Klamm

If you look at the whole picture, the card below it also depicts a figure in strange bone armour (and different design). The two explanations I can think of are 1. New warband, possibly the silent people? The green icon on the future slate that I assumed was for bonesplitterz might be them. 2. That's one of the Kurnothi, Direchasm is gonna feature prominent armour upgrades that look like that. Okay yeah it's this.

https://youtu.be/-c4_RVjReu8

Looking at that new seeker unit Warcry card, the unit looks lightly armoured, perhaps mounted versions of the those veiled warriors in direchasm. Makes me wonder how they'll be mechanically distinct from Hellstriders. The fact they have bows, I suppose, though if there's a dual kit melee variant they will distinguish them somehow. Hellstriders are comparatively armoured and bulky, so maybe they get their rules reworked to be tankier?

Keeper of Secrets shield is probably about right for a mega gargant gutplate. I'd do it but can't afford one.

I'm personally hoping slaangors are 40mm base 3/4 wound models, coz then I'll have an excuse to do my slaanesh ogors. Pro tip, hellstrider shields are the exact right size to be gutplates. Pity those sheilds are hard to come by online, I've used them a fair bit for other conversions. Ogor sized weapons are a little harder, though the keeper of secrets spear tip and dagger will fit on an ogor sword handle.

Trying to get back into the swing of things. I've had the metal slaanesh lord model kicking around for a while, and fortunately it's a perfect canvas to test out a colour scheme for the Myrmidesh Painbringers (side by side you can see the influence). I've started to establish lilac as the colour used to distinguish leadership, whether unit command or heroes. So with the pain bringers, I might keep the cloaks white like with my warriors. We'll see. The blending looks a little rough in places, which I'll blame on using multiple levels of matte and gloss varnish. Metal models make me nervous.

So, that Slaanesh news, huh? After reading broken realms, I decided to finish my squad of chaos warriors. I'm glad I did, coz those painbringers manifest the exact aesthetic I've been trying to recreate. My slaanesh project kinda sputtered to a halt, mixture of life stuff and losing enthusiasm on such a mortal-lite roster. Well, that's changed now. I'm kinda glad, because now I have many WiP mortal models I can finish before 2021. I guess the only thing now is to rename the mortal contingent of the glitter host coz Hedonytes... WHERE'S MY ROYALTIES GW?!

Hey, what's with the chaos warrior war scroll having options for halberds, great weapons, banners, hornblowers etc. when the kit doesn't come with any of that? I understand they want to accommodate people with the old kit, but isn't the tradeoff of having weapon loadouts on the new kit which people can't actually use worse? Is there any clue that these are the only chaos warrior kit that is coming? Looking at the sprue, they're disappointingly lacking in customisation.

It must be pretty safe to say that the name dropping of 'Gutstuffers' rather than 'Gutbusters' in the GHB write-up implies an Ogor battletome coming soon, right? Unless it's simply a mistake, but one would assume they'd have edited it if so.

A WiP of a mortal overhaul: the Ulg-Hysh epitome, arcane synthesis of light and shadow.

@Sleboda I'm not quite sure, I'd assume she's a bit smaller. However, she does seem to be a very similar scale to Sylle'Esske (both on 50mms, Sylle'Esske stands probably a head taller by my measurements from pictures), and that's going to be her peer on the table.

Just a quick update today: I finished my Alarielle-based Slaaneshi Daemon princess conversion, and now just need to paint it. It'll be cool to have another similar scale Daemon princess alongside Sylle'Esske to lead my Hedonites (and now I'm going to have to find a different name for my mortals since GW used mine lol).

Well, it's been a long road completing my unit of Chaos Warriors (my course has gotten busy, so hobby time is scarce), and this blog has been pretty dormant. I am back to trying to finish my group of 10 warriors, but I've at least got 5 ready to show off. Hobby productivity has been generally so low that while the lack of mortals in the upcoming hedonites release is a huge disappointment (I could rant about this for hours, but let's leave it at that), that I feel almost like I deserve it: paint up the WiPs before tackling new shinies. Here's a WiP banner bearer: I did, however, do a 'for-fun' project in between the Slaanesh slow-grow, and that was repainting an old Ogor Maneater conversion. I actually got back into the hobby a few years ago with a sculpting project of making Maneaters for my old WFB Ogre Kingdom Army. I spent a while on this conversion, but the original paintjob was... less than stellar: Anyway, re-doing the chivalric chonker gave me a nice metric for how much I've improved. Here are some more details: I've got a Dark Elf one which I never painted, decided to base it. Maybe I shouldn't pick up more projects, though...

