MaatithoftheBrand

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/04/vote-now-to-see-your-favourite-black-library-books-back-in-print/ Some solid choices here, although it fills me with sorrow as it seems unlikely "Ambassador" will win.

So in light of the latest statement from James Workshop, I have found myself awaiting the final and most complete take-down of the scourge of horses to date. James Workshop/Hbomberguy Anti-Horse Video when? More on topic, I have heard from a few places now very vague rumblings that GW might be considering axing White Dwarf? Does anyone know where this rumour originated and how (hopefully) spurious it is?

Even if they are in the Stormcast book, its not like we haven't seen units gain rules that let them be used in other factions without breaking faction coherency - the Lumineth Zenith Twins can be taken in any Order army, and I wouldn't be surprised if one or both of the Draconith don't get a similar rule.

So its annecdotal but I saw a lot more people excited about 40k and Warhammer in general when they announced 30k and started releasing things for it. Given that many of the Age of Sigmar armies have strong, if not one-for-one, parallels, I would not be too surprised to see people use armies in both, or at the very least it might allow areas where there is currently no non-40k scene to develop an alternative, which seems like a good stepping stone to bringing at least a couple of the old holdout veterans into AoS. Furthermore, this will be a specialist game, and a massed battle one at that. Which means that, whether or not it is the intention of GW, I imagine a lot of players wanting to play with new armies or buy new models for old armies will generally try and go for the cheap(er) main studio plastics whenever they can, and only buy the expensive FW resin kits for special characters, cool monsters, and elite units that don't exist in Age of Sigmar (similar to how, for years after FW started their classic armour lines and even after the release of 30k, a lot of players still chose to "count-as" or more often convert the 'modern' era plastics to resemble Crusade era armours rather than buy the resin kits - something I think seemed to remain the case until the MkIII and MkIV plastic kits began to be released). And if they already have all these AoS models, I think a lot of people will think that they might as well use them. Beyond that, there are probably a fair few new players that will be drawn into TOW after loving the Total War games, and those are also new players that, once they catch the tabletop bug, might love a quicker game like AoS too. And even if all this isn't the case, a whole new range of models are always going to be welcome - I can't wait to see people using the Kislev bears as Demigryph Knights in a winter-themed Cities of Sigmar army, or CoS/Lumineth armies made up of neat ranks of Cathayan soldiery. I'm not saying that in some communities there won't be a split, but I am remaining positive and am excited about what this means, both for the Old World itself, and also for Age of Sigmar.

If you are just after a simple-ish game of small heroes leading rank-and-file armies, have you tried Oathmark?

