RexHavoc

This is what annoys me with GW. I moved into painting stuff up for some other games, as even though I love AoS there is a few things that pushed me away from it (not counting the insane work load I've had over the 61 weeks of the 2 week lockdown I've been stuck in) Cursed city seemed to now just be a ploy to push people to buy the new kits in higher priced, but smaller offerings. Make a tempted big set that hardly anyone is able to get, let them all get annoyed at scalpers, then the GW prices don't look so bad. Then there's the new start collecting kit. I'm hoping we see some leaked prices quickly, but I've been warning my group the last few weeks that start collectings are on the way out (IMO of course), I've spent a small fortune grabbing the almost all the last ones I've been wanting/needing just in case. Just one more to go (if it comes back into stock that is!). Then I see they've kept the start collecting, but I'm honestly expecting this one to be priced like the combat patrols (€100+) as thats over a €100 of troops before you add in the wight king. I'm not so worried with this set- I always though GraveGuard were over priced anyway, so I've been using other company skeletons as the bog standard and then the GW skeletons from the start collecting as my grave guard. So I own no actual GG and I can always do with more black knights/hex wraiths. But to lock the new character behind an old kit paywall is awful. Yes, I've heard the argument that these are 'start collectings' meant for new players, but there will be many that have tons of the old kits but wanted the one new one. Yes, the wight will come on its own but that could be months or even a year away- they've not done a good job getting the new characters from the 2 army sets they've been doing the last 4 years. I'm not impressed with the release of cursed city, but this release does at least contain the two kits I really, really wanted from the whole game, I will probably buy it reluctantly. But I will less inclined to buy any kits/games like this in future. I'd really hoped that the last broken realms book was coming this week, so I could grab it whilst my own hype for it is still high. I loved Morathis book but had no interest in Teclis, so skipped it and without Teclis I skipped Be'lakor as well. Those new wolves are ace though. Going to find as many excuses as I can to paint quite the number of them. The one being eaten by the crow is my favourite model to come out this year (so far)

Yeah, 15mm seems to be the threat GW worries about. There is a company producing both 6mm and 15mm minis for sci-fi, who's main target audience is 40k fans (Epic specifically). GW haven't battered an eye lid at the 6mm stuff, but orders for 15mm samples were made by GW head office. Either they keep their eye on scales/sculpts to see if its a market they ever want to get into or that they worry that more people will move into 15mm 40k due to the cost. 6mm has a huge following, but its harder to convince people that are hooked on 28mm to move to 6mm, as they perceive it to be harder to paint and less detailed. I don't see them doing fantasy in anything other than 28mm (or at least their version of 28mm/32mm/heroic scale stuff) I'd like to think I'd be all over a smaller scale/warmater redo if they were too do it again now- but in truth I've so much 6mm fantasy it would be hard to convince me to go to 10mm or 15mm now.

Great stuff, got a lot of your blog posts to catch up with I've gotten very far behind what with my current work load! Itching to get to painting myself! What happened to your library shelves/librarian orc? I swear I saw it somewhere and its vanished with out a trace?!

Thanks! I wanted something that was striking on the tabletop/shelves yet I could stand to paint thousands off (I might have gone a bit mad collecting bundles of stormcast recently!) There is a few more details to add and I really need to finish the bases, but overall I think its simple enough that I might have some chance of getting these all done alongside all my other projects! I really wanted my Slaanesh force to be less 'spikes, guts, skulls & chains' and more of a decadent society to contrast against my 'Nobel rotting knights' of Nurgle.

I'd been wondering if that meant it was going to be a Indomitus circus show. Shame if it is. The 2nd Ed set is fantastic and part of that charm is that it is available on the shelf. I love the new models but have no real interest in trying to buy it in the 7 mins its available (6 of which where the website crashes) only to still miss out on it when they oversell the item, take weeks to refund the order and then only be able to buy the models at a huge markup from the original set. A made to order after would be better news, but they wont have the transparency upfront about it and that will just complete the mess of a release.

As mentioned above, you may be able to find someone that is happy to build models for you. I'm a fan of building models but don't have enough time to paint all I want to build, so you might someone similar locally. There is the Knight-Incantor from the starting Age of Sigmar booklet/magazine- though this is likely to be going soon due to the new edition. You could also look to older once piece models. Warhammer fantasy, Heroquest/advanced heroquest, battlemasters all have model ranges that can be picked up for fairly cheap and have plenty of AoS units (though the designs/style of the minis are very different from modern ones) Outside of GW models you have places like em4- they do a really, really cheap range of Dwarves and orcs which are all one piece models, apart from the shields (You could get away with blutac-ing those on or again finding someone that wouldn't gluing them for you) ScruffyCrow on youtube has done some fantastic things with these models for the Oathmark game and shows how well those old plastic models hold up

It looks like the same logo to me tbh, I thought they had just shifted the background colour to the more blueish tint over the older greenish tint of the malign portents/Soul wars era of the logo.

