RuneBrush

+++ MOD HAT +++ Just a reminder - no leaked photos please... Some of you have been here long enough to know this

John Blanche had designed steampunk dwarves for WHFB 20-odd years ago in fairness, they just never got made until AoS. Quite a lot of the designs appear in the KO too such as flying ships with balloons above them

+++ MOD HAT +++ Going to close this thread as it looks like it was an oversight on GW's side. As concerning as it is, leaving this thread open runs the risk of burning brands and pitchforks

+++ MOD HAT +++ As exciting and ground breaking as it is to hear about Squats coming out, I just need to point out that two pages worth of discussion is a bit excessive on an Age of Sigmar forum. The mods have been fairly chilled about release discussions outside AoS recently, please don't abuse that tolerance.

Without wanting to be harsh, the lighting in the cabinets in both the WHW shop and the exhibition hall is awful for taking a decent photograph and viewing a model behind glass does make it more difficult to see. I do agree that 'Eavy Metal follow a fairly formulaic painting style now, that's because they're painting models to sell as part of an overarching range and a whole team paints an army rather than one individual - it'd be no good if you knew Max painted that model and Drew painted that one because they're painted in different styles. I'm not quite as hard line on NMM as that. I do feel that NMM does have a place in miniature painting and there are some artists out there who's NMM work far surpasses the technical limits you can achieve with metallic pigmented paints. For me one of the biggest issues is that mediocre NMM looks awful but mediocre TMM looks OK. People also spend too much time on NMM on competition pieces at the cost of the rest of the model so you get this weird disparity in quality. But NMM is broadly a personal opinion - I know I'm not good enough at NMM to enter that into a competition so stick to my traditional metallics 😂

Going to agree that I'd like to see more single army boxes rather than the dual ones we do, although I do like them having a narrative flavour. Most of the time we pick one up only wanting half the box and it's a pain to split as there's only one set of books in it.

Golden Demon is always an interesting one on a number of levels. There is a huge amount of subjectivity involved, but also seeing something in the flesh and looking at every angle can often change a model that looks amazing in a photo to a model that's covered in really obvious flaws. The judges have numerous things they judge on in addition to painting - how well the model fits into GW's settings being one item. The difficultly of the painting techniques doesn't really come into play because the model is judged on the overall piece, factoring everything in together. A large model has more areas to hide mistakes in comparison to a small one, so there's a bit of a balance between large and small entries. The piece also needs to catch somebodies eye from 3+ feet away right up to 3 inches - it's one heck of a challenge and many models have missed a prize by failing at this. Quite often too, the photos don't do the model justice - I know that the official photos make my Imperial Knight look inferior to other pieces that were on display (to the point they didn't get printed in WD), but in the flesh there's a lot more nuance and textures to it. I'm now going to be exceptionally unfair and nit-picky on the three models mentioned earlier, so I will first of all say that each of them deserves their respective golden demons! Hat's off to them, they're painters who I follow on Instagram and their work is stunning. I now will be the equivalent of a food critic. The Great Unclean One is great (ba dum tish), but with the exception of the freehand banner doesn't have a "wow" factor. The banner does the bulk of the work - it's the thing you look at first and if you removed it, the model would only stand out from a distance due to it's size. Sigvald goes the other way, there's so many colours and beautiful transitions that you almost don't know where to look. It's also missing the classic focal point you'd expect in a miniature composition - in fact the face is lack lustre in comparison to the rest of the model. The skink I actually have struggled to find anything wrong with other than it's a "simple" model. Every part of the model is flawless - the scratch built base does everything it needs to and you can tell the effort has actually gone into painting the piece of plastic rather than spent on something else. OK, I do feel like I've kicked a puppy now. Each of the pieces is a worthy demon winner make no mistake. But when it comes to a "best of show" award like the slayer sword, I've yet to see anybody find something actually wrong with the skink, so can completely understand how it picked up the sword in this instance. From what I've heard there were also loads of textures on the model that we can't see - the flesh had a satin sheen to it with more matt shadow for example.

+++ MOD HAT +++ I've just moved the Adepticon Demon posts into their own thread

Interesting I think would me my initial comment. On the one hand I really like the fact that it allows armies lacking a monster type centrepiece the option to have one (and clearly there's an implication there will be other incarnates). On the other there is a risk that if you don't have a chunky hero to attach it to, it'll do as much damage to your own army as your opponent's if it goes wild. The all out attack bubble I'm mixed on. It's only +1 to hit in two phases and I'm guessing (having not seen the rules and loath to head to the pit that is BoLS) that it still counts as a command ability, preventing a unit from benefiting from another in that phase. If that's the case, it doesn't feel horrifically over the top - it integrates neatly into the existing rules without any special conditions. If there are extra layers (e.g. doesn't count as a CA), I've more of an issue because it just adds (more) unnecessary complexity. My biggest reservation is longevity. The model is currently locked behind a big box set plus an expansion book. In a couple of years time when we get a new rules version will Incarnate's still exist? ps - am I the only one that thinks it looks a bit like a cheese string monster? 🧀

Hi folks, Am going to lock this thread as wahapedia skirts the fine line of piracy

As a random aside, pre-pandemic, I did hear rumours that GW were looking at potentially having their own printing plant in the UK. No idea if that's still on the cards or not, but printing and the shipping of the product are a huge cost & delay in the grand scheme of things. The tricky bit is most paper production is from China so there's some transportation required regardless.

