Clan's Cynic

Flamekeeper's up. Do love the art.

I like the artwork. Very gritty.

Fyreslayers/Idoneth - Battlebox, Battletomes, nothing more except maybe Endless Spells for IDK. Nighthaunt - Hero model, Battletome with more sub-factions, that'll be it. Sylvaneth - A small wave of Wood Elf-esq Kurnothi and/or merged with the Wanderers with one new Hero model. The Cursed City Elf just looks too much like a normal Wood Elf for me to believe it's a coincidence. Lore will handwave this as there being enclaves who never fled to Azyr (like the Cursed City model's) and they were always there off-screen, or Alarielle welcoming them back into the fold. Blades of Khorne - Valkia will get a new model and of course a Battletome but that'll be it. Gloomspite Gitz - Same as above. Slaves to Darkness - The Chaos Sorcerer Warhammer+ tease makes me think we might see the multi-part Warriors/Knights finally and a good chunk of the older kits like Marauders given more sculpts.

I think some of the confusion comes from peoples differences between what's a narrative games vs Narrative Play and what the definitions are. The majority of people play AoS casually, or narratively (lower case) but still work within the Matched Play boundaries. At the end of the day, AoS is still a game where you're trying to beat your opponent - even if you don't necessarily care too much about the result - and for that reason people will want to steer around broken combos and totally weak armies, or else there isn't really much of a game there. Narrative Campaign Weekends at GW's own official 40k events only used Power Level for one event before swapping over to Matched Play. After 2.0 I don't think any of the AoS events ever used anything but Matched Play. Those are still narrative games. Look at Horus Heresy for another example. That's a system where the overwhelming majority of people are playing (lowercase) narrative games, but I'm willing to bet if GW were to introduce a Narrative and Match Play divide, almost all of them would still be using Matched Play (points), simply because most people still want to have an (in theory) balanced game to play, whilst still being fluffy. The majority of historical wargames are what would be considered narrative, but again, most of them use points to hash out games that aren't recreating specific battles.

My opinion is the opposite. The Finecrap models have, visually, aged very well. Maybe they're not on par with modern sculpts, but to say they're about sixteen years old they still hold up. The only real issue is that Finecrap is- well, you know. By comparison, the original infantry kits (Gluttons, Ironguts, Leadbelchers) suffer from being designed with rank-and-file in mind. The poses are terribly static and look odd with all their arms tucked into their sides, with every single non-Champion/Standard Bearer being in that identical stance. They looked great when marching in formation, but they're on round bases now and it just does not look good (again, imo). Leadbelchers kind of get away with it because there's not much you can really do with 'face cannon forward' but the Gluttons really need a new, dedicated AoS kit.

The Crab is AoS' equivalent of the Krieg shovels meme. It was cute at first. Now I just want people to stop regurgitating it every time new models or Idoneth are brought up. Yes, I'm fun at parties and all that.

Remember when GW themselves said they didn't expect people to spam Iron Hands Dreadnoughts, despite there being stories of playtesters warning them exactly that was going to happen? Either they're wilfully ignorant, do not care, or are woefully naïve when it comes to these situations.

Seems almost certain it will be Stormcast vs Orruk Warclans? Albeit with a bias towards the Thunderstrike/Kruelboyz models.

It could also be a typo. Warhammer Community aren't known for being meticulous.

"Just screen better bro."

The GSC/Custodes codexes were delayed from their battlebox, so it might be they were ahead of the curve of announcing them this time? GW are still printing their books out of China so it's not out of the question things are whacked on that front. Tomorrow's New Model Monday, so maybe we'll find out then.

Don't forget Malerion's 'Umbraneth'.

It's not GW, but the guys who made the A Song of Ice & Fire game have said they get their highest sales figures when they release a new faction. I doubt it's much different for Age of Sigmar, particularly when there's always plenty of buzz surrounding The New Thing. I do think there'll be a point where a whole new army is a surprise rather than expected, but I doubt we've hit that peak yet. It seems inevitable Chaos Dwarfs will arrive at some point just because it's an obvious avenue to go down to expand the the GA, Skaven are so wildly diverse there's a lot of places they could go and they're an obvious candidate for a big revamp. Destruction still has room to be fleshed out now the carry-overs from WHFB are largely cohesive. Plus at the end of the day, if the shareholders see the green line takes a sharp incline whenever a new faction releases they're going to tell GW to do more of that. Much like how the Space Marine bloat and questionable release practises probably isn't healthy for the game overall, if it makes them more money than not doing it, what're a few low-kit armies languishing compared to the all mighty pound?

The closer the box set is, the sooner we'll find out if a new battletome is coming. Probably.

In the words of the late, great Grand Marshal Garithos: Never trust an elf.

I think if we were going to see more Fyreslayers/Idoneth in the next six months they'd have been included in the New Year teaser, particularly when it was otherwise so 40k heavy.

Just a fluff article today. The interesting tidbit is "The Fury of the Deep boxed set will be available to pre-order soon." Which makes me think it'll go up for pre-order next week?

All the fake rumourmongers are now going to be like, "A source told me aquatic-themed Skaven with submarines will be coming in 3.0 along with Chaos Dwarfs, Malerion's Elves and Dawnbringer Crusaders!"

MiniWarGaming have quite a few AoS battle reports.

The Fyreslayer Vanguard will be interesting to see. If they keep the Magmadroth/Vulkites and just throw a Hearthguard sprue in you would literally have every Fyreslayer unit in one box.

Some snippets from Blacktalon in the 2022 Warhammer+ trailer.

Chaos Knight for 40k.

I don't know how viable Total War is to measure popularity for the wargame. Warriors of Chaos was absolutely one of the most popular factions on the tabletop, if not the most popular in a lot of places. WoC and Beastmen are both paid DLC from Game 1 who have (until very recently for the Beastmen anyway) extremely outdated mechanics and very limited rosters compared to every other faction in the game. The WoC campaign barely functions in 2 due to changes to the AI and size of the map and they're still a pretty popular faction in MP. Whilst Beastmen weren't popular, it's worth noting there was a very loud campaign to see them get a DLC and a mechanical update which did eventually appear. Even in 1 they were considered pretty bad to play. Empire is a triple whammy of being Game 1's posterboys, being the most 'historical' faction for non-Warhammer Total War fans and 40k-only players going into it thinking they're akin to their precious Imperium (how many times have you seen 40k-only/new players refer to The Empire as the Imperium?) High Elves are Game 2's posterboys, the fandom wanted them for ages, they have the easiest campaign on Normal difficulty and elves are always popular in general. Skaven are a weird one. According to Steam achievements, more people have finished a Tomb Kings (a DLC) campaign than Skaven one. It doesn't help they were even less played until the Prophet and the Warlock DLC added in most of their missing 'iconic' units and mechanics. I think a lot of Skavendom is largely memes.

High Elves and Warriors of Chaos were WHFB's most popular armies... Lumineth vs Slaves to Darkness confirmed for 4.0's launch box. You read it here first folks. I'll be back to claim my prize in two and a half years.

Strong internal balance. Good external balance. Flavourful and fun rules.