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I think the only metal left is in Skaven


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 Gert wrote:
The Cogsmith was removed in the last CoS update and the Runelord comes on the fancy plinth that only takes a base swap (though most of the images on the webstore have it on the square base lol).

I am interested to see how Dorfs proceed with both TOW and AoS. I think they're very like Skaven in that the design team wasn't sure what to do with them post-End Times.

I'm convinced Dwaves had an update planned earlier in AoS that got torn up due to the Pandemic or internal political/finance shifts in GW. You read any of the Gotrek books and almost every single one after the first (which were more audio dramas) and they have a grumpy Gotrek starting to try and work toward rebuilding his people into something.

Each time it kind of fizzles out in the end, but its very much there as a running theme that makes me think its one of those nods the lore writers gave to the story writer to use because it was going to happen "at some point" in the wargame side of things. However like everything pretty much in Cities of Sigmar, its had a huge question mark over its head. Cities very much feels like the army that wasn't planned and kind of hung around with things that GW wasn't going to use or didn't plan to use or didn't know what to do with or something

Dudeface wrote:

Frankly given the choice of armies out the gates I think they've been trying to smoke the nostalgia weed a little too heavily, the metal units are too expensive, the models aren't as great as people tend to remember. Keying into the armies with better existing ranges might have been a better move, or more iconic armies possibly. But if I wanted a rank and flank game, I'm not sure 30 year old plastic minis at cheap-end of GW prices are doing it for me, I'd probably accept the hit-and-miss sculpts and run kings of war.

Ok but why limit yourself to Kings of War/mantic? Play kings, by all means, as it's a great game. But the market is not a dichotomy between those two manufacturers

Multiple human armies can be made by kitbashing historical kits together. Wargames Atlantic has skeleton warriors in plastic that are miles better than GW's decades old TK sculpts, that have a chariot/cav kit coming that is the same level. There's also conversion bits via atlantic digital to make those "Egyptian" in feel.

There are so many ways to to convert units from any of the big companies games. I try to showcase smaller or less well known ranges in my store because of this. I've found hobbyists tend to pigeon hole themselves into one particular range from one particular manufacturer. This hobby is an art kaleidoscope.

 McDougall Designs wrote:

Ok but why limit yourself to Kings of War/mantic? Play kings, by all means, as it's a great game. But the market is not a dichotomy between those two manufacturers

Multiple human armies can be made by kitbashing historical kits together. Wargames Atlantic has skeleton warriors in plastic that are miles better than GW's decades old TK sculpts, that have a chariot/cav kit coming that is the same level. There's also conversion bits via atlantic digital to make those "Egyptian" in feel.

There are so many ways to to convert units from any of the big companies games. I try to showcase smaller or less well known ranges in my store because of this. I've found hobbyists tend to pigeon hole themselves into one particular range from one particular manufacturer. This hobby is an art kaleidoscope.

Doors wide open when it comes to 28mm fantasy. There's dozens of great kits available from multiple companies. Plastic kits, resin, metal you name it. That's without even touching on print on demand or home printed fantasy miniatures.

Just starting an Empire force for KoW with mainly Perry plastic boxes for line infantry , bows, foot knights and heavy and light cavalry. I've a few Highland Miniature prints for the more exotic stuff.

Just finished a Halfing army mainly using TTcombat's beautiful and extensive resin range.

I am interested in a return of rank and flank Warhammer but the prices for both miniatures and rules are eye-wateringly expensive compared to the rest of the very healthy 28mm fantasy scene. Quality is an issue as well - rules are unproven and already book heavy - some of the miniatures are ancient - both factions at launch are a bit niche.

 Gert wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Only metal dwarf minis left are the Cogsmith, Runelord, and Warden King.

None of those Dwarf minis are metal, they're all plastic.

