RexHavoc

I'm sick of them only releasing stories that are part of the main line as ebook only. I won't buy ebooks. I'm glad this anthology is coming because it has several stories I'd love to read, especially the Eight lamentations shorts. I was also pretty miffed with how they released the short books over christmas- the series of ten books. I'm pretty OCD when it comes to my book collection, and though space to display them is always at a premium, I hated that they numbered the books on the spine and that made me not buy them. I don't want to display AoS books and 40k books together, I like the genres separate but with the odd numbers (I didn't want to buy all 10) on the spine they will look out of place if placed apart on the shelf. I ran out of space ages ago and some of my 40k books sit next to my AoS rulebooks now and it makes me mad just looking at it! Can't wait to get some new shelf space in the summer and rearrange everything back to it's own shelves! The new anthology thankfully takes care of some of that issue, having the short stories together finally lets me read them. I Just hope the short book collection gets the same treatment. I want to see the AoS and necromunda ones at least get a reprint in something similar. I'm a big fan of the chronicles books, even if I would rather them be hardback! You get several books at once and they seem to be including most of the important short stories in them as well. I just wish they would included the short stories as and when needed in the hardback editions of new books as well. He had a whole endtimes book. I've yet to read it- been working way back through the older ones as I never finished all of them, way back when. But I'm sure its more than a sentence or two!

That download page is much tidier. Last time I looked for something on there I gave up, it was a mess. I tend to use the links on the lexicanum wiki, as they have nice tidy grids and everything is easy to find. Hope they add the legends warscrolls and army books on there too, as they can be a pain to find as well.

'Rumour' from some comments on facebook. Someone is claiming that this comes directly from staffers at the last open day on grots. I don't put any stock in this at all, but have at it: " Goblins are being redone, as are wolf riders. Combining the remaining orcs and goblins into a new faction. Gonna be a shadespire team for them next season." " some conversations I had at the last open day surrounding the current normal goblins/grots being missing from gloomspite. " I find it hard to believe due to the fact that this is the first time this has popped up in conversation, and the open day was weeks ago. This would have been huge news over all the grot pages if people had been told this and also that they have removed everything from the webstore (greenskings, wolf riders etc) so early. You'd have thought they would have kept a range (even one of the oldest they still sold!) on sale right up to the last minute, as they did with almost all the other ranges. They wouldn't clear out models that they intended to keep in the game a year before we start seeing even hints at new models. Personally, I think if we are to see a new grot battletome other than gloomspite, it will be for a new grot range. Even something like the grotbag scuttlers. The only way we will see a generic 'greenskin and friends' battletome in the future is if the skaven one is a mass battletome of everything. But I'd still have a hard time believing that we will see new grots when they have such strong lore and models for gloomspite. As a grot fanatic, I'm all for more flavours of goblins, but I think gloomspite is what we have for the foreseeable future.

I like weird more than most but I do dislike most of the deepkin range. I just dislike the whole 'takes the water every where they go' aesthetic they have. It just feels goofy. I wouldn't have minded the sea theme but I'd imagine them like the crew of Davey Jones ship (from Pirates of the Caribbean) and how they leave wet footprints, seem wet but are not floating about or swimming. I servilely dislike the water cloak, but that's becasue I find it over done, not the idea of a water spell itself. Some lovely models in the range as well but as a skirmish only player, very few models fit in with my own narrative and many of them would look out of place fighting in the terrain I have (wizards tower/grounds, nighthaunt ruins, freeguild city and soon grot caves) even though the malign portents story where high elves find the town plundered by the deepkin was super cool and a great bit of horror. But brightly coloured swimming eels and turtles would look odd in my gloomy set up. I'm likely to pick up a start collecting when it arrives, as I can plunder parts for other projects and I would like to paint up at least one of those eels.

This ^^. This seems to be WD mission statement going forward. Though nothing official has been worded that way, even their facebook has mentioned that its going to be more of a hobby tome than a news/sales catalogue. The 'news' section is gone. There is little point them releasing a print magazine with news which is always three months out of date. They could just bump up WD content to include news for coming month or even just change the release date of WD so it coincides better with their release schedule but at this point I do think they are better off having a monthly hobby book. Buying white dwarf for news is redundant with all their 'free' social media outlets now. White dwarf costs as much or more than posting to facebook, but has the risk that if they don't sell it (and in vast quantities) it looks bad to their shareholders and the figures.

