Kaleb Daark

they weren't even progressive when they came out - they were modelled on the storm of magic artwork and were rubbish even then. Totally agree about the manticore, and I really hope in this age of beasts we'll finally get to have monsters which we can be proud of by a new sculptor. The current crop of stuff seems rather promising.

Please tell me that the thing on the left is a cheeky tease for a new remastered chimera model ?! ( I know, unlikely) The current manticore and chimera was are absolutely dire, I'd love to see a plastic AoS'd version of the mierce chimera, it's a classic chimera and just plain gorgeous sculpt. however, having the GW chimera budget I butchered mine quite extensively to get it to a more pleasing state but I still can't get over just how bad it is.

absolutely, it's the same as the necromunda and bloodbowl communities, who when GW binned the games off still continued and nurtured them. Also it showed that there was a different demographic of player to the normal 40k / AoS player. Although in another league entirely, you just have to look at heresy, where I personally know a man who thought nothing of dropping the money on two warlord titans, a warhound and each of the cerastus knights. when he came to sell all his heresy stuff off (and there was a phenomenal amount of it) due to some life changing circumstances, he netted nearly 20k ! incredible. I think that in the background, and lets leave out the whole how it happened and why trope, GW saw that fantasy battle never died, it still had a community and was still being actively supported, and that was by more than a couple of hundred die hards in a bunker refusing to accept that the war was over. Therefore ideal specialist games territory, as lets face it... like heresy you can go for years without releasing anything big, but those people will always be there to buy whatever you do throw down. It won't happen of course, but this would be the ideal time to bring rick Priestley back into the fold to head up the story arcs therein, after all he's not going to dealing with the mothership spreadsheet surfers and he's probably the closest thing they'll get to Alan Bligh for clarity of vision and understanding the DNA of not only the game but also of the players, and on top of all that it's the provenance and seal of authenticity that will repay whatever they would have to pay him in absolute droves.

Might be a forum upgrade. try using a different email address- on some forums it resets the notification settings for the user. Worth a go.

they were actually going to bin off middle earth a few years ago, but sales figures in the background told them that may have not been a great idea. Hence probably relegating it to specialist games. In that way it's "over there" with heresy and other stuff like bloodbowl that has a large understated fanbase that will just keep buying whatever morsel you throw down.

That LoTR licence was with newline cinema iirc. They said that something was happening at the end of the year to middle earth so I wonder if they've cut a new deal with this new production? There was a period when it was a real millstone around their neck due to lack of take up and the obligatory contractual store presence.

With the rules team within GW taking the rules writing off the FW team it signed the death warrant for FW in AoS. Chaos dwarfs made it to legends over a year ago, and now they've gone entirely. My belief is that the mothership just doesn't want the bother. AoS is plastic and thats that. I can see the only thing being left is the daemons as they're usable in both, and I mean come on, the thirster is sublime - why would you want to use the dire pile of dog log plastic model when you have the exalted thirster in its place. I still think their greaters are far more sublime than even the new greater daemon plastics. If GW were serious about supporting the FW models you'd have seen the points for them in the battletomes and even mentions for them - you don't, and never have. It's a pity as I've found FW a lot more gritty and darker in aesthetic than the plastics which at times have been Christmas tree caricatures and for me it works well. I also think that now the mothership has told FW that it's place is specialist games. perhaps they will remaster the models and bring them back under the old world banner - it makes sense to. If I have one criticism, its that they could at least send out a last chance to buy. That would have been nice. The khorne dragon I was going to treat myself on my birthday in a couple of months, but if I had known it was going I'd have dropped on it right away, same goes for the dreadquake mortar and several other models. To suddenly tear out the rug is pretty poor. On a wish list level I'm hoping for one of the back stories in old world being the original vision that Rick Priestley had for end times before the main GW studio took it out of his hands, and the story would make sense given what we know of the old world currently. So... Tamurkhan was one of four sons of the Khurgan. Each chose a different god, and follow the path of chaos in an attempt to become the everchosen. He and Alan Bligh were going to follow this narrative through Warhammer fantasy in the same way that the black books followed the 30k narrative, and as we all know, the monstrous arcanum and the Tamurkhan book are truly beautiful things in the flesh. I remember one FW open day way back when, that the dragon was being talked about even then. Don't forget that the original show for the Kdaai destroyer pretty much ended up as the greater khorgorath in everything but head. Speaking to Alan Bligh, he was full of so many ideas on the whole four sons of the khurgan narrative and I wouldn't be surprised if all his old notes and outline documents are a treasure trove of inspiration to the new Old World team. That would be an epic story arc with four amazing centrepiece models - we already have two brothers, Tamurkhan on the toad dragon, and the khorne dude, and it all happened several hundred years prior to arky coming along so precedes the whole storm of chaos narrative quite nicely. But going back to the original thread... nah. FW for AoS is dead. I think the GW rules team taking it on was a burden they never really wanted, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are factions within the main business that were resentful of the FW team and following. As the guy in the gw staff thread pointed out, FW had a very old school, tighter team way fo working and mentality and that I can see rubbing the corporate minded people up the wrong way. I used to work for a special operations division for a manufacturer and what he said resonated - we were very proactive and tight as a team, and we did things our way, and our stuff just spun gold as everyone wanted it. The main business were forever trying to break us to fall in line with their processes, design language and way of things, and in the end they won and the department apparently is a shadow of it's former glory - but it plays the way the mothership tells it to, and all the cool stuff was taken over by them, and subsequently binned off. No, I think that AoS is very clear in what it wants and where it's heading. I can see also that when the old world breaks cover all the old legacy models that existed pre AoS being phased out and going back to the old world - and it's right that they should, after all they were designed for rank and flank. Chaos warriors being an example - look at the new slaves models, dynamic poses, aesthetic tweaked for AoS, send the original ones back to fantasy. Same with beastmen - give AoS some lovely updated sculpts and new look aesthetics and the AoS scale, and send the original models back to the old world. In the last days of 8th, the aesthetic of anything that was dropping at the time was clearly completely different to what had come before - of course it was, it was designed for AoS rather than fantasy. Even on things like the exalted greater daemons, I can see their warscrolls just dropping away. That's ok. I'll always use my FW thirster as a regular thirster rather than that thing that needs plastic glue.