It would appear that my gut feeling was right! We've a UK GD at WHW 1st & 2nd of October: https://www.instagram.com/p/CbsZasfNd-a/

I'm not sure we're getting a Fest event this year - certainly it's unlikely it'll be in May if they do and it's been many years since it was run in September (thank goodness, got fed up queueing in the rain). I think the HH open day is another test to see how safe an event is to run - personally I could see GD possibly being run like this for this year.

One thing I will say is that the models locked behind battleboxes are released a lot more quickly on their own than they used to be. With the regularity of larger releases most of my local group are avoiding the big box releases unless they actually want the entire contents of the box or "need" the models quickly.

My biggest gripe was always when they listed 4 paints, none of which were used on the model being shown 😂 The back almost needed a "parade ready" model with the actual paints used on that rather than a 'Eavy Metal model

You certainly had them in the Soublight book - and equally the quality of the Mawtribes one in my view.

It wasn't announced but the writing was largely on the wall. In the last big survey GW did they asked the question "do you find the painting guide on the back of boxes/instructions useful" or something along those lines and the general social media consensus was most people just didn't use them. The painting guide in battletomes are actually pretty decent now, plus you've White Dwarf and GW's YouTube channel. The citadel colour site (and app) does need a bit of love in truth as I don't think it really adds anything you can't get from elsewhere.

I'm in the throws of sorting out what I'm calling my "event" army (i.e. not Khorne or Nighthaunt 😂) and my plan is to make my own binder with all the rules in I need!

Or not - there are still a huge number of hobbyists who wouldn't support moving to digital for everything. Ultimately GW is trying to find a formula that works. I remember listening to the owner of Future Publishing a number of years ago and one of the biggest mistakes they made was forcing digital magazines on customers. Some genres it worked really well for - e.g. computer gaming, programming etc. Others such as guitar magazines it was a failure - however they eventually worked out that most guitarists were more than happy with having the freebie CD on the front as a digital download but keep the magazine physical. GW are still tinkering with the most Personally I'm of the view that the lore component of books needs to remain as a physical book, lavish and lovely to be put on a bookshelf or coffee table for the world to see. The rules section could be pulled out into a booklet alongside a matching digital component. The trouble is that this is a massive change and from a business perspective also represents a big risk.

Could you clarify ticket holders - is this some kind of Adepticon ticket holder or was it a special type of ticket (e.g. you're a WH+ subscriber).

Spent this morning's bus ride frantically catching up with the reveals on my phone - looking forward to seeing them on a proper screen after work 🙂 My initial reactions have been a little mixed in truth. Necromunda is a firm yes from me, anyone who follows me outside TGA will know that I'm a big Necro fan and recently just finished painting up a new Orlock gang, so this new box appeals to me! The new Age of Darkness ruleset for HH is another one I'm keeping an eye on, I'm less keen on the scale creep and ideally want MKII armour for my Death Guard, however it's a really positive step for what is a really good game. The new Imperial Knight codex is certainly on the shopping list for my Knight Army and one of the new Chaos Knight kits may well become a future project just for fun (likely a couple of years away though). Bloodbowl was certainly all about beer boars 😂 I really love how BB has retained that light-hearted entertaining element, which we've seen replaced with grimdark in other systems. The Underworlds warband I'm less invested in as a game as I'm not keen on that endless cycle of deck building, however the necromancer is a lovely spin on what we've had traditionally. AoS wise I felt was a little more lack lustre, which is a shame. The new Nighthaunt character is great on the one hand, but on the other I'm not convinced a named character is enough to bring my army up enough - for that we need the new battletome and sooner rather than later. I also feel Nighthaunt are one army that's missing things like a big centrepiece model and a terrain piece. Let's have a ghostly snake or gheist giant and a soul well to allow summoning new units 👻 The campaign book looks really good, though I'm cautious on it's contents from a gaming perspective having been somewhat burned after building a Legion of Grief army from Forbidden Power. The scenery is great as we've come to expect, really reinforcing that Azyr aesthetic which is a combination of Order cultures. Again though it lacks anything that properly blocks light of sight! Overall it was a very packed reveal show, it's just the slice of cake for AoS felt a bit meagre in comparison to other offerings.

Who knows? It's possible that's why they put up the prices or equally they put it up due to an increased cost in production - or a bit of both.

One rumour is Age of Darkness 2 could land in November which has seen a smaller games system have a box launch land. Alternatively it could be the other way round, but we've had confirmation Ash Wastes is next up, so reckon it gets it's reveal over the traditional WHFest weekend.

More key is that he worked at Relic and was involved in Space Marine 😉 Will be interesting to see how this pans out, hopefully we start to see the various armies being designed in relation to each other rather than feeling like they're one off projects.

I think Covid threw a bit of a spanner in the works because test games couldn't be played - both at GW and for playtesters. Now I'm not going to pretend that if they had been played we'd be sitting on a perfect edition, but it certainly didn't help. I doubt we'll actually know what battletomes this had an impact on, but I'm hoping we do see things start to sort themselves out in the next year or so.