Oh sigmar! Imagine if they did huge kits in plastic! (though it would get to the point that I still hold with 40k- apocalypse scale battles are silly, epic 40k works so much better for larger scale 40k. I'd hate to see AoS become the same kind of parking lot looking game! but the converting opportunities of a kit like that would be too good too pass up!)

Very cool. I've been on holiday so not had the chance to sit and read the current issue yet (as a skirmish only player I'm looking forward to seeing the new skirmish campaign stuff) but it does sound like they really are returning the mag to being a hobby magazine. I might even sub, something I've not done as there are often huge chunks of time that have passed where WD had nothing of interest in it for me. If it truly is going to be a pure hobby mag, that info never becomes outdated so will always be a great reference. Plus I like having something non digital to read. Let's hope they don't burn out on hobby articles to quickly and it doens't go back to being just reprints of community articles, just two months too late! I'm hoping they reintroduce way more 'real' armies- from both staff and players. The studio armies are of course top quality but after so many years seeing the same style on every mini they release it's become stale. I do miss the days where they printed armies which, if shown on the facebook groups, would cause people to spin out and a torrent of 'thin your paint' and '0/10 duncan' memes would be posted. Those old tales of four warlords with fat bloke were always the best part of the magazine. It was nice to see them return to that over christmas with the online article but they've yet to show off the next instalment (or I missed it!) The last printed four warlords had some nice armies but the articles themselves felt clinical and sterile and not at all like a passion project from hobbyists. They even showed some models online that didn't seem to make it in to the magazine, which was a shame.

The problem is that you will never please everyone. I personally can't stand the limitation. I still think the realm lore retcon was the worst thing they did to the game, and I tend to ignore it (which has caused people to loose their minds, as it's 'incorrect'!) Saying ''but in the end us consumers want to build on an existing world, not one we have to create ourselves'' is speaking for a whole community , and it's not even correct. AoS started out with a huge community of imaginative world builders. Plenty of us play the game because we get to build our own world, we don't all want to be spoonfed from GW- which is what a large percentage of 'returning' AoS players seem to want. There is no real wrong way to enjoy the game, but for every 'set in stone' piece of lore GW bring to the game, that is one less open part of the lore for the players that love the sandbox nature of AoS and not surprisingly, there are a high number of people that don't care about the lore, that only play AoS for the tournament/matched play style of gaming, they are not the ones buying the novels and audios, so why does it matter to much if they have a clear image in their heads of what housing looks like in the realms. I can tell you right now exactly what housing looks like in the realms- it's what ever you want it to look like. If you want to roll with the classic Fachwerkhäuser houses of the Empire, you can. You want your troops to live in floating spore domes that transform in to attack craft, you can. You don't need GW to define these things. Once they start defining the whole universe there will be no room left for imagination and once that happens you end up with the same thing that happened to WFB, a complete world where GW have no room to create anything new, for fear players complain it doesn't fit. There was no room in WFB for GW to come up with new ideas, new forces. The sandbox nature of AoS means they can create seas elves or sky dwarves or drug goblins or brain whales or whatever, with out treading on the toes of any other creator (including their own) And this right here is the biggest issue with all the people complaining that the realms are not fleshed out enough. People that complain that they realms or the lore is not well defined tend to be the people that don't bother reading the books. They want easy answers from a wikipedia entry. I've only read a handful of books and each one of them (bar one) has been pretty good at describing cities, buildings, and the people, all of which are of freeguild design (or at least of human design). If someone is not interested enough in the lore to pick up one book to read, then are they really interested enough to need to know what shape the buildings are? People had less of an idea of WFB lore back at it's peak. No one picked up every single army book or read all the novel publications (there were more than just books) and not everyone had access to the internet back then (though there were some absolute gems on it even back then- I still have my print outs some where of the snotling battletome/40k codex!) Yet I don't recall a single time anyone complained that the GW were doing a bad job because buildings were not well defined. Woops. Sorry!

I always thought we might see the devoted come in the next starter set (AoS3) versus death cults. There have been a number of mentions of the death cults in lore and some art work popped up around the AoS2 release. One of the rumour engines looked remotely like part of the the death cult art, but it seems it wasn't as most of the older AoS rumour engine stuff has been solved since then.