I liked a lot of the lore we got in Kragnos, although I do agree with many of the posters here (though perhaps not quite with the same fervour, maybe) that there seems to have been a real difficulty in this book to balance the different storylines and how much pagetime and focus/impact each one got. I think the Alarielle prologue/opening was very cool for a number of reasons. I liked seeing a conclusion to some of the plots and consequences started in the Realmgate Wars and the Season of War, and there were a lot of small touches (the Spirits of Durthu being useful/deeply involved in a ritual connected to the World-that-Was, due to their connection to it, etc) that I really liked to see. Also, and this is probably where people will disagree with me a little, I also liked that it wasn't hugely connected to the rest of the plot of BR: Kragnos - the Broken Realms books went strongly with the theme that the Aelven Pantheon is very much concerned with its own survival and strength, and that the Aelven Gods either do not feel the need to inform their allies or ask for aid from them in their plans, or even believe that their allies will agree that they are more expendable than the Aelves are when playing for the "greater good" (as we also saw in Morathis justification for claiming Anvilguard). The ven Densts were pretty great point-of-view characters, particularly in the build-up to the Siege where they had more character moments rather than just having to run between skirmishes. They seemed to be a good example of when I personally find Warhammer fluff at its most engaging; when we OC see how ridiculous the whole thing is, but IC it is played straight and serious. I have... more mixed feelings on the Slaanesh subplot, and it does feel a little too removed from the other storybeats/at times feels a little too Tzeentchian/the 'victory' the Twins claim in the epilogue does not feel like it matches the story, but overall it is an okay B Plot for the book. It could have been fleshed out more, and I don't feel like B Plot is the place to introduce such huge characters as the Children of the Dark Prince to the setting, but it is not, to my mind, the biggest missed opportunity in the book. To me, the biggest missed opportunity in Kragnos Is Kragnos When I first started reading through the book, I was really excited with where they seemed to be taking Kragnos. Whilst his methods and powers might be very straightforward, here was a more nuanced character than we generally see for Destruction: -His companions that rode with him were war captains he genuinely trusted and whom he cared for as friends and comrades; indeed his motivation for much of his Drake hate is grief and vengeance over their deaths. This is a marked contrast to Orruks and Grots, who are famously untrustworthy and quick to betray and usurp each other, and even Ogors, who often end up eating their own children in leadership challenges. Gargants have a familial bond, but it is a simplistic and brutish thing. A loyal and emotionally sympathetic leader and deity seemed like a unique and interesting addition to Destruction. -Whilst Kragnos is the God of Earthquakes and the End of Empires, and he clearly reveled in and celebrated the brutish and simple destruction he caused, unlike the other forces of Destruction who are generally only just in it for a good scrap, Kragnos was (at least in theory) ending empires and scattering tribal armies in the name of Donse. Now, it seems clear that this was more a justification to himself/others rather than a truly sanctioned mission (especially given he was exiled, or left, after the fight with his brother) but again, a character who fights for a true cause/the memory of a cause is another interesting angle on Destruction. -We have a lot of characters in all the worlds of Warhammer that rage and fight as primal warriors/berserkers/etc, but even in the depths of his rage we saw a pragmatism and awareness in (some) of Kragnos' decisions; accepting the surrender of Derko Walrusbiter, holding himself in reserve with elements that can exploit his speed and openings (Goregrunta mobs), and the like. It would have been interesting to see more of that side of Kragnos - a brutal and destructive force of Destruction, but one still able to think about the situation and assess his choices and strategise, at least a little. But then, instead of this side of Kragnos, the moment he's inside the city walls, he becomes another generic Destruction warboss and loses all of that nuance. The portal "trick" is believably one that I can see working on Kragnos - he is depicted as somewhat narrow in his focus throughout most of the book, and so an opportunity to bring low a seemingly resurgent Draconith empire would perhaps be irresistible to him. However. The parting paragraph goes out of its way to have him issue a threat/postponed challenge to Morathi-Khaine and pointedly ignoring Lord Kroak. For a being who was painted as very aware of who his enemies were (he recognises a city of men despite technological advancement and the architecture being Azyrite not Ghurish tribal, he knew that the Seraphon and their Slann were servants of Dracothian, etc) it seems strange to me that he would not issue a challenge or even acknowledge Lord Kroak - an obvious (albeit a little bit dead) Slann, the same creatures who imprisoned him for Ages of the Realms, the same creatures who stole the deaths of the last Draconith from him, the same creatures who serve Dracothian himself and opposed him at the very height of his glory. Instead, he issues a challenge to a small Aelven woman, whose monstrous form he had already bested and whose magic could not harm him. Why? TL;DR: I feel like Broken Realms: Kragnos had a lot of potential and a lot of good small moments, however it let itself down by spending page after page almost turning Kragnos from Big Earthquake Horseboss into a human and nuanced character unlike the other named figures in Destruction, only to then have him be a siege maguffin and then an idiot once the plot picked up speed.