Yeah, see this is total madness to me. I don't understand this one bit. All I can imagine is like 20 lads signing up to a tournament, each and everyone of them thinking to themselves how annoying it is they can't use models they own and cursing the new rules, before trudging along to the game with a brand new set of (expensive) models, but all saying nothing to each other because 'That's how the local meta is'. 🤷‍♂️

They do this because so many believe this attitude is true and of course GW are going to cash in on it. If people kept playing with models they own, rules changes be damned, GW would eventually figure this out and have to start putting more effort into keeping both new and old players interested in the game. I just don't understand the inability for people to say to their gaming group, hey I've got this old model I'm going to keep using it in place of the new kit instead. There are probably a few instance where old models are pushing it, especially within the tournament or PUG scene, but most of the time there is no real change to models other than some visual aspect. Since the announcement of AoS3 at the weekend, I've heard a ridiculous amount of things where people are complaining about some aspect of the hobby which were all solvable by simply telling your opponent what you are intending to do is and it is astonishing to me! I'm not the most social of people, but if you are about to spend 2 hours of your life playing a game with someone, then what harm is there in telling them prior to starting that you are using an old model in place of a new one? There has got to be a goldmines worth of psychological papers to be written on the weird habits of wargamers!

Been ages since I've had time to work on anything, doing both Uni and working from home has taken its toll on getting any hobby done on a regular schedule. But I did get these done a little while back, though there is still some work to finish on them once this term is done and dusted with. I already have Nurgle chaos warriors, the new kits are nice but very pricey for the amount I intend to put together and I wanted something a bit more more fancy for my Slaanesh knights. plus I have a huge amount of spare bits kicking about after buying up some stuff for other projects/conversions.

Though it was pretty likely the LoN was on the way out as soon as this was announced, I wonder what's happening with stuff like the Mortarchs and Nagash himself. (Unless they were all rolled into Bonereapers- its one of the few battletomes I've not brought and I've no idea whats in there tbh)

This seems to be the common thing now. I picked up the KO warband yesterday as they were finally back in stock. Its €20 for a Aether-Khemist (which I think is a better sculpt) and three other models against the single Aether-Khemist at €22.50.

Skeletons are priced exactly where I thought they would be. I'm still surprised they are 20 in the box though. The fact that they are slightly cheaper than the recently retired set it also surprising. The blood knights are a great price (I'm assuming that they are multipart and that things like the banner are alternative parts) I was expecting them to be up there with the big chaos knights in price. The rumour seems like its just an an amalgamation of all the wishlisting and guesses from other rumour threads. I find it hard to believe that they would bung all the dwarves back together when we have cities of sigmar (who have already been mentioned as being Human, dwarf and elves that are going out and reclaiming the chaos wastes) and the overlords have been pushed so hard since launch as their own thing. I just don't see it being true. I'd like it to be- I much prefer mixed battletomes more reminiscent of the old army books that let you own one book and build a million different themed forces from it.

I'm very, very surprised at this. I honestly thought we would see 10 zombies and 5-10 skeletons to a box. I'm likely to hold out for a battleforce or start collecting set of these (If start collecting are still a thing, they seem to be slowly being withdrawn and I'd not be surprised if we see AoS versions of combat patrols with 3rd Ed) but pleasantly surprised that my issues with these two sets of models are pretty much mitigated just from having 20 in a set.

Well, there is no dire wolves, Skeleton horse lord or the variants of the vampires next week so much be splitting the release.

Totally. I get that forums don't want to be filled with complaints about pricing etc. but what we what we get instead is people getting annoyed with changes or issues and have no place to air them, so the problems continue. I've so many posts about people annoyed that we've got a three year cycle on books, some of which have been replaced twice in just a matter of months. Whilst what I do isn't as common as it should be, every time I've pointed out that on facebook groups that I've stuck with playing 1st Ed and that others can do the same (though most likely people would choose 2nd over 1st) if they are sick of constant book changes, its seen as a negative when in reality its meant to be a positive adaptation to keep players invested in the game, even if it isn't following the path of GWs 'maximum profit'. I spent a small fortune on random AoS kits this morning, simply because I've been craving doing some converting again and new edition buzz caught my eye. I'd not have done that if I felt I was about to have to drop a ton of cash on new edition books in a couple of months. Quite often people are negative because they care about the thing and want to be part of it. I'm sure it would need to be limited, but there is a outright ban on some grievances across a good percentage of the community and it can't be healthy for the game. As for Fimir being generic, its been so long since I've seen then in use (Other than people complaining about the old lore not being suitable for the modern era) that they don't feel generic to me (The forgeworld models were a scarcity after all). I'd love to see them back, if only so I could get a great plastic kit for them to add them to my old-world Albion/Oathmark collection of models!