Corrected for you… no charge, all part of the service, you have a nice day now

All dead. Khorne Dragon gone. Other stuff is just being pulled left right and centre. I think now there's only about 9 models remaining and that's it. How long the non 40k stuff lasts for I don't know. I'm peeved. I would have liked a last chance to buy email as a curtesy. I'd been putting off buying the khorne dragon and now I'm too late - a last chance email would have been the kick up the backside again. I'm getting the feeling that FW is going to concentrate wholly on specialist games and heresy from now on and the old world. And I suppose I can understand that to some extent. (even though I don't like it). I think we had a brief really happy period where we as AoS players were enjoying the pleasure of having support and legitimacy of forgeworld models. That's now stopped. It also needs the pendulum to swing both ways, after all the writing was on the wall when the last year's GHB was binning off most of the FW lines from matched play list building, and it's safe to say that the rules team in the mothership probably had no love for, or told to not bother with the stuff from the basement at the other end of the building. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

So very this. I knew guys at EA and also for a while at ILM, and yes it's the same across the board. I concur, it has to start from the top down. Currently in society there's a mentality that says you don't need to have done the job yourself to manage it, and yes that's true, but the one thing you miss is the ability to sympathise. In having done that job yourself you understand what it is the man is saying when he's telling you he has a problem or something is going to be late, whereas when you're a career manager who did his management degree at college you're just hearing noise and wondering why the box on your timing plan is red and not green. It's no accident that the best managers are the ones with an in depth experience of what they're asking others to do, it translates into knowing what's realistic and who they need to talk to in order to get things done right, and that has a roll on effect downstream where it keeps costs down as they know how much something should be worth to get made or to have done. I used to work with a highly talented visualisation team. I was the design engineer feeding them CAD and they created amazing renders and VR, and they in their own right were amazing artists and alias modellers. the sales team treated them like a dirt, as if their job was nothing more than pressing the print button, yet these guys were the ones literally responsible for making a customer go wow! I really want that. Yet when a sale went through and the product was released all of a sudden it was the sales dude and the manager at the front of the photo. It's the creatives ironically that become synonymous with the brand and become a brand in their own right - Reynolds, Rhodes et al. Yet internally you often find that the recognition for such achievement is nothing more than the expectation to deliver to the same standard if not better than the last.

Its not uncommon sadly in most walks of uk life as a creative. As a top tier company it and many like it trade on the fact that its doing you a favour by employing you as the name on your cv carries its own weight. 12k is the sort of money a runner in the media industry would get. I once talked to kev smith about the artwork he did, and as a staff artist he really didn’t earn very much. it is what it is sadly, and its not going to change in a hurry. For non uk residents, currently her in the uk if you do something there is rarely any praise or value in you vs those who’s job it is to tell you what to do. With respect to the salary silence it generally stems from there rarely being a strong structure in place. You go in, argue the best deal you can and take the job. You may find the guy who came in on the same day as you is on a third less just because. Hence you’re encouraged to not discuss money as you’ll obviously kick off in your next appraisal.