The Warden King is also Belegar Ironhammer, who unless I am mistaken, isn't around at this point. At least not in as the Exile King of Eight Peaks.

chaos0xomega wrote:
-Some stuff about the logic and rationale of Tomb Kings being evil, and how the community and/or fluff distorted the perception of what the Tomb Kings were over the years due to their opposition to chaos. Can't say I disagree with their take, once they explain it I have to agree the Tomb Kings certainly sound pretty much like the definition of what evil means in a practical sense.

Indeed and I totally agree with the analysis of the TKs as well. It's the same kind of idea that presents Nagash as a "good" guy because he opposes Chaos, when the reality is Nagash opposes Chaos because he wants to rule everything and force everyone to worship him.

Now, if only they could un-retcon Malekith's 'always destiend to be king' nonsense.

 Shadow Walker wrote:

 Sotahullu wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/02/old-world-almanack-designer-round-table-on-how-the-new-old-lore-was-written/

Lore! Mighty Lore!

Was already posted (few posts above)

Yeah, best not to draw too much attention to it. That article reads like a J.J. Abrams guide to sequels/reboots/remakes/all of the above. I don't have enough palms I can apply to my face to adequately comment on it.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
I like Fabelzel's Chorfs, so much so that one is my avatar at current.

Thank you VERY much for that recommendation - much appreciated!

They look great, and if Chaos Dwarfs actually get rules for use in the 'new' game, I'll be getting some...

leopard wrote:

not so much the price itself, but not spending that without a chance to see it and read a few actually independent reviews of it, and by that time likely sold out so will have to wait and see

Well then it's just wait a bit and get. The boxes aren't limited one and done print run. More akin to legions box that already got restock after selling out.

 Gert wrote:
The Cogsmith was removed in the last CoS update and the Runelord comes on the fancy plinth that only takes a base swap (though most of the images on the webstore have it on the square base lol).

I am interested to see how Dorfs proceed with both TOW and AoS. I think they're very like Skaven in that the design team wasn't sure what to do with them post-End Times.

I'm interested in that as well, the 8th edition fantasy Dwarves I'm not particularly fond of at all. Really don't like how they look, the armour and design style of that period seems really off to me.

 Geifer wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:

 Sotahullu wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/02/old-world-almanack-designer-round-table-on-how-the-new-old-lore-was-written/

Lore! Mighty Lore!

Was already posted (few posts above)

Yeah, best not to draw too much attention to it. That article reads like a J.J. Abrams guide to sequels/reboots/remakes/all of the above. I don't have enough palms I can apply to my face to adequately comment on it.

Haha yes so accurate.

Personally my favorite was that the world was always going to be destroyed.

“How can we find a way to justify not putting in Skaven and VC to preserve our AoS sales?? Oh I’ve got it!”

I mean fluffwise, its kinda true. From pretty early on the WHFB setting was painted as a doomed world. We had that discussion in this very thread like 100 pages back. The idea that GW would actually one day, yknow, actually let the prophesized end and the death of the setting happen, on the other hand, was - I don't think - ever actually on anyone's bingo cards, not even GWs.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I mean fluffwise, its kinda true. From pretty early on the WHFB setting was painted as a doomed world. We had that discussion in this very thread like 100 pages back. The idea that GW would actually one day, yknow, actually let the prophesized end and the death of the setting happen, on the other hand, was - I don't think - ever actually on anyone's bingo cards, not even GWs.

The idea of an 'Everchosen' uniting the forces of Chaos for one great, final war was added only around twenty years ago. Before that, Chaos' victory was inevitable, but far, far away from happening within the lifetime of the 'present day' characters. It was more a case of the constant conflict between the free peoples would degrade them enough that Chaos would simply win through attrition, an inevitability brought about by the refusal of the nations to form a true, lasting peace in the face of an existential threat.

'Doomed' in the sense that the heat-death of the universe will one day occur.

Also lets not forget it was a super heroic fantasy setting too. The idea of everything just "ending" wasn't on the cards for many. A super grim last-battle that has evil nearly winning - or outright winning and then triggering some massive event.

