[The Rumour Thread]

12 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

IMHO they did, the promo art guy does not look different enough to be a new unit. the 2h are probably in a multipart kit like Annihilators. MAYBE he's a hero but what would you even call it? Knight Reclusian?

*somewhere across the ocean, a sleeping monkey's paw curls subconsciously*

Didn’t Whitefang’s understudy say the mounted hero was a Lord-Vigilant on Gryph-Stalker? I imagine similar then this is a Lord-Vigilantor or the like that watches over the old veterans gone to war(the leaked close-ups on his black robes that look close to the Knight-Relictors has me thinking it’s a similar purpose to keep their souls strengthened so they don’t burst into crazed elementals((wouldn’t be surprised if the Rite of Life plays a part there)) )

16 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

okay well i am talking about the full-on colored map @Clan's Cynic posted. is it fan-made? is it from instagram? loremasters?

I don't recognize this from the April Fool's Day joke either.

Oh that’s the map made by the Soulbound Rpg. You get it with the Corebook but can also buy it digital(I think physical wall papers are still out there too)

https://cubicle7games.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-soulbound-great-parch-map-pdf
 

https://cubicle7games.com/blog/age-of-sigmar-the-great-parch-map-reveal-2
 

“

• The map was created by renowned cartographer Jared Blando.
• It shows the Great Parch, which is the starting realm for Soulbound. The core book comes with an overview of each of the other Moral Realms, as well as over 30 pages of information on various locations in the Great Parch.
• The map shows some of the biomes of the Great Parch - proving it's not just barren desert! There is even snow to the north in Cotha (and the blood-soaked lands of Khul's Ravage to the south).
• Those who have played Season of War Firestorm will recognise the Prismatikon and the Titanworks in the Flamescar Plateau.
• The newly reclaimed city of Brightspear can be seen in Aspiria. This new City of Sigmar was reclaimed by the Celestial Warbringers and is the focus of the Soulbound Starter Set.”

 

1 hour ago, Ejecutor said:

I doubt we will see a new Knight-Heraldor. This one will be replaced by the one in the Dominion box, very likely.

I think you’re mixed up. The box has the flag guy a Knight-Vexillor.

Knight-Heraldors are the giant trumpet dudes(I remember the stream devs even called the Vanquisher’s musician a Knight-Heraldor in training)

I’d love to get a new one. Magical Instruments are awesome.

 

[The Rumour Thread]

32 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

Flying ships. 😈

Unleash the lava wyverns! Scour the aetheric skies! 🐉 

[Thoughts on 4.0's New Rules]

9 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I am thinking of a bronze colour scheme for those ancient civilization vibes, with Ruination units getting that extra verdigris to show their age.

Ohh, this guy did an amazing ancient bronze job for his Stormcast Eternals.

“Baselayer green then drybrush a slightly brown gold. Doing something similar myself at the moment it’s deceptively easy.”

[The Rumour Thread]

Well to move onto brighter things until more news drops, is anyone doing last hurrah campaigns before the glorious new edition launches?

Besides the store campaigns my Twitter feed is getting full of people doing other fun events for AoS3.
 

 

[Thoughts on 4.0's New Rules]

14 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Really exited about Ruination, too. I am already finding myself planning out colour schemes.

They’re too perfect for Anvils of Heldenhammer for me so I guess I’ll have them as an allied mixed Stormhost into my Cleansing Rain Heralds.

Ghyran’s life giving rainstorms mixed with the stalwart wardens of death to complete the cycle.

 

[Thoughts on 4.0's New Rules]

Edit:replying to Hotep.

Same! Very stoked from what we’ve seen it being a lot of fine-tunings from AoS3 to be ways more straight-forward(general consensus seems to be “well that’s how we were playing it anyway to save time but now it’s official”)

Looking forward to spells and especially Manifestation Lore.

Also bets on the next 2 SCE battleforces are:

Vanguard keyword focused that’s either a free redeploy(as their scout military branch) or a buff vs high health targets(for monster hunting).

And Ruination is just covered in tanky Death vibes so maybe they cause enemies to take a straight 3 mortal wounds when they retreat instead of D3 to play on the fear they can cause and make opponents more wary of fighting them as elites?

I think those would be flavorful and line up well with the various Stormhosts in a number of ways.

[The Rumour Thread]

13 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

No. I don't think it was mentioned here. The cover is ACE!

With a bit of luck it gets translated into Spanish, as omnibus tend to be picked over single books, IIRC.

I know I always go for omnibuses first(to the point I have to make sure they only contain one story I already own 😅)

I love the variety of getting to see so many fun snippets of different factions & places in the Realms through one read through. Easily AoS’ biggest strength that you can quickly hop between a Stormcast, Grot, Kharadron, Deepkin, Chaos Warlord to Sylvaneth and keep a fresh flavor each.

