Jamopower

I never meant real combination. Got bit sidetracked from my original "thesis", which is that people who like elves will get the elven armies. Maybe not all of them, but having a new elven (or dwarven, or undead, etc.) army every now and then, will keep large enough amount of them buying new stuff and more importantly, will get new people interested. That adds up to more money in the long run than giving a new book and unit or two every few years. The fact that you can field them all on the table is a plus, but not anyways necessary. I'm pretty sure that quite a big share of the people that walk outside of a Warhammer store with bag full of boxes don't have a clue what they have bought in terms of gameplay, but they are very sure what they have got in terms of looks and in that way having your elves in a forest or in a sea theme doesn't have too much of an impact, if elves as a grand theme is what you're interested, compared to being interested on, say, dwarfs.

Still at the same period of time they released the Idoneth, which would have been max two units in the Dark elven army if they had been released for WHFB. So I would believe we'll get mix of both in the future. Tie in books to wrap up the older factions together (a Free cities book or few, with universal allegiances for Aelf, Duardin and Free people would be easy, as with one for ogres and then some new stuff like the rumoured Darkoath.

I believe that they co-exist in same communities as per current fluff? As said, I believe that the whole split to the old WHFB armies is historical baggage. It's more what people feel, than how it goes currently. Of course the model range reflects that in some degree as well, but probably that's also why they seem to make some curating of the range all the time.

Is that really much different from say Skaven? If you paint mixture of high, dark, wood and newer elves with the same theme, you'll get quite coherent force as the bottom designs are pretty similar. And as with 40k, I agree with the complete forces. Thus I would compare Idoneth etc. with Custodes, Deathwatch and such. New variations of the old "super themes". Don't believe we will get a new wave of Custodes anytime soon either. Although the Genestealer cults get new models soon, so you never know. I guess in the end it will all be dependent on how much the specific themes sell models.

That's exactly my point, if you replace Skaven with Elves, it's pretty much the system I was describing (and we have?). I believe there is still much of baggage from the Old world involved and many still consider High elves and Dark elves being a different thing, but of course I don't know how it is for newer players. At least the fluff with the free cities and elven heroes working together seems to imply that the old split is not anymore a thing. And if you compare to 40k releases from past years. There aren't so many additional releases to existing armies. Orks got their ages old stuff updated and chaos chapters have got expanded, but otherwise it has been a new character here and there and completely new forces.

It is, but I would say it's even better to get that elf player to invest in to a completely new elven army that is themed around, say Fire or Lions, that he can also ally with the older army. And of course the terrain kits and endless spells seem to be given for everyone. They look to be quite easy to do and can be produced for cheap in China without influencing the production of the Nottingham plant.

That's one of the reasons why I don't we get additional releases for those factions themed very strongly. There's so much more to explore and when you think of it, there's not so much you can do with a one theme in a fantasy setting before you start to repeat. In addition to fighty, priesty and wizardy character, you have light and heavy cavalry, line infantry, elite infranty, shooters, warmachines, monsters, skirmishers and chariots. I believe for example the Idoneth range already more or less ticks all of them. If you think backwards. Old high elves had gazillion versions of the same heavy infantry unit, which just led to people theming their army around one of them, which is sort of what Age of Sigmar has been catering at least for now. It looks like we'll get a new elven army, a dwarf army, a human (stormcast) army, a chaos army and an Orcs and goblins army with changing regularity. Which has it's perks, after all new stuff is usually more interesting than old. Especially as you can still sell the old stuff for new recruits.

Actually outside Chaos, the first releases were very much realm themed, Heavens (Stormcast), Fire (Slayers), Metal (Kharadron), Life (Sylvaneth), etc. I have to say that I really don't believe we will ever get new releases for stuff like Idoneth outside "add-on games". I might be wrong of course. The old fantasy armies were actually pretty similar between each other in the beginning. After all they were mix of popular historical themes and fantasy. For example High/Dark elves being mixture of Rome, Byzantium, Middle eastern horse tribes and classic Elven fiction from D&D and Tolkien. Most armies still had pretty samey selection of troops that you typically have in a historical game.