Eg the Old Ones return and blast 7bells out of Chaos and the Greater Demons. Or some ancient artifact or some last-stand-united force of Men, Elves, Dwarves, Lizard and more uniting and casting some powerful spell or defeating the Everchosen and sending Chaos into sprawling in-fighting etc..



Ergo even if GW did the End Times - no one expected them to actually blow it all up and throw it all out the window as they did.

Again we hit that wall that Age of Sigmar was just such a crazy move. I can say that creative wise it was a smart move in that it freed their creative team up and you can feel that creative energy in the AoS releases a LOT right now.

But yeah it was not a smart move not the right way to do it. Especially since you could have just shattered the Old World on a major war; pushed time forward 100years and boom you've got enough room for lots of old factions to still be around and lots of new ones and such.

I've said it many times- not a single model in AoS is so unique that it could not appear in Old World with some adjustment to the lore of model/setting.

from all the interviews we got last year, we know by now that AoS was the idea of the IP guys who wanted to remove anything were they did not saw the same potential as with 40k
that it always has been planned that way simply ignores that we already had an End Times campaign for Warhammer Fantasy were Archaeon would have actually won and GW alterared the result so that the world continuous without changes

chaos0xomega wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/01/02/old-world-almanack-designer-round-table-on-how-the-new-old-lore-was-written/
fun article. takeaways:

agree with most of it yet I am not sure if anything from that is positive
"this has always been the background" thing is just stupid same as it was always planned that Archeon blows up the world

that models that don't fit the background but not alternatives from GW are available are fine in TOW yet models that are still used in AoS are not also gives us a hint on what to expect from the other releases
and I cannot find it any more but did they ever confirm that the core armies get all the models from 8th playable, or was this just for legacy pdf armies?

that moral is only not black/white during the End Times but always has been strictly black/white in the early background is a stupid argument to justify things and takes away a lot of flavour from the setting


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I mean fluffwise, its kinda true. From pretty early on the WHFB setting was painted as a doomed world. We had that discussion in this very thread like 100 pages back. The idea that GW would actually one day, yknow, actually let the prophesized end and the death of the setting happen, on the other hand, was - I don't think - ever actually on anyone's bingo cards, not even GWs.

same way as the galaxy in 40k is doomed to be eaten by Tyranids and only dead rocks are left behind were the Necrons build their eternal kingdom

yet just because this is written on the wall does not mean that it was planned since the beginning that 40k will end

From various things I've heard, it sounds like the original plan was to do more of an "earth shattering event" and move the timeline forward as you said while keeping some of the core in place. I've heard that Stormcast Eternals were originally planned to be a square-based WHFB army, for example, and the idea of featuring them in a whole new game came later. It seems likely that someone somewhere in a position of influence and power figured that the backlash of doing that would probably be severe enough, and armies like Stormcast met with enough resistance and lack of acceptance from the existing old guard, that there was no sense in settling or half-assing it and it was better to just go all-out with the reset and clean house and start over with a blank slate.

I think some of the earlier AoS releases certainly look like stuff that you'd expect to see in a post-apocalyptic WHFB setting. Fyreslayers and Kharadron Overlords for sure look like what happens when the race of dwarves split in two, with a bunch going to self-imposed slayer-exile into the volcanic remnants of their former holds, and the other half doubling-down on their gyro-tech and taking to the skies to begin life anew away from the goblins and skaven that have infested many of their remaining former homes and driven them from the mountains they once called home. Idoneth are clearly the result of the old WHFB era fishmen memes turned into an actual army. Khorne Bloodbound fits with the style of the chaos warriors of the era, just more khornate.