Ah yes, scripted answer number 4. I honestly don't understand how anyone still chooses to think anything that comes from the facebook team is a hint or news. They answer almost every direct question 'we've no idea but when we hear something we will post it on the WarComms page' and they were also the ones telling people that Cursed City would be a mainstay game for the foreseeable future- the foreseeable future of the full 7 minutes it took to sell out that is. Unless its posted directly on the WarComms page with photos, its not news (and even then they need to be the correct photos and not say, oh the older sets with more contents in than what's actually being released the next week! lol)

I love Fimir, but I honest don't think they will bring them back as a faction and actually hope that they don't. What I'm really hoping for is a real mix of destruction races with a common design theme tying them into the same faction. This leaves them room to bring back fimir as a single kit (with multiple options) as well as a set of new feral-beast type Orcs or just about any of the destruction armies as a new kit. They can draw from a much wider range of influences then. It not only gives us a much wider selection of models to pick from that way but also allows them to do crazier stuff in or bring out other odd n ends kits down the line without too much issue having something new fit in. This sort of makes sense seeing as they seemed to have suggested that cities of sigmar are staying as a focus point of the game and it would be nice to see the mirror opposite for destruction. Though this theory does fall apart as Legion of Nagash is going and being replaced with the gravelords, which is a far more focused race by the looks of it. I'd have liked to see a mixed race force for each of the factions. I'm also someone that's a tad annoyed with Josh Reynolds no longer being a part of BL, his books seem very much in line with the theme of this stage of 3rd Ed. lore so I do find it strange that he left on the grounds that GW were moving away from his style. I had to assume there was more to it than that and go back to daydreaming about how great the rest of the Eight Lamentations series would have been. I do love some of the new art- it feels like a real improvement to the usual standard we've been getting recently. There is a real cosmic horror vibe going on in some of them, I think that's a perfect thematic area for AoS to play around in to separate it from Grimdark gothic horror of 40k or Grimdark fantasy of the old world. Some of the artwork still has that digital feel of 'lets make everything out of focus' or low detailed art that just feels cheap and rushed to me. I'm still sticking with 1st Ed with my group. We haven't seen a single good reason to keep paying for new rules when the old edition serves us just fine. But as usual, I'm likely to buy the starter set (Yndrasta is probably my favourite stormcast model they have ever done- I'm very likely to get two, one to paint as is and one for my Slaanesh-cast I've made in place of Chaos warriors) and if the new race is a good mix of models, even if I don't collect them I will want them for conversion fodder. The starter stuff is usually good value. I'm still not sure that a moving timeline is what the setting needs for longevity- but I like the sound of the City Bois moving across wastelands and setting up new towns. It gives some nice scope for new models and books but without massively changing the status quo realms.

As soon as I saw this I thought this would be great for my realm of metal nurgle skirmish warband, built from DG & poxwalker models. I'm no keen on the flies, they are very flat looking but otherwise this is a real nice bit, got a very 80s chaos feel to it. I'm also having feelings for adding one to my Chaos-adron overlords too...

There has been no sign of Christmas catalogues yet and the battleforces are usually announced before they start getting sent out. I'm honestly not expecting to see them this year, not with the production being affected as it has but perhaps they are just late announcing them not wanting to cut into sales for current releases. With both 40k & AoS having big releases in the last couple of weeks and now with blood bowl next week, I suspect that it will time to show them if they are coming. I'd say we will see a stormcast one for sure and possibly one for the Lumineth as they were the big/new release for AoS this year. I'd like to see a KO one again and suspect we might see a Slaanesh one, especially if they are too have a new battletome next year. They do seem to be the big focus of chaos right now. That said, maybe they won't do them this year. They did have quite a few left over from last years so maybe the novelty of them is starting to wear thin, so we may see something else instead.

Halflings for my Cities of Sigmar.

It looks amazing, until I watched their follow on video for it and you can see how delicate it is. They had to give it a coating of superglue and then when they were showing it being painted, you could see parts of the frosting 'melt' where they applied paint but it had not been properly coated in superglue. So looks amazing, but I think anything other than a display piece it would be next to useless. Shame as its a really nice effect.

