Baron Klatz

Biggest win is for Realm of Light stans. People keep thinking it’s a small Realm because everything’s revealed(as the light does) but you see they even had to use a much bigger magnifying glass on Ymetrica because as a mega-continent(literally what it’s called) you can fit 5 Great Parch’s on it’s landmass! Loremaster vindication! 🪶🤓🪐

He also answers the old question of who it was helping to make Star bridges since we knew since the 2018 battletome some Stormcast chose oblivion from the reforge cost and use their sacrifice to make ethereal bridges to guide Stormcast bolts so the Stormkeeps and Cities could be better protected as those that died could be reforged and sent back faster -but we didn’t know the procedure on who executed them. Now we do.

Yeah, safe money on the “warhammer” mmo is it’s gonna be 40k. Although…this bit always stuck in my head: I keep wondering if they were so insistent on it not being an “mmo” because they had to split the IP rights so one’s the official big AoS mmo in name while Nexon sidestepped the licensing by sticking to “PvE Social Multiplayer” instead. Time will tell!

There was some speculation we might see a new knight-heraldor(which would be very helpful against the new terrain rules with his doots making everything dangerous to stand near 🎺 💥) but I doubt we’ll get anything more than that in the box. All the heroes probably have shooting attacks(mounted lord’s axe throw, new Celestant calling down lightning, Veritant’s holy lantern flames & prayers) to already even the odds that way.(plus factor in their new core rules letting them auto pump up troops attacks & Saves, reforge a lost unit and Ruination all being able to say Nope 50% of the time to enemy abilities)

Too true! RPG’s & action adventures would really help get a ground view of all the crazy stuff going on in the setting and why it’s Realmscapes & mythological Gods vs Monsters atmosphere is so unique! (also double agree on needing a BotW version, especially with TotK and the sky islands. Whole time I kept thinking how cool it’d be to see Lumineth & Helon in that way with their copious sky islands covered nation and the grand races they have where Lumineth use either flying beasts, wind spirits or even colorful giant kites to go island to island to the goal) My top pick looking at Indies would be GW to hire the guys behind Dread Delusion and set you up in a similarly surreal environment running trade & errands you do in it as a Trade Pioneer for the new settlement trying to adapt in some region of broken floating landmasses, wandering daemons and lost undead from the past wars. (thumbnail looks like a common dark fantasy hack-and-slash but it’s much closer to something like Daggerfall in talking to people for deliveries & quests. It’d be perfect for the Realm of Metal as you’re trying to get a map that can update itself as all the islands keep crashing into eachother constantly forming new maps as Chamon does. Plus you get a airship) And funnily enough AlphaBeta Gamer just played a new game called Voin(Russian for Warrior) yesterday that would be Perfect for an AoS skin as it’s also a high fantasy fighting game as you play a lightning warrior slicing their way through flesh golem berserker warbands as you move portal to portal(props to the devs letting you actually see through the portals and not just a magic haze) Easy reskin for a Soulsworn Questor and given variety with tons of AoS baddies instead while you can just populate places like the fallen stronghold with some Freeguild NPC’s or the ice caverns with lost Deepkin looking for frozen souls(ala DeathGorge)

The SCE AoS3 battletome has a good solution for that. In the PtG section when you liberate and repair Shrines to Grungni your heroes & units can skip reforge flaws when resurrecting as Grungni himself will reforge them in thanks avoiding the flaws. So it’d be like Dark Souls 2’s difficulty where you can choose to either repair his shrines and resurrect full and healthy with minimal flaws(and possibly a questionable story ending of taking too much time letting the villain enact his plan) or go full tilt and skip most the Grungni shrines which will permanently lower your health & lose experience BUT you could get benefits such as more lightning powers in proportion of lost perma-health and you can resurrect at Vigilor marker arrows instead which are handier since you place them anywhere.(story trade here is you getter a better ending but your character may find themselves an automaton, tho maybe a perfect ending let’s you see them a Reclusian and a mortal friend they made on the quest their Memorian returning the favor of the times you saved them) I’d also add some different upgrade armors and effects to the reforgings like a Questor Apotheosis Cape made from the Apotheosis Banner strands which let’s you pull a Sekiro so you “fake die” the first time as you blast away and slam back into the unsuspecting enemies as a lightning bolt(with half health). On flaw stuff they could use the Soulbound flaw chart. That could spice things up in subtle ways like a Thunder voice hurting conversation choices and scaring away timid traders or rain refusing to touch you means as area where rain would wash away something like Gloomspite toxic spores means you have to hustle to a body of water to roll through instead.

