Baron Klatz

Ngl, I saw the notification he reacted and was bracing hard for a confused react. 😅 Thanks for keeping my stomach settled and not in knots after dinner, Whitefang. 👌 So either weird beasties very likely for Destruction or the angel thing or something i obtusely didn’t even notice I said in all that. 😄 I’ll be happy either way. 🍻

Skimming over topics since last I was here. On Paladins staying gone, sad but makes sense. Between Annihilators and now the new huge Ruinators their place as the super armored units has been filled twice.(and I kinda wondered if that was why Libs took the Protectors nose bar so someone kept the design the Hallowed Knights use on their emblem) I’ll be interested in the lore explanation they might give. Since the last tome said Retributors become Annihilators maybe they’re pulled back as training gear in the Gladiatorium instead of being an active battlefield & death training via reforgings. Only thing I really wonder on now is if we’re getting two Prosecutor variants. Ones in the trailer have blink-and-you’ll miss it Ionus skulls on their shields. So I wonder if we’ll see that they’re spear &shield Ruination angels with ghost fire wings while the Warrior Chamber gets a refresh with dual hammer light wing angels again?(or something new like swords & lanterns). And on weird things, that can literally be anything and especially based on fan interpretation like how weird they saw Kragnos or Lumineth in general. Yeah. I was always in that camp too because early in AoS they leaned toward animal people in Destruction. Fimir were made Destruction. Silver Tower Ogroid started with the lore Ogroids worked & worshipped under Gorkamorka before they went to Chaos for more power. And literally anything that wasn’t Beasts of Chaos goats was a natural creature of the Realms no matter how surreal or twisted it was. And no matter how hard people bleated about Kragnos I always saw him as too clean for chaos, not having any centigor claw hooves or any mutated scales on his body. So I fully agree it’s just GW’s future plans to eventually make beast people a Destruction thing because there’s more neutrality & narrative room there than the corrupting children of chaos can offer who taint everything they touch. Like just look at how hyped Total War fans are for Tigermen that are neutral anthro creatures? Apply that to an AoS army of beastkin, centaurs and possible insectoids & eagle people that can work alongside any city or faction they want and you got an easy winner.

Hopefully with the Kragnos hunting horn guy from the warband. I’d love them to really lean into Monster Hunterz now between the Bonesplitterz niche needing to be filled and as they’re no longer on a cosmic villain spree it’ll give them a new direction to do as they chill a little(and echo back to when Gorkamorka was Sigmar Pantheon’s main monster killer)

Yeah, a lot of Stormcast designs rocked variants of a nose ridge. Neo-Libs are just pushing it hard as the Protectors did.

Eh, the top of the helm seems a lot thicker so it’s just smoothing out the mask-under-ridge nose-helm look they always had.

Stalkers a good term. It definitely looked more like a predator that waited for an opportunity to pounce compared to some of the burlier gryph-chargers that charged in with their horns at first notice. Of course not. Bloat, smooth out, bloat back up. That stirs the currents that makes the money flow. 💸 (That’s why I know Sacrosanct will be back with a new coat of paint in an edition or 2) Warcry in Catacombs first and later in UnderWorlds with NetherMaze. Still a good shout though.

I imagine the other stuff that fell to the side was due to being designed back in 2017-2019 and then when they were ready to go the changes in design philosophies by 2019(TOW) had them released anyway but knew in the closing future they were gonna be put on a separate path for factions ear-marked to be back ported. (Like Kurnothi may have been their answer for AoS unique Asrai but now they’re gonna double down on plant people because another system answers that design niche)

Yeah, no way they showed off beta scrolls for a grand reveal. Those are the standard going forward. All the Death emblems annd crow features are so interesting. Makes me think Ruination is ultimately an expansion of the Relictors and Temple of Ages. Necromancer-paladins replacing mage-paladins, for a time at least.