Yeah, this is how GW does seem to do it, which is fair enough. That said, if they can't think of compelling mortal concepts for Slaanesh, the most philosophically interesting of the four, then they aren't trying. Just a few I've come up with recently: Quartzblind Knights: arrogant Slaaneshi warriors who accept a Daemonic cristal circlet which covers their eyes, becoming gradually more transparent the more they kill. It's a thematic mixture of a prideful 'I can do it with my eyes closed' attitude while also building rapturous anticipation for the glorious spectacle of battle: once they kill enough, they'll get the pleasure of seeing their bloody handiwork, before the quartz clouds again and they have to slaughter fo Slaanesh once more. Unsated: roving packs of self-flagellating hedonists, their search for extremes having left them numb and impatient for sensation. Maybe they follow sense-blessed champions into battle, hoping these shepherds will help them feel again. Soulwring Sommeliers: a cheerfully gluttonous buff-piece/wizard who makes wine out of captured souls. Valourbane Brigands: the Valourbane are epicurean devotees who are riddled with fear and scorned as cowards. Slaanesh augments their failings and gifts them with magical bows that feed on courage, shifting in range and power according to the strength of will of their target. The bolder the quarry the greater the spiritual reward reaped by both demonic bow and its wielder if they succeed in shooting them down, and so the Valourbane are spurred to seek out the most courageous foes and riddle them with daemon-blessed arrows, like courage vampires. While I am proud of these ideas, it's not like coming up with good Slaaneshi concepts is that hard. There are so many ways to go here.

It'd be criminal not to release a few kits which explore the aesthetic hinted at by the Hellstriders. And we have to hope Slaanesh won't get short-changed compared to the other gods. Khorne and Tzeentch both got sizable mortal contingents. Nurgle got less, and suffers thematically from the fact that they lack an 'entry-level' unit. I love Daemon Princes, but this is why you also need Blood Reavers and Acolytes: chaos is all about the meritocratic dream (Whether it is a fantasy or not). It's an assertion of self-determination in a world of oppressive, large scale war. A Chaos faction is incomplete without a representation of the rungs of this hierarchy. I'm not holding my breath, but I think we can at the very least expect Slaanesh to match Nurgle's Daemon-focused release: at least one new mortal kit, and a couple of mortal heroes (the lord on Daemonic mount should get an overhaul, perhaps an alternate build with a sorcerer instead).

Amazing KoS, and love that Daemon Prince. Disappointed we've not seen any mortals yet, but hopefully that is yet to be revealed... Also please stop continue using my ideas lol

Makes sense, as the KO and Sylvaneth are the next Underworlds warbands to go. As for Fyreslayers... I mean, they definitely need an update, but I don't really see evidence of which of the 'priority update factions' will come out first. We've got brand-new AoS factions which are stuck in the past like Seraphon, Ironjawz and Fyreslayers, as well as GHB allegiance armies which have never received a battletome like Darkling Covens, Disspossessed, Free Peoples etc. Has there been a FS specific hint I've missed?

This looks great (helps that I'm a Chaos player). For me, the big headline (based on Furies being remade) is that undivided Daemons are back and getting some love. New Daemon Prince kit when?

Agreed. The current plastic ogor troops (Bulls, Belchers and Guts) are really fantastic models. I'd be very sad to see them go. I COULD see them possibly squatting most of the heroes. They're mostly finecast and, as you say, that would be the opportunity to have super huge monstrous infantry.