Here’s hoping it gets translated with the announcement! 🤞 

13 minutes ago, Big Kim Woof-Woof said:

I seem to remember someone was saying that standard bearers/musicians were going to be back to one per unit (a la Fantasy Battle). The "standard bearer (1/5)" on the Vindictors warscroll suggests otherwise.

Which pleases me. I like the visuals of having my units festooned with banners and icons! 

Yeah, between units acting like walking life bars, with the important units removed last, and equipment being mostly cosmetic that seems to be easily done now you can go crazy with parade flag units instead.

I know with Libs now not caring if they go to battle armed with dual-shields I could also kitbash some flag units for fun to harken back to those Realmgate Wars flag bearers we never got.

[The Rumour Thread]

Whoa whoa whoa!

Was this mentioned here and I missed it? Had spotted it on Discord for a new Omnibus for the Mortal Realms.

Seems it has stories jumping between the first ever AoS novel “Gates of Azyr” to the newer stuff like Dominion.

Very nifty to see with how much AoS4 has felt like a big callback to AoS1 so good to get newbies caught up and absolutely beautiful cover. That’s an insta-buy for me! 👌 ⚡️ 

(Plus anything Josh is a must)

[The Rumour Thread]

That was a good shot for the goat bois. Really grazed me. 😅

I do wonder what their Legends rules will be? Maybe 2 Traits & 2 Battleforces focused on monster hunting for a last hurrah to chase some gargants into the horizon?

BoC I imagine are gonna be Rend crazy since it’s such a rarity in the game now. Plays on the Rend powers they had in AoS3 and it’ll be mooved out in  a year so they don’t hurt the meta for being an exception to the rule.

 

[The Rumour Thread]

2 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

In the end it is not the same. BoC has much more content.

But Dey didn’t hab da Big Stabba’!

 

Oh and better more cave art.

 

Pour some Juju juice out fer da crazy ladz. 🍺 

[The Rumour Thread]

I’m just happy the OG Liberator & Fyreslayers are getting some excellent rep on their Facebook. 😄👍

But yeah. Beast fans are allowed the salt mine  on this. And probably the one angry Bonesplitterz fan in that herd.

(at least I hope those are BoC fans and not just the “Rawr Games Wokeshop!!” crowd making false anger like on Twitter.

[The Rumour Thread]

18 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

we'll adapt yeah, but coherency was the biggest and most common complaint of all of aos3. Makes me wonder if they thought the complaint was only because we couldn't fight with all our models.

possibly, a lot of people wanted more attacks in so it could’ve been overlayed with their conga line concerns which were growing in frequency through Aos3(whole rows of Snarlfangs or boars lines up nose to tail to cut off half the board and one guy got completely pushed out from his Beastmen ambushes since the over guy stretched his troops out to cover the table so he won Round 1)

Tons of complications in design work and for how fast & easy they want AoS4 to be this was probably the best they could do that wasn’t yell “Conga Lines are Illegal!!!”  

 

16 minutes ago, willange said:

I can confidently say that across all those armies the only units that I know will have issues with this are a few flyers (like terradons in my seraphon, the occasional skywarden spear jutting out the side, gossamids, spiteriders), a few ultra dynamic poses (namarti if you position them too much on the edge which I have done, witch elves in the same scenario).  It's a fairly niche issue that I'm confident can be resolved.

Yeah a half inch between Rounds is better than people are giving it credit for.

And remember stuff like Gossamids, Prosecutors and other big units got special coherency rules on their Warscrolls that have them extra space. So they’ll still be good and possibly we could see it keyworded to units that could also have problems there.

[The Rumour Thread]

15 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

Lol, you can't compare the GW LotR mini's

You literally said LotR movement trays before that. 😂

It fits the same though, closer blocks but they still will have enough room between troops to move around, rotate into better positions and pile in or slide around terrain.(not to mention the troops like draconith & gossamids who get extra coherency to do more)

I mean this is almost the same debates we had when the AoS3 rules dropped and people blew up about closer coherency rules then too.

We’ll adapt and keep have fun with our heroic blobs and solo heroes like always. Especially with how great the rest of the rules look. 👍 ⚡️ 

[The Rumour Thread]

35 minutes ago, RollSixxess said:

At half an inch coherency, we may as well just throw everything on squares and become ‘Warhammer The New World’ or something bc that’s WILD 

Lord of the Realms 

 

(which LotR was one of the game rules used in AoS1’ rule designs so we may have come full circle to a blob block game)

[The Rumour Thread]

5 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

It is "magic", why not turn into glass a ghost?