I’d put good money on it. Fits the starter enemy pattern. Great time to reintroduce the Sacrosanct with a TS Arcanum refresh as they battle Death again Matches up with that Broken Realms plot point that Malerion’s agents in Shyish found a soul to bargain with the light gods so good time to have Death in the background as Malerion & Tyrion emerge(and maybe new form Arkhan gets a re-rematch with Light of Eltharion) and if Destruction gets 5 factions this edition either with Kruleboyz/Gitmob or Beasts of Destruction then starting AoS5 with 5 Death factions balanced that out(as they’re 4 & 4 now) Obviously could be wrong but seems like a lot of factors favor it.

If Fatshark works on it now odds are it’ll be ready for next edition’s new Death menace. So probably end up AoS:Gravetide if they go all in on undead but if it’s just Souls in general like the heroes being Soulbound then AoS:Soultide would work. Honestly hope for the latter as that means Deepkin can also be an enemy type and Fatshark can cameo themselves in. (WiP sketch on this silly joke) My pick would be Voyager’s End in western Great Parch. Float into the harbor on a damaged boat as a comman corps Heraldor and his faithful Gargoylian pet(you choose the form & color of) and through visions(given by a Seraphon) assemble a command corps team(don’t have to be humans either) to help turn the tide of a pivotal battle as each chapter has the Orb Infernia and it’s chaos hordes close in ala Majora’s Mask Moon. That area alone gives you tons of coasts & ancient places to explore from the magically polluted Polychromatic Sea to the flying city of Bataar to the magi-tech Titan forge works of the lost Aglorexi empire. (Also just noticing the new “Smith’s Harbor” set up next to where the Titan’s Works ruins have been. That’s a fun implication settlers are recycling all that old magi-tech into a modern city)

I’m okay with giving CA more time to cook. Even switching over to a new engine they’re masters of stumbling at launch so letting 40k & WW1 take the worst hits so when TWW:AoS eventually happens in day 10+ years they’ll be able to seamlessly use 40k’s massive over-the-top armies, planet hopping, & spaceships to translate into AoS’ god-spawned legions, realms hopping & mega engines(Cogforts, Parasite Engines, Silver Towers, Seraphon starships, Sky-vessel armadas with super dreadnoughts, etc) Maybe by then we’ll also get TW sieges that don’t punish you for using the walls as well. I think it’ll be pretty hefty, the 2022 report had them put a lot of money into it so it’s not something they’re sneezing at. > “New games launching in 2022/23 include major franchises Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and Bloodbowl 3, plus four more still awaiting release dates. In total there are 12 unreleased games in development and four new licences were signed in the year. We recognised one significant one in the income statement this year at £7.5 million with Nexon” Nexon gets (rightfully) criticized for being greedy but they do give legs to their products. Like their MMO Vindictus is over 10 years old and still receiving updates & new classes. I hope some of that team works on it because the monster aesthetics & environments would work well for AoS.

Haha, TempestFall VR at least had that spirit. You’re so huge and strong you don’t even have to fight the Deathrattle warriors, just pick them up and yeet them. 😄 But otherwise yeah, I’m on the same page with everyone else. Getting a proper breakout AoS videogame that shows how epic the factions are and over-the-top epic the Realmscape settings are(like Soulbound does) would be a dream come true whether it be a full experience RTS title with legions of lightning immortals & dragons fighting back an apocalyptic army of demigods that warps reality with every step as they battle on everything from void islands to cities built on top of tree branches the size of valleys, a third-person adventure that has you climb to the top of a floating metalith to survey the shifting eldritch landscapes & mountain-sized monsters below or heck even a point-and-click adventure game like Deathgate Cycle would be aces. 👌 However going by Warhammer’s track records we probably won’t see our DoW or Space Marine until 2035, so buckle up. 😂 On another note. Was looking at Lord-Veritant art to see what the new one could upgrade and noticed they’re usually paired with Judicators, a lot.(probably because Judicator’s holy sight allows them to see when people are lying,even vampires, so is useful for their witch hunter activities) So I’m changing my old bets of Warrior Chamber Judicators to new Ruination Judicators with flaming Boltstormer(storm flamers?) crossbows to purge the unholy. 🔥

My bets are Ironjawz Mobs & Soulblight. Easy to spread out with just some hero releases that way(though maybe something cool too like armored Troggs for IJ & elite Graveguard for SBGL?) Going by NightHaunt in 3.0 I imagine Kruleboyz in the middle of 2025. Maybe that could be where we see new Gitmob nomad units pop-up to ally with them and make a big Kruleboyz & beast-rider sun grots alliance to assault the Realm of Fire & burn Ghyran for new swamps(like Greywater did 😏)