Stormcast Eternals and the Nietzschean 'Ubermensch' This is a piece about Warhammer and Nietzsche, pertaining particularly to his concept of the Ubermensch. I quite enjoy Nietzsche (not the same as always agreeing with him). And while I actually do think there is a case for quite a few of his takes (Genealogy of Morals and Anti-Education are important works with a lot of merit as anti-establishment dissent), I'm uncertain about his concept of the "ubermensch", the Nietzschean superman. But it's the latter that is the topic of this post, and I think it does have some interesting relevance to Warhammer lore. Obviously, the first thing to come up when broaching this topic are Space Marines. But I would say that the SM are in fact a poor example of the ubermensch. Similarly to how Nietzsche's concept was appropriated by the most horrifying regime of the 20th century (Aryan supermen), the similarities are predominantly superficial (and, truly, it is unfortunate for such an interesting if prickly thinker like FN to be tarnished by such association). Nietzsche was not concerned foremost with brawn or aestheticism but with a stubborn will toward self-actualising. To borrow an over-used term, it's a mindset, not genetic inheritance. So, while marines literally are literal 'super-men', the eugenics and lack of self-determination do not fit with the ubermensch ideal. To move this onto the Stormcast, who I believe are more fitting embodiments of the idea, I want to touch on the idea of 'slave morality'. Cribbing from Nietzsche here: for the Greeks, the duality was was between good and bad i.e. good was synonymous with nobility and strength, while bad was the plebeian, weak and the low. This was what Christianity successfully reacted against, based on the revolutionary idea that the formerly "bad" values of passivity, weakness and "turning the other cheek" should be re-categorised as 'good', while many of the ways that 'good' nobility expressed its strength upon the low was not only not "good" but a new moral category: evil. Both 40K and AoS exist in a context different from 'modern' morality (i.e. the idea of peaceful, passive good vs invasive, malicious evil found in the Abrahamic religions). In the world of warhammer, deities are literally real, active (and not simply to be interpreted by the priestly class), and essentially deny the creation of any such morality based on the veneration of passive resistance. AoS's Stormcast eternals may at first seem to be a simplistic version of the traditional "golden goodies", but there's actually some interesting stuff to dissect there. N's concept is essentially an idea of a, a subject who rises above modern "slave" morality to forge their own, self-affirming lifestyle. Of course, the SCE serve their god Sigmar, but the military hierarchy is one which allows for the questioning and debating of individuals. It's not a collective which suppresses dissenting assertions of will, and ironically (though obviously, this is GW's authorial choice), such freedom to 'be' has meant zero defections to chaos among their ranks. Sure, they operate as part of a uniformed collective, but the point of the ubermensch is not necessarily isolated individualism but how the personal glory and strength of an individual elevates all. After all, Sigmar plucks only the greatest warriors from their moment of death and invites them into his service. More than just the "Blonde Beasts" conquering and asserting their power across the realms, SCE protect the vulnerable from Chaos, which you could interpret as a version of what N describes as a healthy creditor-debtor relationship: the stormcast gain satisfaction from saving the powerless through the expression of their own superior power (a more effective form of strength assertion than Khornate slaughter), while cultivating the safety of a mutually beneficial civilisation. Basically, their mission of humanitarian liberation is intertwined with an individualist mission for existential 'meaning'. On that subject, Nietzsche's rejection of morality initially sounds like it would apply to Chaos best of all. To a certain extent, this is true, as all of the Chaos gods but Nurgle embody a different facet of Nietzschian ideals, whether it be the physical assertion of power, the pursuit of Dionysian desire and pleasure or the cultivation of one's own skill and power. Yet part of what makes chaos is how these positive ideas are warped to the point of self-destruction, this dogmatism becoming its own form of bad consciousness. Archaon (and Abbadon in 40k) stands as the only true chaos Ubermensch, while Stormcast society finds a way for a multitude dedicated to the ideal to flourish. Despite their creepily expressionless facemasks, the Stormcast seem to be represented in the stories as partaking in drink, telling jokes and generally keeping a semblance of Dionysian virtue alive. They fight for a cause which they choose to follow, and are unimpeded in the ability to desire. And, of course, there's the fact that they come from all walks of life, classes and genders. The ranks of the SCE are a true meritocracy, allowing individuals to flourish within the context of the collective. HOWEVER, there is one massive caveat to the idea of the SE as Ubermensch: the 'eternal' aspect. This, ironically, is reminiscent of Nietzsche's 'eternal recurrence' thought experiment: the idea that, if one was to live out one's life infinitely, repetitiously, the subject would ave to struggle to overcome a 'ressentiment' about their existence. And this is LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENS to a Stormcast: with each death and rebirth, an increasing 'copy of a copy of a...' chain, they lose a portion of 'humanity'. This loss is represented the lack of emotion and mindless heed of orders; essentially the loss of personal desire and the internalisation of ressentiment. They express strength no longer as individuals but as passive conduits of Sigmar's will, and so fail to retain their ubermensch status. One could say that their eventual fate is to become... Slaves to the Sigmar's command; slaves to Sigmar's morality? So yeah, my thesis is that the Stormcast eternal is the ubermensch but with a shelf-life. They are initially a shining exemplar of the ideal but degrade into its parody. All of this is also a charitable reading of Nietzsche's ideas, but I'm inclined to say that's usually the best way to approach him. Nietzsche is often placed in the same category are Freud in terms of massively influential intellectuals whose ideas don't stand up to scrutiny, but I'll go to bat for Nietzsche. A bit. Not Freud, though, especially for influencing his nephew Edward Bernays .

It's ironic: I've waited for Slaanesh for YEARS and now that it's on the precipice I kind of hope the release only arrives after summer: I'm far too busy at the moment and do not need the arrival of my main army as a distraction But I think it likely, it was the army 100% confirmed in the 2018 wrap-up. The surprise upsets of Skaven, FEC and Khorne done with, Slaanesh HAS* to be the next army, right? *literally no basis other than a likely disprovable gut feeling.

AoS + economics? Hell yeah! I know people joke about the whole "where is the farming" complaint, but IMO some of the most fun you can have with a fantastical, mythic world is to use it to frame something mundane. Isn't that kind of the appeal of something like Harry Potter, which translates the slog of boarding school through the lens of magic wonder? The AoS RPG is gonna be great with this, hopefully.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/03/06/warhammer-horror-maledictions/ Dunno if they'd already revealed the cover, but 'Maledictions' is a cool looking tome. Plus added weirdness for me with Kin Newman's book getting a rerelease: his reviews in Empire Magazine were one of the things which got me into films, which have become a big part of my life. It's odd when interests intersect like that.