Happy to help Praise Hashut

Building on this, we already see in the lore and the novels the idea of most people accepting a Pantheon In the Spear of Shadows, the Free Cities are places where not only are the different facets and forms of the gods worshipped (there is a comment about how Sigmar-as-God-King, Sigmar-as-Barbarian-Warrior and the likes are all semi-independent divine concepts) but also where Nagash-Morr and Nagash-the-Child are openly worshipped - the devotees who seem to venerate Nagash /above/ the other gods are given a fair bit of side-eye by the more traditional characters, but also they acknowledge that you can't really ignore Nagash* and so acknowledging the kinder fragments of him is probably a good idea. We also see the idea of Grungi as a Forge God more than a Patron God, where anyone who respects the craft prays and acknowledges him as the Great Maker - be they duardin, aelf, human, or even ogor or stranger practitioners still. In the Tainted Heart we see this idea of Pantheon again - whilst temples to the "High" gods like Sigmar are the largest and most prominent, Free Cities in the Realm are filled with shrines and temples to what might be considered in game terms to be 'minor' gods and spirits - local River Gods and wind spirits are worshipped in temples without that implying that the devotees are not also worshippers and adherents to the broad creed of the God-King. The Order Battletomes seem to have a few nods to this too, albeit less explicitly; the Slyvaneth acknowledge and worship/worshipped Kurnoth, before his great reduction at the hands of Nurgle without the "Kurnothi" elements of their culture being rejected by the Everqueen. The Free Cities have the Phoenix Guard - who worship the God-Beast, the Ur-Phoenix, without it being seen as a reason to cast them out. And these exist even within Order, which appears to be fairly given to monotheism, at least in terms of its dedicated military forces rather than its civilians. Even in Death, where all is Nagash, there is an almost-Pantheon. There are the Aspects of Nagash, although in Death there seems to be less of a need to acknowledge any Aspect except for the Undying King, and then there are strange outliers such as the godbeast Hrunspuul, who fills something of a minor god role. However, I would still argue that Death is the closest to a monotheistic Alliance in the setting. The most obvious example though comes from Destruction - even before the return of Kragnos, the forces of Destruction seem to be more than happy to worship a Pantheon, with almost every single subfaction having a Pantheon to a greater or lesser extent. The most obvious part is that Gorkamorka, High God of Destruction, is already a duality of gods, and can be brutally cunnin' or cunningly brutal as needed, and whilst the Ironjawz and the Ogors and the like might lean more towards Gork, and the Kruleboyz and Grots might lean more towards Mork, it is never at the total exclusion of the other. Many of the "Aspects" of Gorkamorka - unlike the Aspects of Sigmar or Alarielle or Nagash - appear to be truly seperate entities infused with his energy in some way; for example, the Spider God, which was made a god by glutting itself on Gorkamorka's power. Then there are the other deities and godbeasts worshipped by different Destruction factions; the Everwinter that the Beastclaw Ogors venerate/fear as it pursues them, the Bad Moon and the Evil Sun, Skwidmuncha and Boingob - godbeasts worshipped by certain Orruks and Grots respectively - Ynmog and Behemat the World-Titans... So the idea that the Kruleboyz cannot venerate Kragnos (particularly if they have... somewhat twisted the legend of him into something else) seems a little shortsighted to me. Provided the GW writers put the effort into making the connection make sense and it isn't just a lazy "new models worship new models". *Unless you are lucky enough to be a Stormcast, or the favoured amongst the Aelven nations, or someone else who has managed to "cheat" the Undying King.

Fyreslayers definitely also have a Battle Standard Bearer hero who is tasked with reciting the legends and history of the Lodge to inspire his fellows in battle - cannot for the life of me remember the name of the unit off the top of my head though. So there's some precedent for it.