I would also class Sylvaneth as elves, which makes three (or tree?). The repacked Island of Blood box that they sold very cheaply some time ago, would indicate that they indeed had quite much of unsold stock around. On the other hand I have understood that high elves were one of the most popular armies of old Fantasy. One thing to keep in mind is that I believe all of the 40k codexes have now been updated and they pushed them out few books per month last year or two, so getting a lot of Battletomes this year with no new models besides the Made in China stuff should be pretty much given.

If they just would ever update the Warhammer Legends to be a full set of armylists, there would be less problems (and I would be very happy), but it doesn't look like it is going to ever happen.

At least the current version is an upgrade from the Juan Diaz daemonettes. Preparing to battle means usually gluing at least 10 arms back in to the models.

I'm sure there will be new models. It just might be that most of the models come later and there will be a "teaser" first.

Based on the artwork, the Realm of Chaos box set could very well be similar to Blightwar. Christmas bundle with bunch of existing models and new characters, including those Khorne models from the old starter that are not anymore available from anywhere else, with some preview of Slaanesh allegiance abilities (that we have already had two versions of) and then the main release would be later. Let's see.

It's not a night goblin warmachine. Night goblins have only short bows for shooting.

Well, I haven't liked the "older newer"models either (but I love the old stuff like the old stone trolls) so it fits the theme I agree thst it will look better with darker and less cartoony colur scheme, but I still think it's bit too busy, which is common to most of the new models. Another separate issue that I have wirh models nowadays (not just GW), is that all of then are very "specialized" and while they look nice as separate pieces, the fact that they are always the same models will have the effect that when you have seen a single army, you've seen them all. Especially with the ranges being so small. For example ironjawz suffer from this. But each to their own, I'm sure that many people love the model and the cartoony style seems to be the style that sells nowadays. I'm fine with that. I have enough projects anyways

The physique (small feet, large body and hands) and overall feel (stuff sticking out from back and general cartoon look) is what makes it look the same for me, not the details. Don't like neither.

The troll looks like it's straight from Warmachine

Darkoath might have some beastman type units, just as Tzeentch has Tzaangor. It doesn't require to them being merged together.

I have a feeling that majority of the customer base doesn't even know what armies are in the top 3, let alone care about it.

The copyright issues always sounded like a bad excuse, when they kept stuff that is even more generic in the game. I mean essentially the whole Freeguild range is a Pike and Shotte era Holy Roman Empire army with added skulls.

But if you like elves and they drop a lion ranger army on one year and a phoneix temple army on second, which can ally with eachother, it's quite likely that many will end up with both of them as it's very tempting to flesh out the full army after you already have started them. With updating of the old battletomes, it would be just few new units added to the existing collections while the new starters would be the same in both cases. Thus having small factions that people can "complete" makes a lot of sense for me. On the downside, it makes the armies very samey. In broad sense, after you have seen one Ironjawz army, you have seen all of them. Additionally there is less risk involved. If something doesn't sell, there has been less investment and the range can be dropped more easilly to mail order only status to free up space for new models. How I see the "factions" in AoS is that there are the Aelves (3 battletomes) , Duardin (2), Sigmar (4), Chaos(4), Death(3) and Destruction(3), which all get a release every now and then to keep the fans of the subgenre happy and buying. Of course in addition to these, there are some outliers like Skaven and Seraphon that will get mixed in along the way.

Slaanesh in the beginning of 2019 would follow along the other gods pretty well.

It's because the movement in the movement phase is now called a "normal move" while "move" refers to any sort of movement. The classification has changed in the new edition as the pile-in move was specified in a faq to be a different kind of move, which is no longer the case and the rules of Hold the line are unfortunately still written using the old edition terms where a "move" means a different thing.

Yeah, it's a glitsch from the term inconsestiencies on the rules writing and update, hopefully it gets cleared out in a faq, as it's pretty inlogical that you can pile-in only on your opponent's turn.