I’m guessing they want units to fulfill different unit purposes. like Libs are tough units that can take & hold objectives while Vindictors and other spear units will get different abilities(and this is a guess) like “Brace(Rend)” that increases Rend against charge attacks and a special ability to get better hits against Cav & Monster keywords so those units have a role to block opponents and chase down beasties. We’ll have to see the whole picture but I’m excited to see how they expand from here and streamline AoS for a refresh to new players. Also now that Lib weapons are cosmetic only we can unleash the true Chad weapon choice. Dual Shields! 🛡️🛡️⚡️

Oh definitely. Just look at AoS3, a lot of other cool stuff didn’t launch until after the Starter set and Draconith waited until December. So I’m sure the box is only the beginning for both armies getting a bunch of releases afterwards to refill the Stormcast Eternal Ranks and bolster the Skaven hordes.

This is my only wrinkle with the news. Love the Freeform nature of the list-building so you can take/spam what you want as fits the over-the-top nature of AoS & the Mortal Realms with heroes the big focus befitting the mythological nature of the setting. However sub-factions we’re big for the flavor. I guess I can have a fool’s hope that it means they’ll return to AoS1 Battletomes where we got a boatload of diverse lore-only sub-factions we could theme our forces to for fun. That’d mean the lost battlefield flavor gives us a denser lore book which I could live with. 😅 Just give us tons of fun lore to play around with and theme our own armies to then(at least the days of “what? He’s locked to this sub-faction!” are over) Manifestation lore sounds cool. I wonder if that’ll be for summoning numerous things like Endless Spells, Incarnates and Terrain to shape the realmscape battlefield.🤔

Yes. They’re excellent starter forces that are elite & huge smooth armored Goliaths so very easy to paint and collect for beginners. And we only have to look at Lumineth, Gloomspite, DoK or Soulblight to know it doesn’t matter if you’re a starter faction if you get lots of love in an edition, if anything the Starter forces get a bum deal after the first half-year is over and they go on the backburner. Plus now that we got Hallowed Knights we can properly see Stormhosts themed down the editions like Anvils of Heldenhammee vs Death, Astral Templars vs Destruction, Celestial Vindicators vs Chaos, etc to mix things up.

That’ll probably be a revamped Lord-Relictor(as it’s the Relictors job to safeguard Stormcast souls) to replace the original one(based off Ionus) that in the box acts as Ionus’ adjutant in bringing those broken souls to the Black Tower for a mysterious purpose(probably bound lightning gheists) My gut feeling is he’ll take up those 2 guesses knight slots so he’ll be the last big reveal as a powerhouse necromancer-Paladin priest to go with the Death themes of the Ruination.

Haha, best gif for these. I remember when they first released and people called their lore like Machine Men and now they even have closer frames. 😂

It did feel a lot like the “Tomb Kings are classified as Evil race” to “Oh we just meant Core Race, haha!” and that ended up happening anyway. They were too blunt, had to back pedal with positivity but things still happened as they said(in this case the “not in the foreseeable future” likely meaning 2027 & 2028 releases)

And don’t forget the electrifying personalities of the Devoted of Sigmar/Order of Azyr! We need that angle for both higher up Azyrite authorities watching over the native settlers and the links to those who push themselves to try and be chosen for Stormcast Eternals.

Probably the reason right there. They’re waiting until the 1st quarter financials are officially over before they break the news on whatever the change-up to BoC is so not to hurt sales by even 1%.

Probably devil in the details like not all the BoC are going extinct(such as dragon-Ogors), dwarves don’t count as safe if Dispossessed are gone, Bonesplitterz have their own monkey’s paw, etc. That’s why it’s best to just wait for the indexes than start getting in a panic over what we can only speculate on.

Remember it’s a small team doing that stuff under the specialist studio. They don’t have anywhere near the resources like the main studios. You’re looking at something like full Kislev in a year but it’ll take up any other TOW release for that year.