I think as others have said, my thoughts on soup depend on the lore behind it and the cohesion - on the individual "flavour" of the soup, rather than the concept as a whole, as it were. Cities is the "big, controversial" one that has actually been released - it has more Stormcast on the cover than Cities units, and its release marked the end of a lot of classic kits (and, in terms of age, not-so-classic-and-yet-seemingly-perfect-for-AoS kits, like the Skycutter (no you're still bitter)), but on the other hand, it also perfectly fit the lore we had for how the Free Peoples of the Mortal Realms frequently worked, particularly those descended from the people and refugees of Azyr. The idea of Freeguild Human regiments marching in lockstep and matching colours with Clannish Longbeard shieldwalls and roving bands of Aelvish scouts is one that matches the fluff for how these races and cultures have survived - side by side, often uncomfortably and with tensions, but with common homes and purpose. I think, given the change in design philosophy from the 'small, bespoke factions that we can grow' to 'functional, cohesive armies', Cities of Sigmar marks a sensible choice to keep a number of those factions and themes and lore ideas in the game and functional. Has it been implemented perfectly? Well, personally I would like more Cities units to be able to support each other better - if my Warden King has been commanding his City's garrison for decades/centuries, it seems strange to me that the Aelven Sisters of the Watch and the Human Greatswords that call it home are not as much an extension of his tactics and inspiration as the Ironbreaker bodyguard he has. And I do think that a lot of people were very much soured by the fact that this particular soup tome came off the back of losing so many models and options - especially ones as iconic as cannons and Warrior Priests. But, I do think that Cities has potential - and GW has, over the last few years, moved more towards centering Cities characters (particularly Free Guild) in more narratives and trailers and the like, which gives me some hope that (even if they are still a couple of years away because GW only started work on them after somewhat panickily realising just how many people wanted a "standard human and friends" faction) we will eventually see more expansions for the Cities. Mawtribes also works fairly well in my opinion, but almost for the opposite reason - whilst we did get some fluff about the curse/blessing of the Everwinter in the Beastclaw Raiders book, for the most part this did not have to interrupt the lore and narrative of the combined Ogor book. Ogors have always been a disparate and mercenary race, so having a wide array of tribes that mechanically work fairly similarly, but some are led by world-traveled and extravagant mercenaries, some worship primal fire, others are cursed to be hunted by the Everwinter, etc. This was helped, as others have said, by the fact that this was more a reset than a "souping", recombining visually very similarly designed models and mechanics into a cohesive whole. Warclans is almost the opposite, to my mind, although I can see the attempts to use lore to combine the elements. The Ironjawz being standard Orruks who have proven their worth, grown big and strong, and earned/forged their own armour with the goal of conquest and destruction and proving their worth over all others, they moved away from the standard Orruk in one direction - towards discipline and might and (the orruk version of) Soldiering. The Bonesplittas instead being standard (or even Ironjaw) Orruks who have effectively being called by Gorkamorka/the Waaagh!/blunt force trauma to leave behind their old life and become monster hunters - effectively feral paladins whose battles are worship and hunt and ritual more than they are warfare; effectively moving them away from standard Orruks in the opposite direction to the Ironjawz. Now, I know that Orcs/Orruks have always been fairly good at coming together when the Waaagh! is impressive enough, and that the Great Waaagh! rules are designed to reflect that idea; a war and cause big enough to unite the two groups. However, I think that for this imagery/idea to work, there needed to be one or two more small subfactions to make it feel like a real coming together of a true Waaagh!; a handful of standard Orruks who have managed to keep up with these two factions of elites, a few mobs of demi-gargants or Morruks or some other new AoS type Orruk culture or adjacent race - without that, Warclans feels like a bandaid to keep Ironjawz and Bonesplittas in the game more than a meaningful soup list (not helped by not gaining any new models or scenery or endless spells or the like during their souping). I think the worry/feeling I have about a book that combined the Kharadron and the Fyreslayers is that as it stands it feels an awful lot like the problems with Warclans, but even moreso. As others have pointed out, there are very few - if any - cultural ties that still exist between the two factions, and that a single, slimmed down book would lose a lot of the flavour and variety that these two currently possess in a way that does not seem necessary. That is not to say that there are not some commonalities and that there aren't reasons these two might work together - there is a whole Skyport that can already include Fyreslayer units (because that is an unusual and conservative Skyport that still venerates the Ancestors and so has more in common with their Ashqyian cousins) and both factions are mercenary enough that they would work with the other to secure ur-gold/trade contracts. You might even argue that, particularly in the face of true threats, both might be likely to celebrate their shared heritage by offering a discount! But as they stand now, simply souping the two doesn't seem like what the fans of either wants, and like it would reduce the variety each faction was able to show within itself. Now, the idea that the return of an Ancestor-God like the Smith is significant to the duardin is not controversial; it is a big deal. In fact, I think an interesting parallel might be the Ynari for the Eldar in 40k; an Ancestor-God returning to the frontlines with a new plan and purpose is a big deal, and whilst many Kharadron and Fyreslayers might continue to do their own thing, I can see a large number of both being encouraged enough to travel to make common cause with the Smith to go and join his host, and even a handful of Kharadron even being so inspired as to actively convert to the worship of the Ancestors again, and a handful of Fyreslayers to see him as the best path back to the reforging of their own god/a messiah figure worthy of their worship and veneration. However, given that these conversions would be a minority amongst the allies flocking to the Smith, and so many of the lore hints to his plan and his return talking about something new (and, you know, him being a forge god), I think the more interesting route would be a new faction - even one that starts or even stays very small (a new longbeard and/or quarrellers equivelenat, a smith hero, a rune golem unit, something like that would be an okay core) and can either take 1 in 4 of either KO and FS, or 1 in 4 of each (so half the army can be these existing factions) seems like a more satisfying option for everyone.