I mean…heck yeah? I bought the 2015 starter box & start collecting sets multiple times just so I could have numerous Lord-Relictors. 😄💀 I’m extremely happy that the Relictor lines have finally got fleshed out to knights, Questors, Ionus getting a major badass update and now Ruination basically being Relictor themed Warriors. I mean they’re literally Necromancer-Paladins that we’re reforged from necromancers or Shyish princes that turned from Nagash so Sigmar could make use of their undead soul powers and mix them with holy magic so they, lore-wise, do all kinds of crazy stuff from resurrecting dead leviathan skeletons to shake chaos castles off their backs to taking recently slain Stormcast souls and turning them into ghost grapeshot to obliterate their killers before sending them on their way to Azyr to reforge. They’re peak. On a related note my guess for the new Raven/Wolf chimera companion is it will be with the new Lord-Relictor of the box. With priests needed to build up prayer power it makes sense he gets a Shyishian breed of crow gryph to keep him safer(I’m guessing it’s actually classification is something like Gryph-Skulker and it excels at taking down weak prey with critical strikes, such as rat-men) @CommissarRotke ”are we too young to remember if Wfb/40k had these narrative problems?” Pffffft, hahaha! Dude those early times were narrative sh$t shows so much lore went back and forward between retcons, re-retcons and undid retcons brought back. Just listen to some of Sotek & Andy’s podcasts. Altdorf’s history is the best. Get to see it go from a small hill city, retconned into a land-locked huge Roman city then dialed back into a medieval sea town because they needed it connected with man-o-war, then turned into a massive land locked gothic city and THEN turned back into the original small city for End Times. And other fun instances of people like Andy who rewrote whole histories for it to be more accurate to the rpg but then the head devs moved out and his work was tossed out and replaced with somebody else’s slapdash Altdorf lore. AoS may have it’s growing pains and then got hit by a pandemic & multiple global crises that made it’s strides turn to stumbles and messed up narrative pacing it keeps having to get back on track with but we’re LEAGUES luckier than the lore mess and Storm of retcons oldhammer was constantly in. 😆 (I mean, even the Gotrek & Felix novels were so clumsy timeline-wise they had to write some timey-whimsy outs because the authors didn’t check with eachother and you’d get points where Gotrek, Felix and Ulrika are adventuring…years before the Window Tax Riot even happened where Gotrek & Felix first met)

That was sooooo awesome! 🤩 Really amazing stuff for beginners to the cosmic setting and how the Realms work(with a few nice asides like Aqua Ghyranis used as currency or Shyish creating hellish landscapes out of belief) Very nice presentation on how Hysh & Ulgu cause night and day while Ghyran & Shyish change the seasons. 👏 ⚡️ Love that magic map too! I would love that in a AoS art book and maybe used as a stylish inter-realms campaign index with that aesthetic. Also really appreciate the book recommendation in the article. Bad Loon Rising is the only one I don’t have so I need to fix that. Lastly, on Ogors I saw Ricki post this today. Makes me hope Firebellies get some time to shine while we’re in the Realm of Fire. 🔥

Ogroids! Let’s gooooo! Goroan Empire arise! Also I like that change to Fyreslayers to just give them “Fyresteel weapons” instead of 2 types with one option obviously better than the other. Small thing but appreciated and doesn’t hurt anyone’s choice as “weapon” can be both the handaxe or warpick.

So um….between this confirming only Faction Terrain has health and the last terrain article mentioning “some special faction terrain can move or attack” do we think it’s pretty much a smoking Ironweld gun at this point that the CoS Cogfort Whitefang jr. mentioned is gonna be their heavily fortified faction terrain as a walking castle that can choose to either move or attack?(and give some terrain benefits like obfuscation & Cover for freeguilders to use)?

I could see that. It’s possible they may want to make more faction focused Warbands like Black Talons, Flameseekers, Command Corps & Wildercorps specifically for the main game now that things like a Companions Universal Rule can let them bake in more pet antics and they can just make skirmish focused battleplans. However I still doubt it(also went back to check and this appears to be from Mr.Negative himself WoS Hastings. Best to remember he said Bloodbowl would be dead in 2021 & UnderWorlds gone in 2022. He’s got a horrid track record with side games for years now. Bob not much better)

Hahaha! That’s a good point. We’ll have to see how unique flyers are handled in AoS4. NightHaunt are likely to have it baked into their Ethereal keyword/rule so they can interact with terrain normally. Will be interesting if Gloomspite keep weird flyers just because how insane they are that a Boingrot is randomly jumping enough to be seen makes sense or if they get some kind of “Jump over the Loon” rule that’s let’s them fly over stuff(and I’d imagine interact with a certain Bad Moon power up) without the actual Fly keyword.