Up to a month ago I would have agreed that anything with a huge amount of old models and no battletome will stay that way, as they don't want to do all the work revitalising a range only for people to just use old collections. How ever Gloomspite has dispelled that. Night goblins are one of those factions that a very high number of players have a lot, even if tucked away at the back of the closet. They have been the main army for at least two editions of fantasy, they were crazy popular in the late 90s due to being one of the first multi part kits made, not to mention the crazy range of models that were brought up for 40k and gorkamorka during the same period. Gloomspite have shown that GW can put out a new range of models, models which people own loads off and still sell out of them (troggs were OOS this morning online, as were several other bits)

Blackstone fortress has it's first expansion on the way, it seems to be a very small release with only a couple of models in the box, so maybe it's that. But then there have been a lot of 40k previews over the last few months and the expansion was shown only a couple of weeks ago, so maybe not, might be a bit soon. So we are getting a reverse update? Perhaps we are going back to having silly rules in the warscrolls! fantastic! haha

Highly doubtful. Rules as written will remain as they are, Malign portents made mention that there are both memory daemon versions and physical versions now. The stormcast heads are insane. Way to expensive. I'm normally ok with the price point GW set (even if I'd always like to pay less) but that is insane for a handful of heads. I'm also very surprised that the people on facebook that are always yelling about having more female models in the game are not complaining that there is a charge for female heads! (Though they don't have a head to stand on- as there is the male pack too!) At this point though I'd rather make a green stuff mould of the female heads we already have than pay that sort of money. I am surprised that they don't just add more spare heads to the stormcast kits (and a lot of other kits as well) The new troggoth kit has something like 8 alternative heads and they are large multi part. I know that is probably because they have less other options or parts but I'm sure they could find a way to squeeze and extra head or two on sprues.

Missing space dwarves from your list- squats confirmed for AoS!

If we are mirroring underworld releases, then they need to back track and fill the holes from shadespire first! We need that skaven battletome now!

Thanks, I spent years trying and not getting any where with more realistic or gritty schemes. I've finally got round to excepting that the clean style is what I do best and I've been able to get on with painting now! Thanks, never too late, I'm always slow with updates! Got my stash of gloomspite yesterday, but before that I tried to clear some of my WIPs that had been cluttering up my desk before operation clean up! I didn't get them all finished as most of them still need the basing done, but most are at 99% and will be easy to finish off when on a day that I can't paint for too long. Slowly working may through my stash of snotlings, then it's going to be time to pull apart the ten or so old square based ones that are due a massive clean up-originally painted around 1992. Also managed to come up with a paint scheme for my newer nighthaunt models, as much I love the oxide ones, I couldn't face painting the whole army like that. I did get my KO warband leader undercoated but I've been too consumed with the bad moon to start on him yet! (though I need to as he needs to be ready for the next game!) The next grot is a character I made up for a Mordheim gang quite a number of years ago now and never got around to painting him. He's a squig leg and mushroom seller, but years of bopping vicious squigs on the head has lead him to be pretty tough! He also needs a new base (I was always quite pleased with his flagstone base so it will be sad to see it go, but he needs to be on a round like the rest of his warband!) but haven't decided if I will stick with his Mordheim themed one, in remembrance of the old game, or if I will update it to match the rest of the warbands. Also knocked up a collage of close ups of the trolls and snotlings (the snotling bottom caused a bit of a stir on another group!) for the 'eavier metal group #miniaturecloseup2018 #miniaturecloseup2019 challenge. Not the best painter in the world for sure, but some people were taking the challenge very seriously, and I thought it was about time a bit of snotling humour was injected into the proceedings!

Yeah definitely. People forget that Soul wars was a huge release but it kind of blends in to the background as it was to some just a new box set and another stormcast release (even though there were tons of new stormcast to go with it!) They can definitely get several armies out by the end of this year, especially as the ones people are shouting for have a lot of the models already there, even if they add to them. I do wonder where we will be this time next year though. As once we see at least the last of the daemons, skaven and free guild books (Ignoring elves and dwarves, as though people still want WFB dwarves and high elves to return, elves currently have three books and dwarves have two) we will be in pretty much the same shape as we were when they pulled the plug on WFB. I do wonder if they will go back to starting the cycle again (as they used to do) or if they will continue to bring out small, more unique forces and begin to retire older battletomes that have had their day. I can see them doing that, as it also pushes to rush buying on armies they may otherwise had left off, as even if it is years, we are used to seeing models being around a long, long time and having them only around a couple of years is going to make them feel like they have a much shorter shelf life.

6 months with out them would be fine, Gloomspite has been a huge release, over €500 in new releases let people that went mad for them so close to christmas finishing recover their wallets.