Hopefully this is not only a response to me and my posts - I am sure it is not as there has been a great deal of discussion about the bog-daemons over the last few pages - but on the off; a response. I really like the fimir and I am still fairly sad I was never able to pick up any of the FW models - they were absolutely stunning and I would have loved to have a small knot of them in some larger destruction force, loping alongside grots and spiders and gargants as part of the semi-mythical "horror of the primal" vibe Destruction can give off. And I don't think anyone (or at least not anyone on TGA, that I've seen) is suggesting there is some active controversy around them or that GW is shamefully trying to make the whole world forget that the Fimir ever existed. Just that I doubt GW would want the headache of having to unpack the somewhat meme-ified version of the fimir that now exists in the wider public sphere by making them a focus of a large/main game faction, especially one designed to sell 3rd edition. That said, I really hope they keep doing things with the "fimir design space" as it were - I have always been of the opinion that the fimir feel much more at home in smaller-scale games, where the "threat hiding in the mists" and small raiding forces for one or two victims is a much bigger threat - HeroQuest was a natural scale to first introduce them, and maybe earlier editions of WFB (or indeed 1st ed AoS to a certain extent) where the armies were smaller. Perhaps that's why I have always thought they made such excellent villains for WFRP - they are strong, large, and have magic, and their ideal targets cap out at a regiment or village in the World that Was; a pretty powerful boss/one shot villain for a small band of Warrior Priests, Dwarf artisans, and a Rat Catcher. As such, I hope we keep seeing the nods towards something... neolithic and "other" appear in AoS - we have seen the Fomorians, who draw upon the same inspiration as the Fimir and who look awesome/I would love to see get a few other little twists, as Ogroids have (and, like the Fimir, even first turned up in a specialist/boxed "skirmish" game). There are hints of something primordial and cyclopean that destroyed the Gargant Temple in the King Brodd lore. In these places - on the peripheries, half-hidden, is where the Fimir work best, imho. That said, if the "boghobgoblins" or whatever this faction ends up being have plastic versions of the FW Fimir as an elite infantry/troll type unit - the last dregs of a forgotten and ancient sorcer/warrior culture in the deepest fens - well then good. But as you say, I do not think they necessarily have the scale of design potential (as written now) to be a stand alone faction - we already know how people feel about visually shallow armies (poor Fyreslayers).

I think the problem is less that the lore exists, and more that the culture amongst fans is still (in a lot of places, not all - TGA, for instance, rises above this type of childishness) "lol so edgy" when it comes to Fimir - the meme is how much of a dark and gritty race they are because of their reproduction. Beastmen and Archaon don't occupy the same meme status - Beastmen either get jokes about furrys/being the forgotten 3rd Chaos army whenever they are mentioned, and Archaon's fluff discussions often come back to either comparing him to Abaddon as a "failure" for Storm of Chaos, or End Times memes about either how he killed off a setting, or else how even when he did that he didn't win and had to come back to try again. As you say, GW ignores this stuff with other characters - I think the issue is with the Fimir, the players don't play along.