I've ordered a nice batch of Broken Realms bits. I've been crying for decent narrative supplements/campaigns since AoS first dropped. I love malign portents but felt that one book for it wasn't enough and the last one they did (The chaos one, the name is escaping me right now) I didn't bother with as it seems a bit too rules heavy and I tend to avoid any book now that is too rules heavy. I don't think Anvilgard is being removed from the game or rules. I don't really follow it as I don't play RPGS, but didn't the AoS RPG just release a Anvilgard sourcebook. Seems weird they would write and release a sourcebook for a town that was about to become old news and no longer matter. I'd not put it past GW to do so, but I had thought that the RPG team were pretty heavily connected or at least very well communicated to and with the AoS design team when it came to lore/rules. Good things: GW are pushing the 'narrative' side of the game, where I think AoS really does best its best work. Those gorgeous new boxes/art for the battalions. One of my biggest gripes with 'new' gw is how sterile both the stores & White dwarf look now. The plain white boxes- 'eavy metal miniatures-'start collecting' look feels so generic for a hobby that is (usually) so heavily creative and bold. The book doesn't appear to be numbered. Such a small thing, but as someone that wants buy things that interest me and leave things that don't, numbering books makes it hard to be a collector that doesn't want 'all the things'. I've skipped on buying the yearly novellas & the one or two 40k campaign books I'd have otherwise brought. Its a small, silly thing, but it really annoys me having books numbered on the shelf. Morathi (the book) looks fantastic. That red spine is going to look fantastic next to the dark covers of the core rules/Malign Portents/my collectors gloomspite book. And the logos & titles are not wildly out of place like the Adeptus Titanicus books. 11/10 for that cover & spine. I love the idea of Stormkeeps. This could be one of the most exciting changes. Which I will mention more on below. Looks like I collect Slaanesh as well now 🙈 Bad things: Whilst I appreciate that rules are a big(gest) deal for a lot of folk, there are a lot of complaints already cropping up about the rules and I've seen a few people huff and puff about 'having' to buy a book for a couple of pages of rules. Yet, had this been flipped, more in line with the 40k books, there would have been complaints that they had to buy a book of rules that will be 'invalidated' in a couple of months, had it been packed with rules. 🤷‍♂️ I wish GW would be a little more transparent and up front on releases. Would telling us how many books there will be affect their bottomline that much? Maybe popping up a timeline like the necormunda books had, even if they can't currently give dates. Yes, I'm aware that they probably avoid doing this due to the folk that freak out when something is delayed and perhaps I'm being spoilt by other companies announcing well in advance. Nothing is selling out quickly (or at all, at the time of writing) Whilst the 2nd hand/Scalper market for AoS never seems to be as big as 40k (understandably) I don't think this is a good sign for AoS as a game. The edition has already shifted into a more meta-rules-faster release cycle, much like 40ks community wanted. This could be the start of AoS no longer being the 'in' thing. Even more so as people are waiting on the old world release (when ever that may be) Whilst I think November has always been their month to release the 2 force sets, I'd much rather have seen this closer to December, would have made for an awesome bundle for Christmas. Whilst thematically the big box is spot on, I would have like to have seen 5 less Melusai and a set of Witch Elves in there. Looks like I collect Slaanesh as well now 🙊 Things I'm basing off nothing but pure speculation: Stormkeeps. I think this is such a cool addition. Whilst often being compared to space marines as a negative, I'd love if they just embraced it at this point. Stormkeeps make me think of stormcast that are settled, that get to be part of the town/area they live in. No more popping in, killing chaos and buggering right off back home after. Whilst they kind of had this with CoS, making stormcast more 'human' seems the way to go now. Maybe they are looking at humanising them more in preparation for the 'big changes'. Perhaps we see Sigmar mirror the 40ks Emperor more, either powered down or for some reason unable to continue to put so many resources into stormcasts, to the point that it matters more when they die/get reforged. Could just be a small addition and no grand plan there. But I'd like to think that we might see tighter stormcast lore in the future. Keeping my fingers cross for a skaven-Duardin-KO-Gits broken realms book. A sort of 'As above, so Below' battle, with sky battles & cave warfare going on at the same time. That would be fantastic.

Also finished up the first of many, many units of rattlebone warriors, with some old world vibes. I've intentionally left the shield design blank right now, as I'm not sure what way I'm going to go with the whole army. I've done the unit filler as these will also be used for games of WFB & oathmark. There is still a crow to add to it, but its MIA, I left it on my desk and it seems to have flown off! They will get their own custom unit tray at some point, replacing the neon green 6th Edition one! But I'm still working on a matching unit of nighthaunt and waiting to make a bunch of trays together.

Been ages since I added anything to this thread. Finally got round to painting my Snotling Warlord- Gütz, The green swordsgrot! I original built this conversion around 1999, but he was so banged up I reworked him with some identical replacement parts as I loved this model!