Yeah, like there was a story of the NightHaunt chasing retreating Beastclaw Raiders too deep into their Everwinter which even freezed their ethereal souls solid and the Ogors ate them like spooky popsicles.

And the dark waters in Ulgu’s Harrowdeep can even Drown the ghosts in the flavor texts.

The Mortal Realms are wreathed in powerful crystallized magic down to grass and water(which is magic mists that settled).

So that kind of stuff is all on an equal playing field the whole setting is so over the top “that nothing’s special”, even endless hordes of screaming ghosts & spectral daemons.

[The Rumour Thread]

10 minutes ago, Pizzaprez said:

I'm inclined to agree; I liked the 2" coherency AoS began with. I get that it caused its own set of challenges, but I liked the look of it and it made it easy to keep my guys in coherency using terrain like the Stormvault with it's 2" wide staircases. The ridiculous conga-chains one could do isn't great, but .5" just makes me feel like one would be better off just using movement trays exclusively.

I mean they had already shrunk to 1” by AoS2 so they were already going up those Stormvault stairs in grouped warbands. 😄

 

So a little bit closer isn’t that big a deal for most stuff to still be mobile blocks of blobs that can adjust themselves to the terrain, swarming in narrow choke points, spreading out on battlements & piling into the enemy.

Mostly just hope they’re smart for the units that do need it like giving it to key words like Ward has now so it’s “Wings(1” Coh)”, “Spectral(1” Coh)”, “Monster(3” Coh)”.

[The Rumour Thread]

1 hour ago, Marcvs said:

my feeling is that the new coherency, the wound pools (albeit not hugely impactful at first blush) and other little signs (the 3" range will mean most units will just have all their models in range) point to the focus switching from single models to "units" as the game piece -likely won't be achieved entirely in this edition of course. It is surely a direction to go if you want the game to be faster.

Agreed(but ran out reacts).

Feels very much like the units are gamer pieces & walking health bars. Very arcady in that sense with the emphasis on wanting faster games.

I agree closer coherency is a pain but that’s the beauty of round bases that it’s an easy rotate to keep everyone together, even if someone does end up charging in backwards. 😅

Hopefully we’ll see wider special coherencies for NightHaunt, Sylvaneth & Gloomspite stuff as the major issues. But otherwise it’s an easy enough thing to adapt to even having your guys move in a death ball across the field.

And I can understand it. AoS2 already had congaline & daisychain problems even AoS3 couldn’t solve, now with the new 3” melees as well everyone gets those would be nightmares of overlays.

So tighter blobs were their answer. 
 

That aside everything else looks really good & thematic with much more vicious melees feeding into AoS’ Gods vs Monsters status as no one takes a backward step under the constant watch of their gods and goes all in.(and retreat is heavily punished)

After the initial birthing pains I think AoS4 onwards is gonna be an amazing time to battle through the Mortal Realms and see built on in the next editions! 

[The Rumour Thread]

2 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

We can debate and discuss Hammers vs Hallowed color scheme until the next End Times, but I think there's a bit of an Occam's Razor here too: the sickly green hue of warpstone would overtake the gold of Hammers and anything gold would just look like green metal. I think it's partially a decision based on Skaven's color palette.

That’s definitely a big part of it. Even since the Realmgate Wars the Silver armor styles were better for a contrast against all the grimy Pestilens & Nurgle corruption & warpstone.

 

but I do also think it has to do with Stormhost rotations too to avoid Ultramarine burn-out.

Hammers for 3rd against Orruks and big chaos gits like back when they tussled with Ironjawz(even inside the Gnarlwoods at that which was a 2016 thing)

Hallowed Knights now for their natural high resistance to magic & chaos corruption.

Anvils of the Heldenhammer next edition against Death

Possibly Astral Templars against Destruction and then either Hammers again or finally Celestial Warbringers or Celestial Vindicators get some love against Chaos.

[The Rumour Thread]

I mean that’s more than a simple retcon, you’re looking at tons of characters completely flipped around like Elspeth’s entire rivalry with Gelt dropped because he wasn’t born yet and all the connecting elements to the Storm of Chaos thrown out the window.

I could see them making a brand new campaign that rewrites Tamurkhan & his battles with the Chorfs & Cathay as a way to give them something to do in the Great War but “finishing the story” just isn’t possible and smacks of a wishlist because of Thrones of Decay’s superfluous connections to it.

[The Rumour Thread]

1 hour ago, Vaellas said:

Still feeling like he is a new Castellant

My bet is Lord-Celestant. The forms seem closer.

 

 

With Valius an official Thunderstrike Lord-Castellant I think he’ll be their future blueprints with heavier keys & city heraldry themes on their armor to give that “demigod governor” feel as they take command of a city under their Stormkeep.