I think the problem with GW trying to take this approach is that the internet exists - and, though it's taken them a seeming age to learn it, GW has finally realised that the internet affects perception. That is to say - it doesn't matter how much they try and focus in on the embittered pseudo-bronz-age/celtic cyclopeans in the mist, abandoned by their gods, angle, because if little Timmy goes online to try and see how to paint them or learn tactics, eleven seconds after the Google Search resolves he's found sixteen different AoS and Old World forums with people discussing the old lore, arguing about whether GW is evil or has some "woke agenda" to remove all the grimdark or converting up the heroes with the old Dark Eldar Slaves models "for lore accuracy". You could see them slowly learning this lesson with things like the "Failbaddon" meme and other such nonsense where effectively all the marketing around Abaddon's new model had to keep poking fun at the meme and the last like three Chaos Marine books have had to bend over backwards to point out that assymetrical objectives can exist and Abaddon probably isn't just somehow the only loser to ever keep the favour of the gods and the Traitor Legions. And even then, it still feels like most of the discussion online still either calls him a man who failed 12 times, or else bemoans how it took "retcons" to make him not suck. And in a lot of ways, that's a shame. The Fimir as they exist/existed are a very cool flavour touch - that in the stinking fog around Marienburg, those lights in the distance might be worse than will-o-wisps, and there are ancient, monstrous crones with bronze sickles performing dread rituals, seemingly not caring that the gods they beseech don't answer them. I am very glad they still exist in WFRP4e, for instance. But, I feel like they are one of the biggest victims in Warhammer of the internet's habit of 'memeing' concepts and reducing them down to one-note shorthands, and I don't see anyway GW could meaningfully get the community to move on from "lol do you know how fimir used to breed in the fluff", and why they would risk that when they have the freedom to do anything they want - they aren't in the Old World anymore, and don't have a limited roster of races.

A note on the map of Ghur - it isn't new, I'm afraid: It is the same one that appears in the Sons of Behemat Battletome. Sorry if someone has already pointed that out and I skimmed passed it. Now with that out of the way These were some incredible reveals! Yndrasta is without a doubt one of my favourite models in a long time, and if the lore for her is as cool as the model, she has the potential to be my favourite AoS-original character. The new Stormcast will take some getting used to, but I think I like them. The red eyes look mostly like they are clustered in pairs, with some lone eyes suggesting they are on the sides of heads/the figures are turned more towards their prey and each other than to us, the viewer, in my opinion? And I feel if it were Fimir there would be more talk about brine and fog - particularly fog - rather than just bogs and fens. However, you know what greenskins did exist (and even "technically" had rules) in the World that Was that could easily become a lanky-goblin type creature, as suggested by the rumours/leaks, and lived in swamps? Boglars/Toad Gnoblars!

This is weirdly hypnotic... I can't look away... the allure of Slaanesh...