But some factions look like nothing that would fit there - Ossiarch Bonereapers I can't ever have seen fitting ihe modern cities of sigmar range too much of a fantastical departure from the more gritty realism in the design stylings favored by human armies in the WHFB setting. Kruleboyz are a vast departure from old world orcs and goblins, lumineth are less grounded than whfb high elves are and would not have played well with existing HE collections, and Stormcast would only work as "good guy daemons"/aengels (TM) sent down from the heavens by Sigmar to protect his followers in times of need (ala fantasy magic space marines) which would have only ever really resulted in complaints from the grogs. I think we've seen enough feedback over the years from various fans to know that many of the designs for AoS would not have met with acceptance had they been released for WHFB. The feedback regarding a number of AoS ranges by WHFB purists (and even some AoS fans) has been pretty consistent that theres many things perceived as too over the top. There are some things which met with acceptance and adoption by WHFB fans (new chaos warriors, blood knights, etc.), but there are many things that did not as well (hell even Cities of Sigmar got a lot of hate from many who felt the design of the armor and weapons was too fantastical or whatever). You can also look at stuff like Kislev for TWW which had a lot of complaints that it was "AoS-ified" or "too over the top high fantasy for the gritty low fantasy WHFB setting" because it had too much ice magic and bears instead of sticking to normal dudes with normal weapons and armor and horses.

Wtf happened to that post lol but I agree and disagree, yes kharadron could be an evolution of dwarves, but that's exactly what they are, just in a related setting.

something with the firewalls and security measures at work doesn't play well with dakka, causes segments of text string to get duplicated and randomly re-entered into the post at one or more other points. Sometimes its just a single letter repeated once in a random spot, sometimes its entire paragraphs repeated a half dozen times.

Been dealing with it for ~8 years now, you're I think the first to ever bring it up as I'm usually pretty quick about re-editing it.

agree and disagree as well

yet talking about GW at a time were they did not cared about Feedback at all and even their FAQ/Errata was on a level of "rules are guidelines, your own fault if you take them as written"

that company would not base the decisions on feedback

also there is the rumour that the original plans for 8th 40k was to be the very same as with AoS regarding rules, and only changed because they saw that their ideas did not work well with the community

chaos0xomega wrote:


But some factions look like nothing that would fit there - Ossiarch Bonereapers I can't ever have seen fitting ihe modern cities of sigmar range too much of a fantastical departure from the more gritty realism in the design stylings favored by human armies in the WHFB setting. Kruleboyz are a vast departure from old world orcs and goblins, lumineth are less grounded than whfb high elves are and would not have played well with existing HE collections, and Stormcast would only work as "good guy daemons"/aengels (TM) sent down from the heavens by Sigmar to protect his followers in times of need (ala fantasy magic space marines) which would have only ever really resulted in complaints from the grogs. I think we've seen enough feedback over the years from various fans to know that many of the designs for AoS would not have met with acceptance had they been released for WHFB. The feedback regarding a number of AoS ranges by WHFB purists (and even some AoS fans) has been pretty consistent that theres many things perceived as too over the top. There are some things which met with acceptance and adoption by WHFB fans (new chaos warriors, blood knights, etc.), but there are many things that did not as well (hell even Cities of Sigmar got a lot of hate from many who felt the design of the armor and weapons was too fantastical or whatever). You can also look at stuff like Kislev for TWW which had a lot of complaints that it was "AoS-ified" or "too over the top high fantasy for the gritty low fantasy WHFB setting" because it had too much ice magic and bears instead of sticking to normal dudes with normal weapons and armor and horses.

Actually I'd argue that Kruelboyz are closer to Old World orks than the rest of the ork range. The AoS orks right now feel very much like 40K orks in fantasy right down to their general intelligence, behaviour and mannerisms.
Kruelboyz feel much more like they are from the Black Orks line and closer to Middle Earth orcs. Cunning, dark, nasty, smart, you know proper stuff of nightmare orks rather than jovial football hooligans on steroids orks.


