Elmir

The Yak (not just a cow) is often used as an animal symbolizing steadfastness and stoic resolve. I'm getting a massive "mist of Pandaria" aesthetic vibe mixed with oldschool elves. If I ever paint these models, I would be going for a more jade/teal green colourscheme because of that. Anyway, that eastern inspired expansion did have different animals associated with different combat roles. I suspect this army might go for a similar route... We'll probably see another elemental aspect (water would be my guess) next week.

Very different approach to painting these. Underworlds is pretty fun to experiment with though.

During these corona times, I'm getting my sacrosanct chamber painted up and was considering running evocators on dracolines. I'm not experience with SCE yet, so I don't know what my second artifact should be, so I've not filled that part in yet. Was thinking Celestial vindicators. Lord Arcanum on Dracoline (220) Knight heraldor (100) Knight incantor (140) 3x5 Sequitors (390) 5 evocators (220) 6 evocators on dracoline (520) 2 celestar ballistas (220) Cleansing phalanx (120) Extra CP (50) Gravetide (20) Thoughts?

The Grymwatch have been added to my FEC force:

Katakros has been finished!

More additions!

Finally a plastic Slann! and a boneshaper.

I wouldn't want a system where doing subfactions costs points (especially for those players relying on them to manipulate battle line choices). Points really aren't the be all and end all solution to balance. I understand that GW likes their current book format for rules (as they are very much near the base of their income pyramid), but because they keep up the (imo) antiquated battletome/codex format, these imbalances remain in print for a loooong time... They seem to want to shift more towards a living rulebook system, but as long as they are unwilling to do complete overhauls of certain bent/broken items in the allegiance systems, the examples you've given will keep on existing. BUT, I have to say, the latest Slaanesh tweaks make me hopeful that in the future, tweaking or downright nerfing allegiance abilities is also on the table. Personally, I would like them to swap to an entirely warscroll based system for their rules (the whole lot: artifacts, spells, allegiance abilities, subfactions,...) If one turns out to be a bit busted (like Slaanesh recently, or the the FEC savage strike, Petrifex,...), they can just bring out "update decks" for each grand alliance alongside GHB. Hell, you can even use to boost and change warscroll cards for the woefully weak elements in an army as well. This way, armies would not be left to linger for too long and your army would get more regular updates apart from some points adjustment. Petrifex a bit too good? Swap a single card over next year to tweak it. Hag-nar head and shoulders above the rest? Either change Hag-nar or buff up the others to make them more desirable in stead? One magic item is stacking a bit too well with a certain command trait? Change one of the two slightly to fix that problem. Want to revisit an old faction with just a single new subfaction (like Legion of Grief)? Just print out a new card to add to the deck of LoN players. Want to sell even more stuff: create lovely binder maps that allow players to only take the warscroll cards that are currently used in their army. It would also declutter a wargaming table (an epiphany I had recently by playing on a lovely table with 2 fully painted armies... But it was still a mess of cards/books/dice/... all strewn around the table). Why do I not like only tweaking via points adjustments? Because it can ruin the entire feel of an army. I play Grey Knights in 40k... A supposedly elite force. The rules they gave them are so poor, that many of their units already dropped so massively in points, that they are actually losing that elite aspect of the army. I'm beginning to outnumber most typical marine armies and fielding "hordes" of low point power armoured Grey Knights is not what I had in mind when I started collecting the army (nor is how they are described in the lore...)

I've finished a unit of Kavalos deathriders and the Bonereaper spells meanwhile:

I hope to God GW doesn't start doing a book for every different coloured stormhost out there like they do in 40k... I like the larger diversity in armies AoS currently has.

Easy for me: if they ever did the Total War: Warhammer Vampire Coast expansion in a model range, I'd be all over that! The leviathans, necrofex ships, rotting prometheans,... It was all so wonderfully done in that DLC. The dreadfleet was already mentioned before, but they were just (uninspiring) rules.

I seem to recall ancient days when some of these heavily armoured orcs and these very same savage orcs were a single army (with even more variation in models if you can imagine that!!). If only somebody imparted the designers on your wisdom back then! Also, following the same god seems like there's reason enough to sometimes fight together. So I'm afraid I don't quite agree with you on that one either. But that's ok... The design team made a book that caters to both people who like that solution (to having very limited model choice) AND to people who like to keep those model ranges apart. I play mostly death and I love the fact that there are more combo options than ever for me to make different armies, even if it means fielding a lot of "old models" to make them.

They didn't just soup them up though. They gave them a new allegiance (and I couldn't disagree with you more that orcs + orcs don't fit at all, but that's a different conversation) AND kept all their previous allegiances intact. IMO that's the most elegant solution they could have gone for to offer more model variation to players. You know, apart from whipping the backs of the model designers to work even harder than they already are... The release schedule (also for models) is pretty insane these days.

Thing is, when is an army a "small army"? They have already started expanding them... But only with single heroes so far. The other thing is: there seem to be as many "small armies" these days as there are large armies (that are mostly based on old WHFB ranges). I think a possible future is to fuse some of these armies together again with ranges that makes sense, like: Great waaaagh Legion of Grief Free cities with KO, Sylvaneth,...

This guy has been completely finished now! I run him as a mercenary giant or as the giant running around in shadespire (seems more appropriate for the mirrored city).

Also... Technically, I don't think Slaanesh was in GHB19 (odd timing there)... so they might not have been mentioned in the GHB errata and get their own errata later on. At least, that's what I keep telling myself because I'd be slightly annoyed if that army stayed as is.

I've been working a bit more on cleaning up my backlog of terrain: And my Warcry warband posing on it:

I picked those up during a big Wargame convention called Crisis in Antwerp, Belgium. I believe they are from a company called renedra .

The first 1000p army is marching out this evening! And the whole bonereaper famility together so far:

The Liege Kavalos is also finished!

Feast of Bones!

Size comparison and family photo!