heads and a different banner.

We will almost certainly see the first Skaven next Monday.

As expected, the helmet looks much better on the real miniature, at least it does to me. I also like that it's still a bit bulkier than the Vindictors.

Integrated doesn't necessarily mean dropping clans. It just means that you can have a list which mixes the clans together without suffering. A major complaint about the cities book is how little interaction between the humans, Daurdin and Aelves. People don't want them to disappear but do want to be able to play them together. I think the same is true about the Skaven clans. Moulder, Eshin and Pestilens are icon elements of the Skaven lore and I'm quite sure they're here to stay.

The confusing thing is it seemed like the scope of the project did change but in a negative way. Kislev and Cathay were originally said to be coming to the game but then weren't but now maybe are again?? With a project like this it definitely does make a certain amount of sense to start small, guage demand and then go from there but it doesn't seem to have been a very smooth process. I am very curious what 'the scope of the project has changed' actually means. It would be great if it meant adding support for the other legacy factions in the future or doing 3 plastic kits pet faction instead of one.

I agree. They should have made that announcement as soon as they announced 4th edition but if they have to do it the announcement should be: 'We are sorry to announce that Beasts of Chaos will not be recieving a 4th edition battletome and the range will be moving to the Old World. If you wish to continue playing your army with your friends in 4th edition we will be releasing a battle pack for the faction but it will not be recieving balance updates in the future and as such will not be a legal army in official tournaments. We are excited to bring the army to the old world later this year complete with several new models." Any way they phrase it the news is awful but if they'd shared the news in March it would have given people time to rebase their army, choose a different army or go and play Conquest so by the time the new edition launches there isn't a shadow hanging over it. The longer they wait, especially with rumours floating around, the worse it will be.

Given the continuing confused reactions from @Whitefang the future of BoC doesn't look that bright. If they are dropping BoC I really hope they give them an index even if it's similar in style to the old world factions. GW could even say they won't be allowed in official tournaments as most other events just ignore that. People were still playing Brettonians and Tomb Kings for years after AoS launched. At the very least, I'd like to see them get the chance to take part in AoS4.