Yeah, they can barely get a handful of old factions out in half a year and even then only provide a few new sculpts for them. Nevermind full new factions of fresh models, that’s gonna be a good number of years away like right on the heels of AoS5. They needed that article to set expectations but leave it to fandoms to blow everything out of proportion. For me I think that 4-winged lava wyvern would be ace and look totally different than any other faction’s drakes. Soulbound also has lava spiders that can be tamed which would be a very unique flavor for Fyreslayers to have at least one arachnid element for their fiery cave systems. Other things I’d like to see is based on Elden Ring ideas with a ancestor face warmachine(weaponized battle forge on wheels) to even a possible chariot and that whole “Grimnir & Vulcatrix will be reborn combined together” the Lofnir believe which can lead to those magma drake warriors.

Well since we’re back on this topic for the 50th time I’ll weigh in that I say just double down on the Fyremancer & magmabeast-master aesthetics with lava Spartans in kilts the base design. Above all else the Order factions symbolize each of the elements of the Mortal Realms opposing Chaos and Fyreslayers are the Realm of Fire made manifest. 🌋 And indeed, as someone once pointed out there’s actually no reason for the Realms to naturally have volcanoes as they have no magmic core & tectonic crusts shifting from that. The volcanoes of Aqshy, Ghur & Hysh to the ghost Fire mountains of Shyish, the molten mercury mountains of Chamon to the Sap volcanoes of Ghyran are all due to the Fyreslayers origins as their gods Grimnir & Vulcatrix battled, exploded and their sparks scattered across the realms causing volcanoes to grow where they touched. This is why every volcano is a shrine & home to the Fyreslayers as it’s literally grown from their father. Thus making them the prime fire faction should be, in my eyes, GW’s #1 priority. 🔥 (and later chaos duardin as the evil corrupt version of that same as Hedonites are a dark mirror of Lumineth with many similar units)

Well before Adepticon anyone saying which faction was gonna get new faction terrain would’ve been “impossible” with the GW production issues cited as a reason so while I agree we probably are due “out with the old, in with the new” for the older stuff I still refer back to my earlier comment only GW really knows.

I mean we’re looking at possibly 3 removed armies(hopefully not fully) of BoC, Bonesplitterz, Dispossessed and possibly CoS Darklings too. So the unify isn’t exactly necessary here. Also tone it down on the “reality” stuff. You did this same song & dance back in 2021 about duardin in AoS3 and even had Whitefang behind you and it turned out to be hot air. End of the day only GW know what they’ll do next so let’s just enjoy some cool art and factions working together as they do in the lore without going overboard, eh?

One guy’s theory is it might be what Khul goes after next since that area is in front of a gateway to Khorne’s domain. a “hell crown” for the top of his pyramid as he ascends to daemon princehood.(probably will do something heavy metal like melt all the skulls down into a giant brass skull for the topper)

Remember the good old days when we could see something nice like a Kharadron giving a Fyreslayer a model sky-vessel for Christmas and people just went “aww” instead of “Soup! Soup! It’s a hint!!”? I miss back when. Not sure what happened but ever since AoS3 people have been so soup crazy for every faction(remember when it reached a head with a “Big Dads & Little Lads” tweet for SoB + Ogors people said was gonna happen?) even though GW have been doing the opposite(partly so they can sell more tomes & box sets) And now with AoS4 having a chance to offload a bunch of factions back to TOW it seems even less likely than before. But yeah, I think the cover is just in the spirit of AoS duardin and Grombrindal trying to lead those that will listen to him. So if not a model probably just special RoR coalition rules that won’t affect what actually happens in AoS4(he’s had no where near the time to unite races across multiple planes of reality) It does seem a sour note that Dispossessed are left out entirely. Hopefully they’ll get an Ironweld refresh to be closer to CoS aesthetics, would suck otherwise for players to be told the armies they just made are only good on squares(with double the numbers) and nothing else. At least we’ll know I a few months thanks to how Indexes work so it won’t be 2 whole years of doom-posting and debates about resources(which surprise surprise the “no more terrain” ones went right down the drain)