Most of the AoS factions are more fanciful in design I agree there, however at the same time we were getting that slowly with Old World. The Ossiarchs first 2 units were Old World End Times models; meanwhile the Daughters of Khaine were dancing around on rank and file bases before that. Part of it is simply that Old World had old models and a different approach to sculpting even without considering its need for rank and file. With some sculpt adjustments many of the AoS models could likely rank-up pretty well; and the big fancy hero/leader models were again coming for the game. We saw the big new Forgeworld sized Greater Demons appearing in End Times.

Old World did have this strange ability to be a low and high fantasy setting in the minds of fans at the very same time. Many of its depictions and gameplay models suggested really low fantasy - Game of Thrones early books style. With a few mages here and there but mostly grim dark peasants and monsters. At the same time the Lore had huge epic fantasy battles with vast powerful mages clashing; living siege engines; dragons; airships - and that's just the stuff Gotrek and Felix encountered.

AoS is very much firmly high/epic fantasy. But again GW could have done that with Old World after the "End Times" just shaking things up to a "New Times" or "After the Shattering" or something setting.



Again the whole move to AoS was a broken mess on multiple fronts. It's had some good results, but lets be honest that no sane company would have done what GW did at the time.

The move to AoS worked for them though. Maybe not as well as it theoretically could have under more optimal execution, but it still, long term, has paid off bigly.

Personally, I would have taken a slightly different approach - there certainly would not have been a 3 month period of silence between killing the setting and announcing AoS (supposedly not the original plan or intent per James Hewitt) that left everyone adrift and speculating, the follow-up would have been more clear-voiced and immediate. I also certainly would not have gak-canned the full rulebook that had been developed for the game at the last minute and put all the rules out in a brochure with no points system, etc. Setting wise, I also would have, I think, more directly linked the setting to the WHFB:

Rather than super-magical realm bubbles floating in the void I'd have had everyone living on the shattered landmasses of the old planet drifting through space, which would allow for the retention of existing locations and points of interest while allowing you to literally redraw the map as to how things fit together and how folks navigate from point to point and making the distances between parts of the world physically larger and non-contiguous, etc. It would only be like maybe a couple hundred years after the end times occurred, the majority of characters are dead as we knew them, some have ascended to godhood, but some live on the fringes of society in disgrace or exile, etc. The existing factions and lands are likewise now meaningless, the Empire, Bretonnia, etc. have endured a post-apocalyptic societal collapse, but new cultures and kingdoms formed around different shared identities and philosophies, etc. So you still have some continuity and through-lines across the setting, even though "the Empire" is dead and gone, one or more human factions (amongst others) have taken up residence in the fractured hellscape of its former location and built a new capital in the crater of what was once altdorf or something. It leaves fans with a less abstract understanding of how you got from A to B and how things changed and evolved, and leaves even more room for easter eggs and hints as to what happened to whom and where, etc.

Never understood how people can complain about AoS models when fantasy had this post ww2 thing:

WorldEdgePlayer wrote:
Never understood how people can complain about AoS models when fantasy had this post ww2 thing:

Spoiler:

That was very late 8th though, so practically knocking on the door of AoS.

The 6th Ed gyrocopter was much more reasonable for the setting.

That's just an extended gyrocopter. Let alone they had zeppelins for bombing runs.

Thing is lore wise that's accurate for what the Dwarves could do - we had even more similar things in Man O War.


I 100% agree that AoS now is doing really well - some bits are still a pain like the multiple realms which I just feel need GW to push out a dozen bits of high detail art for each to really show us how they live in those settings (not just fight). Otherwise a lot of it works and as I've said earlier, the creative juices are flowing and you can really just feel that the designers are being let loose on the setting in a great way that's really let GW push more original designs of their own.


The only thing that feels like its holding its back are still things like the Dark Elves and bits of CoS that aren't human - or things like old Skaven models. So things where we aren't sure what GW are going to do or where we are waiting for an expected major expansion.


Heck some of the army splintering worked really well. I'd argue whlist most felt flat/dull/or failed - Death and Chaos Demons have splintered REALLY well into separate forces that really benefit. Esp Demons - having a well rounded army per god really feels very lore accurate and way more potentially fun than all in 1 army where you can't really give each god too much because the other gods are doing their bit.

