Warboss Gorbolg

I’ve flirted with Beastmen for a couple of decades but never committed. Especially during the WHFB days, they just felt like a poor man’s O&G in terms of variety and support, and generally had the same high level themes and unit types as O&G. Their Lore about wanting to tear down civilization and especially hating humans in part to Beastmens’ tragic creation and existence I’ve thought was interesting, especially in a setting centered on humans. Then the idea of some of them rising up to complete with chaos mortals as they are the truest children of chaos is a cool concept IMO. Lastly the subtlety of possible beastmen mutations and hiding on the periphery of civilization is interesting from a story and narrative perspective, if you’re into novels and other narrative gaming. I could definitely get sucked into beastmen if they get more modeling support and updates.

The reimagining and new lore of FEC is probably my favorite “rebranding” in all of AOS, and I’m not even a fan of Death in general. Even just a new box for the ghouls that reflects the delusions would be a huge upgrade and realignment to the lore for the whole faction IMO.

The Fellwaters are serious business compared to their Stone Troll predecessors! The Cave Troll from the LOTR line might be worth looking at as well if you haven’t yet.

Honestly I still think the Fellwater models hold up really well. Still look good to me and have enough options to make several units without duplicating configurations. The Vargskyr one looks great but it will certainly take a lot of effort to create a unit(s) with visual variety.

Love the GSG Underworlds war band. The wolf riders look good but like some others, I’m not particularly excited about them as they don’t fit within GSG themes. Would rather GW continue to focus on the existing GSG themes.

I was thinking that it ends up more like Chaos, except instead of god specific armies we’ll get 3-4 realm influenced ones over several years. sort of hope I’m wrong as I’d go broke.

Honestly I find the blue cloth the most striking. Great looking dragon! 🎉

I think that GW is leading with the Crusades because it is the easiest to design and deliver. Basically builds upon old world priests and flaggellants updated with Stormcast inspirations. GW says in the article that introducing new mortals is a huge undertaking and this is just the beginning. From a theme perspective, I think that the Crusades can get away with ignoring realm/city specific influences more easily than trying to introduce new swordsmen, war machines, etc. I wouldn’t extrapolate from the Crusades to the rest of the mortals designs. Again, I just think that the Crusades might have been the low-hanging fruit and easily separated and therefore designed for.

Sorry didn’t realize another thread touched on this, but thanks for the replies. I can certainly live with it if they will be coming back every few months or once a year. Was worried they were going away permanently.

I noticed today on the GW site that a significant number of Underworld’s war bands are now “ last chance” to purchase. This surprised me and I hope that GW reconsiders. I’ve found Underworlds to be an awesome source of needed hero models and alt sculpts in general. Guess I’m just sad to see this happening as I’m sure that I will start new armies in the future and hate to think that these great models will be gone.

As a horde army with cheap heroes, Gloomspite needs additional shaman and loonboss kits. Preferably they would follow the old Empire wizard and Captain approach so that multiple variations could be built from a single kit. A refresh of spider riders along with a new boss would be awesome. Seems like it would make a great start collecting type box as well.

It can be so hard to guess where GW is going from a model perspective. My hunch is that instead of releasing a generic human faction, we’re going to get something strongly themed like what they’ve done with Warcry warbands and in AoS proper, Lumineth. Then over time we’ll get new human themes that expand the faction. Just my guess. For some reason I really dislike horses in the AoS setting. Like how did they get here? Wouldn’t mind seeing all those go away in the new human faction.

I think it is an interesting concept. When good units get points hikes, a tidal wave of internet moans ensue. Additionally, it generally means fewer models on the table one way or another, which GW nor I as a player really wants (let's see those grand armies on the table). Similarly, rules changes take forever and nerfs create hard feelings. Instead, this seems to attack the risk/reward relationship. I think it is worth experimenting with.

If you’re looking for inspiration, you could also see if the Mordheim forums are still active as well. A lot of incredible terrain and war bands were there. GW really dropped the ball on that game and faithful community that continued on for many, many years after GW stopped supporting it. Tom's Boring Mordheim Forum I believe.

Still waiting to see if NH receive a start collecting with the models from Soul Wars that you can't purchase currently. I'm hesitant to jump into a faction with several "limited edition" models.

My initial reaction was that it is a gargoyle type creature, Cursed City or one of the Death factions.

I’m still cautiously optimistic. Arguably the smallest faction in the game is already getting it’s 3rd battle tome. GW wouldn’t keep updating this frequently for what is also believed to be one of the lowest sellers if they themselves weren’t unsatisfied and didn’t also think that they had ideas to improve Fyreslayers.

Interesting take. A lot of what you say makes sense but I think the fact that miniature war gaming is a very small community gives GW extra leverage and longevity. Anecdotal experience is anecdotal, but what has kept me and many others I’ve talked to locally, playing GW games vice even relatively popular alternatives (privateer press, battle tech, etc.) is that I can find other players of GW games much easier than the alternatives that I might be interested in. Reaching a critical mass of players is a huge deal if you don’t have a bunch of friends in the hobby as well. GW brings that to the table whereas other games generally don’t. Therefore people like me only continue to invest in GW games.

I imagine that your first shooting phase you always declare, “inferno raging inside” to get rend 3 on Roaring Fyrestream. Seems pretty good. Looking forward to the full rules.

I recommend that you look at Warcry instead of a full AoS army. It's a GW skirmish game in the same setting as AoS with a much better encounter scale for D&D (5-20 models). You can collect many many Warcry bands for the same price as an AoS army. If you really end up enjoying a specific faction and the hobby, then start expanding into an actual army.

Favorite AoS novel so far is probably Plague Garden, despite it being a pretty classic story in many ways. In general, all the Nurgle as villains stuff has been pretty interesting as their characters seem to get more attention as villains. Also a big fan of books spending time on the non human, aelf, duradin, and undead\chaos variants of them (e.g., Gloomspite). As a long time O&G player, it's nice to see some portrayals that make the more primitive races more than fodder. Shout out for Skarsnik just before end times as well. The novellas like Warqueen are also good, quick reads. For older stuff, the Black Hearts by Nathan Long was fun and I see it very rarely mentioned. It's about a group of Empire criminals pressed into service against Chaos. Low magic omnibus and things go poorly for the anti-heros. The common man trying to survive in an insane world stuff from BL I've generally enjoyed through the years. Unfortunately I have read very little during these last couple of years.

What’s the probability that the soul wars models are repackaged and released? I’ve been eyeing NH for a few weeks but am hesitant to jump in now.

I have at least a few models of all Destruction factions (except Kruleboyz), and sizable amounts of Gloomspite, IJ, and old O&G. Yet I have zero interest in Kragnos. It is literally a giant centigor. Definitely feel like Destruction was cheated on that one. It’s not even an interesting character, and I will never believe that it was designed with Destruction in mind. A new, bigger model for the rogue idol that is manned by orruks and/or grots would have been wildly popular.

My issue with Kruleboyz is the new aesthetic. War clans is now 3.5 different aesthetics (ardboyz). I’d argue that it would have been much better for Destruction and warclans if GW expanded the small IJ and Bonesplittaz ranges to make each more complete. I am still not convinced that the various Orruk aesthetics look good when mixed together.

The fact that there are no models on the list is not relevant IMO as GW stores stock very few COS and Skaven models currently, and those models that they do stock are the more current sculpts.