The bit of Kurnoth we see in Dark Harvest - the bit that is opposed to Alarielle and whose followers attack/were attacked by Sylvaneth on sight is not the bulk of the being that was Kurnoth for most of the Age of Sigmar timeline though, and not the same "Kurnoth" that was used to make the Sylvaneth/Wanderer Kurnothi The "Kurnothi" as we have seen them in Underworlds/Cursed City are the children of the Sylvaneth Kurnoth - the Huntsman-Warrior and consort of the Everqueen. This Kurnoth is still capable of savery - as are the Sylvaneth as a whole - and is still a god of beasts and hunting, just not one solely concerned with finding prey and vengeance. Those fragments were cut out when Alarielle remade him. Those parts are the parts we see in the book - the Old Stag. I like the Old Stag, and I would love to see a Destruction faction built around it - an army of human and aelven cultists who have forsworn Sigmar's pantheon in favour of something they see as more immediate and primal, joined by fenbeasts and supernatural hounds of Orion - or even a way to play Cities of Sigmar with different allegiance abilities to show their worship of the Old Stag. Its one of the coolest god-ish level beings in the setting, and I loved Dark Harvest and everything about the Old Stag. But, what the Old Stag is not is Kurnoth. It is not even a god. It could be a god again - and indeed that does appear to be its hope and its plan - but it is, for now, just an impossibly powerful magical being. It is the fragments of Kurnoth that would not kneel, thrown away because the Everqueen did not feel they would be useful and given an eon to brood and stew and scream in hate. But Kurnoth - the consort of Alarielle - went on without it, and the Kurnothi are drawn from Kurnoth, not the Old Stag. Some people have suggested that the Kurnothi could be a dual-allegiance faction: Order when they serve Alarielle, Destruction when they don't. And that could be a way to get both flavours people want - there could even be an arc of the Old Stag learning of the death of Kurnoth and moving towards claiming his throne as the "true"/remaining Kurnoth, if the main settings writers decide to lean into the Dark Harvest material. However, saying that Dark Harvest is the only lore that defines Kurnoth and should dictate what the Kurnothi are ignores everything else we have seen of Kurnoth in the Battletomes and Side Games, and indeed much of what we learn about Kurnoth and the Old Stag in Dark Harvest itself.

Out of interest, what makes you think Dark Harvest means that the Kurnothi cannot be fully explored? I would argue that given what we have seen of the Kurnothi thus far, Dark Harvest really helps to explain why they are the way they are and actually helps them become a full "sub-theme" or whatever within Sylvaneth

The Kurnothi were introduced to us in the game and in the lore when they were dispatched to Beastgrave to stop the mountain/the beast beneath the mountain being awoken - it seems more likely to me that Sylvaneth might be getting a proper unit or two of Kurnothi, but the Kragnos name and lore in the trailer is a being they failed to stop awakening - an ancient god or patron of Ogroids or Fimir or some civilisation of Fireater Ogors or something, rather than directly to the Kurnothi.

Just off the top of my head, what units do we "know" existed in the lore for Cathay in The World That Was? There's the classic Blackpowder Rocket artillery piece, and the Empire Helstrom Rocket Battery unit entries continued to reference them being based off of Cathayan fireworks well into the final editions of the game. Tamurkhan has a side adventure in the narrative where Sayl the Faithless goes and attacks an outpost of the Grand Empire of Cathay in the Mountains, and they have guardian lion/dog statues and longswordsmen in ornate armour (which is further supported by the most famous Cathayan exports in Warhammer Fantasy/Mordheim apart from silks being the renowned Cathayan Longswords). I think Tamurkhan also mentions them having celestial mages, which the Ogre Kingdoms books also suggest, given it is the Dragon Emperor's astromancers who help bring a comet (that ends up being/becoming the Great Maw) down to stop the Ogres becoming a threat to Cathay. Then in the Ogre Kingdoms book there are Monks with martial arts and magical/semi-unbelievable powers, and the Eshin learned their shadow arts in Cathay, which also implies some form of ninja clan type faction remained a part of Cathayan lore until the end of Warhammer Fantasy. Swordsaints/Monks/Living Temple Statues/Ninjas/Rockets/Lore of Heaven Wizards Anything I'm missing from actual sources?

I'd be interested in finding out more about this setting!

The Oathmark kingdom building is genuinely one of the most fun and innovative ways I've seen to reinvent/improve list building that I've seen in a long time - when I first saw them it was like I was a kid/teen again getting so excited to play around with lists! I think that the Oathmark "Terrain Lists" could be a fun alternative way to build/design Cities of Sigmar - you pick the "heart" of your city, and then different districts radiating out to decide which Order units you have access to. Though I imagine it would take someone with a better head for rules than me to come up with a way to satisfyingly add allegiance abilities on the top/into the mix, and whether that would replace warscroll battalions entirely. With Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadowdeep, my big issues with adapting it for AoS would be deciding what the NPC/followers were - AoS is deliberately a much more Heroic setting, so deciding how to physrep the grubby and unimportant "thugs" and the like might be a tricky one.