Personally I'm really looking forward to GW one day doing new demon models! It's shocking that in 30-40 years we still have the same demon model concepts. I want to see other demons for Slaanesh not just fiends and seekers

Well for Skaven there's that rumour that won't go away that they're one side of 4th ed in the summer. In which case they'll get the full revamp that goes with that.

Dark elves and dwarves i feel will get the next Cities refresh. They'll become more in line with the new range and the older stuff will get kicked to old world. To be frank, i feel something dwarfish will come before they get an old world release.

Yep strong rumours that they'll be the other half of a new edition - which will be phenomenal for them as that's just the kind of bulk of releases in one go to really give GW room to replace a lot of old sculpts and have some breathing room to add some new ones.

The "strong rumours" about a skaven range refresh are just a bunch of vague favs from Whitefang in the AoS forum. There's nothing else, nothing, negative, zero patatero, just copium from despertate fans thinking that GW will care about skavens for 2 goddamn minutes. Too many years waiting for them to deliver to raise my hype up and not think that skavens are the new bretonians.

Stop saying "this is most likely to happen" because I can promise you no one on the fanbase knows, theres no data nor more rumours about this, and youre fooling either other por despertate skaven fans, or yourselves. Until a literal trailer/camera potato isnt shown, there are no ratmen under Altdorf...

Whitefang has had a near 100% accuracy rate. Even if he's vague, there's a strong possibility.

Garrac wrote:
The "strong rumours" about a skaven range refresh are just a bunch of vague favs from Whitefang in the AoS forum. There's nothing else, nothing, negative, zero patatero, just copium from despertate fans thinking that GW will care about skavens for 2 goddamn minutes. Too many years waiting for them to deliver to raise my hype up and not think that skavens are the new bretonians.

Stop saying "this is most likely to happen" because I can promise you no one on the fanbase knows, theres no data nor more rumours about this, and youre fooling either other por despertate skaven fans, or yourselves. Until a literal trailer/camera potato isnt shown, there are no ratmen under Altdorf...

Ah. Whitefang has just been incredibly lucky guessing correctly before?

I mean you DO know whitefang's track record right? Surely you wouldn't claim whitefang is wrong without at least having slight clue about his track record like some noob would you?

Tallonian4th wrote:
Any glaring red flags experienced players are seeing?

GW wrote it.
They are releasing ancient plastic kits at a markup.
The rules follow 40k's model (multiple overpriced books rendered obsolete in short order).

It's as obvious a minimum effort nostalgia cash-grab as one can get. Don't fall for it.

tneva82 wrote:

Garrac wrote:
The "strong rumours" about a skaven range refresh are just a bunch of vague favs from Whitefang in the AoS forum. There's nothing else, nothing, negative, zero patatero, just copium from despertate fans thinking that GW will care about skavens for 2 goddamn minutes. Too many years waiting for them to deliver to raise my hype up and not think that skavens are the new bretonians.

Stop saying "this is most likely to happen" because I can promise you no one on the fanbase knows, theres no data nor more rumours about this, and youre fooling either other por despertate skaven fans, or yourselves. Until a literal trailer/camera potato isnt shown, there are no ratmen under Altdorf...

Ah. Whitefang has just been incredibly lucky guessing correctly before?

I mean you DO know whitefang's track record right? Surely you wouldn't claim whitefang is wrong without at least having slight clue about his track record like some noob would you?

Do you also know how vague are the original likes, right? How LITTLE information do they hold? How its not the first time the skaven fans get their hype up for whitefang gossiping for then GW to deliver only the bare minimum like some noob, would you?

Whitefang can be liking for a whole range refresh with 20 kits, a warcry warband, or another underworlds band, or just a lord mini. It wouldnt be the first time.

I won't run into desperation, neither consume copium for this time. Trailer or nothing.