Melcavuk

Adding in the Cult of the Dragon. Beasthunters, merchants, traders and wisemen focused on the great drakes of the realms:

Dont get me wrong I like the idea in theory, its only tripping point is the fact that there has been an inconsistent application of what exactly a subfaction functions as which is more a GW consistency thing than a slight on your concept. If every faction had allegiance and OPTIONAL sub allegiance then this would be a beauty of implementation on how to alter them for balance, it is the fact that for some the allegiance and suballegiance and intertwined that we struggle.

A pitch to make models bought by AoS players worse because you dislike the age or aesthetic of those models does little to prevent your community becoming that which you disliked most about the old one.

Its definately a thing, the risk here would be that Subfactions are optional for some Battletomes and the army can be fully functional and cool without it, in others you MUST select one and in this case would end up down on points compared to the army who gets the option not to (Cities and Slaanesh are the two that come to mind here but I'm sure there are others). This is further compounded by the fact that some subfactions are "locked" to relics and command traits, others can choose, and some have options for command traits at all outside of their subfaction (see the two factions mentioned above). Making a set battalion unlock the sub faction would fit the role of charging for the subfactions but again first you'd need to add in rules for a subfactionless city and host prior to doing so otherwise you're nerfing the factions who have no choice but to be a subfaction. For factional terrain we're now at the point where we have active terrain (Ossiarchs can actively shoot enemies) rather than passive (you need to run into a wyldwood to get hurt), I'm heavily against active terrain roles within the game when it cannot be targetted or blocked by most armies and has a massive range, in this way it has toed its way into becoming a damage immune static unit, rather than a terrain feature.

Your split based on the date a model was sculpted/released is insane, using Cities of Sigmar as an example they feature in far more lore and key events than the Idoneth, and are arguably far more setting relevant than reclusive sea aelves due to well... the reclusive element of the Idoneth. Your pitch here is anyone playing Cities of Sigmar, and Age of Sigmar lore driven faction that happens to have a pre-aos release date should be inately less competitive than your Aelf so you can win more games because in your opinion you are "Playing the game right" and they arent is gatekeeping which only ever harms to hobby. Every released battletome has "Warhammer Age of Sigmar" on it, they are Age of Sigmar armies, and as always the strive should be for balance throughout rather than forced meta changes because one sculpt is 2 years older than another.

Again your targetting pre-aos models as though they are not officially part of the setting. Those that survived the cull are Age of Sigmar models as much as any eel riding elf or walking tree, making them worse to suit some sort of agenda that new should always be better would likely form a toxic attitude within the setting, because one day your idoneth arent going to be "new", say we bump the date forward to the day after idoneth were released for equally arbitrary reasons (Let say we're only playing the siege of 8 points onwards, so now your army is "old") it'd suddenly be a much different suggestion because it would target your own perception of "proper armies"

I started with Age of Sigmar, to that end every model I own is an Age of Sigmar army, what you're essentially proposing is a date cut off of design that should be good and everything before shouldnt. In that case when the new edition of AoS hits then by your current logic all current AoS armies should become bad so only the next iteration of models is "good". GW have selected which models of the older ranges are "Age of Sigmar" and which are legacy, your proposed method is to resign any model produced prior to its launch as legacy and renegate tomes you dislike to the scrap heap. I maintain the strive should always be for a game that is balanced across the board not utilising an arbitrary cut off date as to models pre-cutoff must be bad and post cut off models should be far better because... reasons that have yet to be fleshed out.

No. Cities of Sigmar isnt "an old army" its an Age of Sigmar battletome, with just as much justified place within the game as any other tome. In an ideal world all battletomed armies should be equal, not deliberately unbalanced to favour someones preferred army.

I’d be all over a Steampunk human faction.

AoS at its core is a fantastic, engaging game with a lore able to be explored to create forces we'd never of concieved in Warhammer Fantasy, its loose definition of the map gives so many areas to explore, develop, enrich and combine in our gaming. At the base the rules are also really great and engaging with the warscroll and double turn system being the ones I enjoy most. In terms of negatives. - The communication in the studio seems to be light in terms of balance, we're often seeing two tomes releasing near simultaneously that must of been on the internal cloud together when being worked on with staggering power differences. This is simply a communication issue, we're getting two "trees" of battletomes, with the engaging, fun and narrative ones on one side, and the overly competitive on the other, if each tree plays against a branch of its own then the game is fine, if the two trees play against each other we see shocking imbalance. - Points issues, compounded with allegiance and sub allegiance. If mortek guard at their base are worth X, then mortek guard all getting +1 save cannot by the same formula be worth X. I cannot see how the formula can account for both with radically different resiliences being worth the same amount.

Starting work on the paintjob