Khorne dragon was way too awesome for AoS so it seems. RIP choppy dude.

Thanks for the last chance to buy heads up FW. Thanks.. As it is, they've thinned that AoS range right down. My feeling is that by the year end only the greater daemons will remain as they'll be 40k and heresy compatible as well.

Amen brudder

inside out dragon with a big hat worshipping fire doesn't count unless it's a Kdaai Destroyer... I'm liking the thing vibe, but that can be a tzeentch expansion pack, as can the size zero supermodel snake hip slaanesh dragon with high cheekbones. Nurgle dragon can have a belly mouth and guts add on, but the khorne dragon must be proper as a proper thing on st Propermas day. And not inside out.

yes, and looking as brutal as the khorne dragon, and not that inside out covered in eyeballs rubbish that's been going on.

I think I found where the sculptor got his inspiration...

not this side of a solamnic knight or dragon highlord anyway. For me Larry Elmore and Clyde caldwell are the undisputed kings of how a dragon should look.

right... so chop one up... paint it mouldy and we have a proper zombie dragon... yup we like that. Anyway.. the khorne / Chaos lord plastic dragon is just around the corner right?

I think this was one of the biggest kneecaps to new players of old fantasy, and a great turnoff. The way the army was structured was a throwback to the 2nd and 3rd edition army books. So lets take 25% minimum core tax. A warriors of chaos army was laughing. One unit of 25 and you were done. That was two boxes of warriors with extra to make a bsb and a champion, so dropping what 30 pounds? However if you were a greenskin or skaven player, you were practically buying ten boxes at 15 quid each just to give your army minimum legality. They should have just followed 40k lead, which is what AoS has learnt about army composition, where the unit size was dictated by the number of models in the box, and you had to have say minimum of two or three units - so that just made everything cleaner and easier to stomach. I mean what, when island of blood came out it was literally a rite for skaven players to buy three or four boxes just to make up their minimum skaven slaves allocation cost effectively. I also feel a combined stat mechanic would be better for mounted stuff unless you can say, well on a three wound knight, first two wounds knock out the mount and then he fights on foot for the last wound. Or alternatively just remove that bs rule about being able to target a just the character on a ridden monster, after all, if you had your lord on dragon get near a building, he was allowed to dismount to go into the building on foot. I agree with you about square bases, no sizes have been given and I'm wondering if that will be standardised to a degree, after all, remember in end times the blight kings and khorne farmers in iron dungarees all got the ogre sized 40mm bases, which in effect are the linear outline size of a 32mm round (ish), who knows, perhaps everything will go up a size so as to be able to use either square, or equivalent AoS rounds in a movement tray? Hobgoblins were around back in 3rd and you could take them as mercenaries. Does anyone remember the baggage train?

I'd agree with this. It's not like they are just dusting off the 9th edition (that was ready for release but never made it to press) rulebook and rebadging it. If they're revising and revisiting it then its going to take time. I also get why they don't want a cross over, and in truth it gives them the opportunity to retire some old model lines from AoS completely to be replaced with a whole new AoS aesthetic and scale. I can see for example, say beastmen will be eventually pulled back into WToW, and maybe a whole new line of larger more dynamic beastmen in whatever form be replacing them, and eventually, as the updates roll out, what we will have is two very different aesthetics and looks and feels. Lets look at say chaos warriors and skeletons, the new warriors are dynamic and varied, the old ones were designed around ranking up on 25mm squares. Skeletons the same, cursed city skellies are bigger than the old skeleton warriors and will struggle to sit on 20mm squares. I'd bet that a goodly percentage of people who have older fantasy armies never rebased, I certainly didn't as the bases took a lot of work. There was a comment above about Age of darkness and 40k, the difference was that 40k was never a square bases game, it was always rounds from day one. And I also think that there is another thing which we all had to do when being forced into AoS after fantasy died, and it works the other way now as well, and that is we just find a way of making what we have model wise work with it. Don't forget that they may well change and shuffle some base sizes around - after all, are they really going to create a new blood thirster to fit on the old 50mm base? of course not. Still lots to do and still lots to reveal. From a financial point of view, they want you to go buy cool stuff for both systems if you play them, they don't want to have little Johnny buying one army and running in in AoS, 40k, age of darkness and WToW - unless he's a daemons player of course then fill your boots! We the players want to not have to spend out. they the business want us to have one of everything. It's the way it's always been and it's the game we play to find ways around it. But ultimately it's far to early in the day to be frothing and getting nerd rage about something that fundamentally we know nothing to hardly anything about.