Eh, Spearhead is like a pre-made deck version of tabletop for quick unit fights. Warcry is an atmospheric skirmish upon terrain with all kinds of crazy warbands & monsters thrown in that’s the evolution of AoS Skirmish where every model is a unit. They have very clear different niches to eachother. Anyway I don’t believe those rumors for one second(same as I didn’t believe all the doomers saying Endless Spells & Terrain were dead). GW keep giving valuable support and releases to both sidegames so I imagine it’d be a pretty drastic situation to pull the plug. Also just matches too well for the AoS4 set-up which is focused on Aqshy & Ghyran. Warcry:Hel Crown for the sidegame in the Realm of Fire portion. UnderWorlds:Mosscairn for the sidegame in the Realm of Life area. A lot just sounds like doomer clickbait because things are on a low swing right now and misery loves company. “Gorechosen:Ascended” would be pretty fun(and tie well into Khul’s narrative), NGL.

True. They might have to update it like Cursed Skies in the Aqshy areas were trapping the souls of those ghost ships that flew too near due to their ethereal nature so the wraith fleet upgraded to wood & iron ships carried by zombie dragons/terrorgheists*(with some even have animated wings stitched to the hulls) to fly. *would be cool to see if it’s the living ones that one warhammer+ vampire model teased with a baby version. Healthier alive ones used to move their heavier undead constructs.

Haha, too true! I always imagine that’s one of the reasons GW keep trying to push down how many models AoS needs(now with only singular reinforced units) so they can keep piling on the model details on even fodder without people driving themselves into a rubber room trying to make a intended medium-force into a horde army. 😂 Also remember a AoS cornerstone is mixing cultures together like the Edassian warriors within Aqshy are a mix of Africa & European aesthetics or the newish Jade Obelisks are Mayan-Chinese, with that just being the human examples. If they want they can take any two cultures and roll them together like Australian-Inuits hunters for Ghur’s Arctics or Russian-Egyptians embalmed-cairnwolf cultists for an Shyish Nulahmia underworld a Vyrkos empire established in.

Wouldn’t be surprised to see the Wraithfleet as the next Soulblight update to fit the Realm of Fire focus. Easy Varkos hero release with a unit of flying horrors to match his theme of being a terror at sea and the skies(battling Kharadron and raiding their sky-ports as he does in their tomes) They could even recycle the Deepkin terrain design files into new ghost ships or even haunted ship wreck terrain that teleports thanks to the AoS4 rules hinting at terrain that moves and attacks.(if not the Kastelai crimson keep) That’s gotta be the plan. No way they looked at those apes and said still good. With how long it took to get Warcry Kruleboyz it probably is gonna be the middle of their next edition tho. In other random news the Darkoath are proving an epic painting opportunity and are proving very popular for what you can do with a bunch of Conans willing to face down demigods. and if you fight for the other side of the Mallus coin then check out Knotley’s paint advice as always(he’s done Darkoath already too) And in some surprising turns Destruction & Trogg fever is at an all time high.(also Ironjawz Maw-Krushas, I see like a dozen new posts weekly on them) And finally Narrative tournaments have been kicking things off for a bang in AoS3 and another coming soon!

I mean they can justify it now since the Era of the Beast is coming to a close and the wild energies from the Beast Realm are calming down a bit. So it lorefully can get weaker. My bets are it’ll end up doubling down on it’s abilities to “rampage” & eat spells so it becomes a high level battering ram you can summon to blast terrain & enemy living spells to have more control over the battlefield(probably big for Disciples of Tzeentch) But not a boss-level threat so can be taken out by average units & outright deleted by spell hunter units. Making it a Distraction Carnifex in other scenarios. But otherwise yeah, I’m really loving this new take on endless spells & (especially) terrain for what they can do match and Narratively. 👍 (also really happy they connected the Silver Swords to Elixia and the silver banshee, I was okay they had another origin with that Chamon queen but reading about them defending the city in Quest for Ghal Maraz 2 years before they got models made it a bit odd they didn’t build on them more then) Edit: on the “hit spells with a club” thing, remember back in Malign Portents sometimes smaller cities were hiring spell bounty hunters to take down those supernatural disasters with literal swords and a bit of runic/prayer paper to help them corral the living spells. 😄 Hoping we’ll see more on that now with warbands of Freeguild schmoes with blessed hammers being the only thing standing between a city (paying them) and a Purple Sun that’s hungry for souls. 💀 🔨

Personally hoping it’s because an Ironjawz spearhead is planned to go alongside the Vanguard. 🙏 🐗 Similar to how Blades of Khorne had their Bloodbound Starter Set & Khornite Vanguard together.

Really? They’re $110 and she’s likely to cost as much as Ionus & Cthorak cost $130. getting them at $150 instead of $240 seems pretty decent for a deadly elite force like Ionus or King Trugg had

If they do an AoS version all my money is on a Soultide or Gravetide set for next edition’s Order vs Death. probably Soultide to justify soul-taker enemies like Deepkin which is just begging for a literal Fatshark boss enemy.