Exactly. People are ready way to much in to every release now. It's not way a hint at a new battletome. It's the same thing as the high elf turned to stone on morathi's base. It's a nod to other things that exist or have existed at some point in time in the realms. I saw it as more than likely as a nod to the history of the realms. Once upon a time, their were dwarves that lived under the ground, but one day goblins and skaven drove them from their homes and into the cities of sigmar and the skies of the realms(KO) leaving their old ways behind. Goblins now live in the dank, which is nothing more than old forgotten dwarven cities, after years and years of neglect. Their old statues make for useful weapons for trogs. not only that but both KO and Fyreslayers both look like classic dwarves underneath their helmets. This could just be one of their cities that the goblins raided. Even the art work shows that KO don't spend all day, everyday walking around in their 'work' clothes. They are not going to be putting up statues of themselves in boiler suits and DMs. It's not a hint to anything. The only thing I might agree that it is, other than 'rule of cool' is perhaps this is a left over from WFB days. Maybe some of these sculpts were being worked on during the end times (which is why they fit the battle of skull pass terrain and troops so well) but it's taken till now to give them an AoS work over, or perhaps it's reused designs.

Exactly this. Stormcast are to humans what Frankensteins' monster is too his creator and some angry villagers. I don't think the original humans of WFB were homo sapiens either, as the population didn't evolve there as like earth either. I think everything other than the original Slann in both WFB and AoS have some sort of magical origin.

I dont see them joining up all four clans. We might see skyre as the main focus but with some units from other clans, other than pestilence, added in, much like gloomspite. I think gloomspite can probably be seen as the redux standard going forward. It's very similar to how DoK was brought back, only DoK missed out on spells and terrain. It could be that we have another BoC on our hands with skaven, where we no new kits except spells and terrain. Most of the skaven kits from end times are still pretty good and not far off todays standards. We of course get the new warlock from carrion empire as a separate release. Only thing not readily available is the heavy weapons teams and they can just do away with them. I'd love it if they did get a gloomspite sized overhaul but with the amount of kits they still have which are pretty serviceable I don't see it happening. The pestilence machine kits all have skyre duel builds and then you still have the stormfiends and doomwheel. We might see new stormvermin as a troop type but that could be it and they still have a full force, enough for a battletome.

Ah, yes. If I recall, the reason I probably thought November was that there was an issue with my copy and it took them ages to find a replacement part (due to being out of stock) I'm probably misremembering the replacement showing up in November as the release. But sept-jan is still not too long a wait for the battletome, taking into account that christmas probably slows down any new release (as the big January army seems to be popular and a good way to make some after xmas cash)

Blight war was november-ish, Nurgle was something like January. Wasn't too much of a gap between them.

Grotbag scuttlers have been mentioned several times in fluff now but there have been no real rumours on ever seeing them as a battletome. I do suspect we will see another airship based force in the future, but GW will probably be weighing up the options as to which one will be most successful in terms of sales: Grots or Skaven. As @Overread says, I think the days of rumours are long gone. Everything we get now is people pretty much wishlisting or guessing. The only time we get actual rumours are is when something leaks but GW are on that right away now and will often 'leak' it themselves that same day to cover the leak. This is pretty much a 'look whats on the community page' thread now and then general chit chat about the newest release. But we've been down this road before, rumours dry up, people ask for to be back on track. Chit chat resumes. Is it not time to make a second rumour thread for rumours only and just let this one be what it is. It's perfectly fine to steer this one, but as complaints always seem to be that there is too much general chat for the people that just want rumours, how about trialling a no reply rumour thread on the forum?

I actually find the battle for skull pass sculpts slightly more interesting. They have more variations than you can do with the box set one (excluding converting of course) and have more details like pouches, reminiscent of the kev adams sculpts. The details an be a little softer (which can be usual for single piece starter models) but still easy enough to paint around the issue spots. I wish i had brought more skull pass ones and less box set ones, even with the amount of converting I like to do with the set ones.

Ko might not get access to magic as we currently see it, but they are one of the main factions of AoS with out endless spells or a terrain feature. You can all but guarantee that Stormcast will get a terrain feature as soon as they get their next update. You dont have to need to give KO magic for them to have endless spells. They could tap into magical energies for the realms, or GW could use this a chance to expand endless spells from just magic to other similar ideas. They could get fuel supplies, aether gold deposits or defence turrets that all offer bonuses. The biggest issue AoS has right now is that the current model of releases seems to have gone down rather well with the community, yet some of the more recent armies which are quite popular, DoK, KO, BCR...are recent enough releases that a a sudden reprint of the battletomes would cause as stir that they were returning to the sort of release cycle of the last couple of editions (something they seemed to want to do away with with AoS) but just that bit too old to have gotten the new stuff like the terrain and spells.