 

24 minutes ago, DD-Lord said:

I am extremely curious as to what exactly the Ruination Chamber is. So far, we only know that they are Stormcast in their last reforging, but that sounds a little too specific to be their only gig. There's got to be something more to them.

They seem to be heavily tied to Death and what the Relictors set-up as Necromancer paladins.

They have skull emblems, hourglasses, ghost fire weapons & wings, a “Gryph-Stalker” that looks like a gryphon/raven hybrid.

Looks like they’re one-half ancient veterans and Paladin & Lord-level Knight-Questors that form into groups for warriors with too much Azyr energy to be affected by warpstone or chaos, and the other half heavily using necromancy & Death magic to augment their abilities and(I’m guessing) keep their hollowed souls stable.

And GW keeps throwing that “as themselves” phrase around.

”Now they have been called upon once more – the only forces hardy enough to enter a warzone blighted by the corrupting force of the warpstone. For these mighty warriors, this may be the final time they step into battle – at least, as themselves.”

So possibly hinting at Ruination storm automatons or bound lightning gheists after their last reforging to go with the Death theme.

[The Rumour Thread]

1 hour ago, Ledgington said:

They do make a damned handsome shelf 

 

Dang that looks GOOD!😍

Also yeah I run my photos through Discord first and then have that put it online before posting it here so the site has an easier time reading them. It’s a bit finicky. 😅

[The Rumour Thread]

28 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

I really hope not especially when a lot of Cities are explicitly founded by Order coalitions and not singular factions.

I’m hoping it will be part of a moral about working together and things only turn around for CoS(and order as a whole) as they work more alongside eachother.

Currently human-focused: can barely hold their own.

Ironweld update with new city-duardin & Cogfort: can firmly hold together and even push.

Collegiate Arcane update has the city-aelves bolster the human mages & eldritch war engines: successfully crushing the forces of Chaos as they retake the Realms.

Order of Azyr bringing in the Celestium Gargants: stomp all over everyone.

[The Rumour Thread]

11 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

Ironbark duardin who are nature-based instead of metal-based would certainly "defy logic" in terms of fantasy tropes

Well technically it would still be Metal-based. The Ironbark as the name implies are glades that adapted to Chamon so are treemen with silver veins in their bark, use steel weapons and can grow homes & fortresses out of all the abundant copper & iron trees that the realm of metal manifests(which is partly what they did for the lost Duardin that needed homes when the Age of Chaos ruined them)

 

But yeah hopefully this ends on a high note and the hold is restored after this. I loved how wholesome the Sylvaneth-Duardin are.

“Treelord Grundylach and Warden King Aedagrim are the joint  rulers  of  Karaznethil.  They  are  as  close  as  brothers,  and while stern when alone, they share inside jokes in each other’s  company,  grinning  beneath  their  beards.  Many  such  Sylvaneth-Duardin  pairings  exist  in  Karaznethil,  from  ‘Mossbeards’  who  grumble  away  the  days  together  to  Duardin  lineages  who  pledge  themselves  to  a  single  Noble  Spirit,  each  new  generation  befriending  each  new  reincarnation. 

  Refuges of the Realms, Pg. 4”

[The Rumour Thread]

6 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

i don't think what you're describing and the Ruination Chamber are mutually exclusive is the thing. there's no reason to retcon the Star Bridges nor otherwise get rid of them. these could be the same Relictor-led crusades that we simply didn't see before they all got Thunderstruck to save on range bloat. those crusades could've found out new forms of the flaw since it's been a couple centuries since 1e. we may even see Transfigured as the weird, unsettling parts of Ruination.

That’s the vibes I’m getting.

the starter box is gonna represent one of those “Death Company” crusade against one of the major Skaven strongpoints thanks to their heavy Death/Relictor theming.

I’m willing to bet the big reveals of the box not shown in the trailer is the Skaven are lead by a named Skaven Greater Daemon character while the Stormhost gets a Thunderstrike Lord-Relictor that gets a name in narrative but is a standard Lord(same as when Ionus first appeared in the 2015 launch)

It’s basically what they’ve been setting up with past stories of transfigured and Thunderous Ones but put into a marketable form for refreshes over a purely narrative one.

4 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

if the Ballista isn't staying and its our only artillery piece, it feels like GW wouldn't let their poster faction simply lose artillery until 5e or 6e. somethin's brewin.

I liked someone’s idea that since Ruination seems to be the Realmgate War veterans given a refresh we could see a unit of 3 suped up Thunderbolt Crossbow blasters as the new “artillery” and why the ballista was removed.

[The Rumour Thread]

Don’t forget him and his chaos helm topper. Maybe new ones will have horns at the top?