You had this also in fantasy, where you would have unit fillers. So for instance a large scenic piece in the unit movment tray would take the place of X models up to a maximum of say 25% of the unit.

I was saying the same thing from the beginning, and Tamurkhan is a great example of that. A nice campaign story well told, and a nice army list in the back. It makes the most sense as well, that way you're controlling your output as well. The old plastic moulds can be dusted off, and restored as they've paid for themselves now, and some new stuff brought in. It would make sense to just keep the scale the same as the old whfb and then you have that clear demarkation between the AoS scale and the old rank and flank scale. There was so much still on the drawing board for fantasy before AoS that it's not going to be difficult. Like the Age of Darkness Rules, I can see the old world rules set being a refinement and a shaving of the whole whfb rules across the ages, with some flourishes to cater and cope for what they have in mind for the game. it'll be interesting. Like many I'm looking forward to character building again. AoS was model focused - if it was in the box it was on the scroll. whfb did a better job of making you feel the army was yours. Aos could still learn from that, just like the 40k grand master in dreadknight - an amalgam of two models, AoS could do the same, such as a chaos lord riding a warshrine for instance. I'm looking forward to cracking my war mammoths out again with all the options that they had. What will be interesting is the rules treatment of mounted characters - a real bone of contention in 8th where you could attack the character if he was mounted on a monster. Funnily enough we never really saw amazing conversions of lords on dragons etc. Whereas back in 5th or was it 6th and before, if the mount was destroyed he could still run around on foot if you had a mounted and foot version of a character. These are the details that will be of interest to me. I'm cautiously optimistic, and one truth will still hold true... elven armies in all their forms will still be bent as.

I read it as more to do with preventing others from using your IP to generate income. That was the case with chapterhouse and others. They're not going to come after some poor animator or comic artist putting his stuff up on line for the enjoyment of it, but start charging a subscription or wanting funding off the back of it and it's a different story. The whole chapterhouse et al, thing was no different. The case revolved around two arguments, one that the items being produced were not in production by gw, the other that whther in production or not, it was not the third party's IP to do with as they saw fit or to trade off the back of. No, we don't have a kholek suneater model, but we don't want you to make one and sell it as Kholek suneater, and have it looking a dead ringer for our artwork. It's no different to an artist going after a dance hit because they've sampled a track or riff of his and argue that there's so little of it or that it's so old that they shouldn't pay royalties on it. With respect to the book reviews, there is probably an embargo in place when the thing lands in their lap - no release of the video / blog / article etc till 12:00gmt on this day for example. There will also be strict review guidelines and etiquette, and these probably are in the spirit of a review rather than lets read the book word for word and screen shot every single page. Look at it as a RAW vs RAI argument, which ultimately boils down to the individual concerned knowing tha they've overstepped or are overstepping the mark. On the back of this is the fine line of needing that particular community and creatives to push your brand for you, so you don't want to go pissing them off or stifling their creativity, but you do have to exercise a modicum of control as there will always be someone who will push it, and there will be always someone who decides that by dint of what they've said or who they are, the mothership has their back and that person is expressing the official stance or opinion. When those collide, you have a bit of a PR disaster and lots of winning hearts and minds to do - especially in this current world of people want and go looking for things to be angry at. TSR was a prime example of this, and the amount of flack it got for having demons in D&D and how various individuals in the wrong side of the news were also associated with playing D&D, which obviously is what made them not normal and go and do all those terrible acts. Anyone who's posted in the complexity thread will remember a time when liking superheroes and pushing plastic around was just not seen as cool, or in fact normal. But going back to the original thread, I think that this is nothing new, but perhaps just reinforcing the battlelines and letting existing and prospective incumbents know what's acceptable and what isn't. I'm sure that if that animator is any good, and he approaches GW for some permission to show his small trailer he and his production will get invited onto warhammer+ anyway, but if he tries to flog the next episode for a cheeky subscription or "donation" then I can see (however unfair it is) why the mothership would want to have a word. Fan-films and animations – individuals must not create fan films or animations based on our settings and characters. These are only to be created under licence from Games Workshop. I do think this particular infringement is a bit heavy handed, unless the + platform has a mechanism for budding animators to show their talent, perhaps much like the black library submissions. I would have thought a simple disclamor like the static artwork at the beginning would have been sufficient and more than acceptable. I don't think that one has been thought through very well. I don't see animation any different to static artwork in this respect. For me the question is more what's kicked this off? Every few years something happens that makes the sleeping giant wake up and start growling and letting everyone know where his borders are. This is no different.

true.. tempered only by how much they know that forgeworld will reduce us all to festering heaps of slag once they open their order books to us. If they do rhinox cavalry I might even be tempted to buy some chubby guys with big guns.