This is suitably stupid to take part in. I have currently painted 5 armies suitable fro AoS, of which two are still with squares (and one of them for good). My first WHFB army was Dwarfs, for which I have about 200 painted models, but I have no plans on using them for AoS. Maybe I'll dig them out for a game or two of Kings of War some day. I have quite a lot of Lizards that I initially did for 6th edition. My plans are to change them to round bases at some point as I have bought/got a lot of old metal minis in recent years (e.g. 40 5th ed metal spear saurus, 20 6th ed + 10 5th ed metal saurus guard, engine of gods made from an old stegadon, old skink cold one cavalry, about 40 cold one riders, about 100 plastic saurus,some old slanns (both on palanquin and some even older, etc.). I have currently painted: Slann, 2 skink priests, 5 chameleons, about 40 skinks, 15 saurus, 8 kroxigor, 6 old terradons that fit now better as ripperdactyls, a stegadon, 2 salamanders, 2 saurus heroes, a bunch of horrible cold one knights. It was really good army back in the day and quite good nowadays as well. This is and will be my go to "tournament army". I originally started AoS by switching my old 40k daemon army to a Slaanesh army consisting nowadays of: Archaon on horse, 5 knights, Lord on steed of Slaanesh, Harry the Hammer, 6 chaos warriors, bunch of LotR harad that I have used as sorcerer and counts as skaven, 50 Daemonettes (of every generation), 15 seekers, 6 fiends, herald on chariot, masque, herald, Keeper of Secrets. Waiting for the Slaanesh release to be expanded. I also have bunch of other daemons, I could probably build a 1000-1500 point Tzeentch army out of my mortals and my 10 horrors, the Changeling, a herald, daemon prince, 6 screamers and 6 flamers. For Khorne and Nurgle I have just few units. Then, my first proper AoS army from mixed order, the army is currently being updated to allow it to be used for Saga and Dragon Rampart as well. It currently consists of: Elven griffon lord, A great eagle, two mounted human heroes, 5 Grail knights, a Waywatcher, a human wizard, an assassin, 36 assorted dwarfs (which are also an army of their own for Lord of the Rings as they are all LotR models), 30 Halberdiers, 10 archers, 3 Kurnoth hunters, 5 Tree revenants. For these I currently have on my painting desk 15 counts as stormcast and 10 crossbowmen. I have long lasting plans to add more Sylvaneth, but let's see when I get there. A start collecting box would fit in perfectly. I also have bits to convert some wardancers to eagle winged Khinerai Heartrenders. And lastly, I have painted up a collection of random undead from about 7 different manufacturers. I currently have A Vampire, A Wight king (Krell!), 13 grave guard, 3 ghouls, a banshee, 3 spirit hosts, 24 skeletons, 9 zombies, 5 dire wolves, a necromancer and 10 almost finished black knights. Very mish mash army that I probably will use more for Fantastic Saga than for AoS as I don't want to paint a million skeletons or get those big monsters. But it's also close to 1000 point AoS army, so it'll eventually be used in AoS as well, especially as I have bought the Battletome. These are just a fraction of my collection. I regularly play many different games, for which most I have multiple forces. For 40k, which I play nowadays once or twice a year I have about 700 painted models for 5 different armies. My latest bigger project was a 150 model Muslim army for crusade period that I use for Saga and bigger historicals such as Hail caesar or Swordpoint (for which we'll start a campaign on August, which will make me finish my about 50 unpainted infantry). I also have a largish Irish force for Saga. About 130 models for Inifinity, a Harad/Mordor army for Lord of the Rings, two armies for Beyond the gates of Antares, smallish force of Shaltari for both Dropfleet and Dropzone commander, 30 or so models (plus a city) for Batman and some bits and bobs for smaller games. The next project is a 15mm army of Poles and German mercenaries for 16-17th century gaming (about 200 models). Probably for Pike and Shotte and/or By Fire and Sword. All in all, I'd say that I currently have about 1500+ painted models (and hundreds of unpainted). And yes, I have a problem.