The other day I was flicking through some books and miniatures websites, vaguely planning purchases I need for running some D&D later in the year/pining after the ability to not be in lockdown/generally trying not to get too distracted looking forward to Stargrave, and it got me thinking. Age of Sigmar is a large and expansive setting, and the battles that take place within it vary from small warbands of treasure hunters through to enormous battles with vast, neatly formed armies. And for the most part, there are ways to get something of a fix for each of those - Underworlds, Warcry, and Quest (as well as Soulbound and, to a lesser extend, the solo play games from the last full UK lockdown) offer a Warband feel, as (at least in theory) did/does Skirmish. Paths to Glory and the main game allow for small and medium clashes of warbands and armies in a more military context, and some of the campaigns and expansions such as Sieges allow for feelings of grandeur. However, there are a lot of other wargames on the market, and a lot of them do interesting things with their mechanics or designs. For example, the kingdom-building list creation/simplified ranked combat of Oathmark is something AoS simply cannot replicate with particular ease, and the feel of games such as Frostgrave are quite distinct. And that's leaving out all manner of other games - Kings of War, Runewars, Rangers of Shadowdeep, Mordheim, Gloomhaven, etc... So I thought I'd ask the community: which of these games would you like to adapt to be an AoS spin-off, and how would you do it? Or else what fluff or mechanics or general feel would you like to take from these games and add into AoS or an AoS spin-off game?

Looks like I'm picking up a couple of new Undworld warbands soon... Loving the "sensible" (by Warhammer standards) armour and weapons for a duellist with the "Bride of Frankenstein"/Golden Age of Horror era enormous goth hair - very campgothic horror - excellent design choice. Between her and the new Vampire Lord, they are really leaning into the darkly beautiful Aristocracy of the Night vibe in a way the Von Cartsien's "I'm wearing lace near my neck" never quite could and it is excellent.

Latest Rumour Engine solved! New anti-Idoneth faction centred around this catfish infantry

Fair enough - I seem to remember before they got their own Army Book and we focused more on the Uglu and Morathi side of things, the Khainite Temples were explicitly a weird temple or two in Azyrite / Free Cities where beautiful Aelf women held gladiatorial combats for fans (suggesting that this was how they made their money/supported themselves without a strict need for an in-built civilian population) and that as a slight downside people living near a Khainite district were a little more likely than most to vanish from their beds on religiously significant nights. With what we know of the full-on Temples (as entire settlements), it is more conjecture, but the Army Book does speak an arcanely reduced male population as a slave-labour base for the society, from which the Warlocks occasionally arise. The existence of the Khainite Shadowstalkers also implies a more skilled / conventional lay population from which the most loyal can be selected and trained in stealth/shadow magic by Morathi and her Melusai, and knowing Morathi's paranoia and focus on Cult of Personality, it is unlikely many if any of these are drawn from Cities where Morathi does not have severe control. This hints at lay communities around the Temples, although this is far more conjecture and it is still possible that Sorceresses loyal to Morathi helped recruit Shadowstalkers from amongst their Covens in the Free Cities. It does not seem to be a particularly diverse society, and indeed the events of the latest campaign book suggest that Morathi is at least on some level aware of a need for more temporal power to support her church-state. However, until the novels or Soulbound sourcebooks go into more details - a highly stratified Clergy/Slave Labour society, with close ties to secular and lay communities in the Free Cities, seems like an... okay level of detail for an army book to go into? After all, its not like even with all the information about how the World-that-Was worked the Empire Army Books ever gave us much detail about Morr or Imperial Society or the offshoots in the Border Princes and Marienburg beyond the broad strokes needed to explain how the State Army worked and clashed with Beastmen. In summary - I would also like more detail on the Daughters and indeed a lot of the different societies in the Mortal Realms, but until Soulbound or the novels can help, the fact that with some thought and some charitable inferences the Daughters of Khaine work better than most Underdark societies in D&D as a functional way to structure a real society is good enough for me for the time being.