NEW FAQs, Compendium, Forgeworld

[polarbear]

39 minutes ago, herohammer said:

I agree with Envyus in thinking that for the most part the old WHB setting was much better fleshed out than AOS is. A lot of this had to do with the fact that it had 30 years to slowly build up fluff by the end, but I can't help but concur that I think jettisoning all of the old setting holdovers seems premature at a point when so little has been done both in terms of fluff and gameplay mechanics to flesh out the new setting and factions.

IMO, making a harder break with the old stuff is good for the AoS fluff. My biggest issue accepting the current setting is all the holdover armies/characters that somehow got dragged into it 10,000 years or so later. I would have actually liked a much harder break from the start, or a setting that was closer in time to the old world. 

[Tidings]

I'm totally understanding that GW needs to move away from the Old World. It is sad but AoS is a clean slate and new creations like the Kharadron Overlords are awesome. But @AGPO said what I've been trying to say very well. The timing of the keyword changes feels poor, because there are no new models/releases to accompany them. Wanderers got new allegiance abilities but there are now even less Wanderers to field a list from. Most of their synergies are gone and at this point, anyone who has a collection or is continuing to buy the recently repackaged Wanderers is confused how they can even make use of the new Wanderer allegiance. You can't even take Waywatchers or Wardancers as allies lol.

Wanderers were not a competitive, tournament winning army where people HAD to go collect old, oop models. Wanderers were an army that was sorta torn apart when the Sylvaneth half was taken away, but still fun to play. Now that half they keywords don't matchup, I don't really get why they even bothered to release abilities for them, unless they are planning to release more Wanderers soon. If not, may as well let the old models still be played as ONE army until they finally release new Aelves, no? Is this line of thinking really that unreasonable?

[Jharen]

19 minutes ago, Tidings said:

Now that half they keywords don't matchup, I don't really get why they even bothered to release abilities for them, unless they are planning to release more Wanderers soon. If not, may as well let the old models still be played as ONE army until they finally release new Aelves, no? Is this line of thinking really that unreasonable?

Perhaps they plan on dropping the faction altogether in the future.  It's hard to say.  But allowing allegiances and synergies between older armies (that they may be redoing/canceling) with newer armies that have been more established in the current system, could cause unnecessary headaches for balancing.  They need to narrow down their armies and interactions.  Working to balance a game with a smaller more controlled set of faction interactions and synergies is just easier to do.  I'm fairly sure we're going to see more phased out eventually too, and this is just yet another step in the complete phase out of factions they feel have no place in their new settings as they try to distance the current game from the game that was.  I do think their method of doing this has been a bit slow, and for some feels like someone removing the band-aid slow and painfully.  Of course if they'd just broke ties right from the start it would have caused an entirely different uproar the likes of which may have killed their chances of an AoS launch altogether.  They are between a rock and a hard place with their long time fans I think, and trying to please everyone is impossible.

[Baron Klatz]

"GW is spending virtually no effort on promoting the AOS IP in terms of video games or other properties while still focusing on the Old World in the form of games like Vermintide. It seems to me that by making WFB and WF40k more visibility in the broader "nerd" media sphere of consciousness GW if just creating a situation where potential customers either get turned off to the idea of taking up their tabletop games or else jump straight into 40k never to give AOS a second look. "

GW doesn't decide who promotes the games, they put the licenses up for sell and sees what companies bite.

Companies know the salty Old World fans are a gold mine right now and will buy up any property for it despite how shoddy the game is (man-of-war) or expensive the dlcs(TWW).

They only put up the AoS license for sell last year. It'll be years before any kind of games will come out for it.

And as for Envyus's complaint they should've kept the Old World, we'd still be in this exact same situation but with the Aold Wyrld,  all the renames, same gameplay changes and a high fantasy old world that kills off the Brets and Tombs without any of the uncharted kingdoms AoS has so you can't even justify an expy of them is there.

Old Guard would go from today's "they killed the Old World" to "they ruined the Old World!" and we'd be here arguing about old armies regardless.

 

[Baron Klatz]

@Jharen,  The problem there is that Wanderers have clear mentions in the lore, a meaningful connection to Alarielle, and have several shout-outs on the Facebook as well as receiving those high elves units for their army.

IIt'll be far harder to write them out than stuff that was neither mentioned nor supported. (Exception to the warsphinx whom Archaon fought)

[Jharen]

@Baron Klatz That's a good point, yes, but they may be trying to distance the army from the game as we know it currently,  at least mechanically, in order to 'clear the clutter' a bit.   It's possible they plan to revisit this faction at a later time, after they've established a foundation that is more solid to build upon (game mechanics wise) with the current major armies and their synergies/abilities.  I could be way off, I don't work for GW, I don't know their overall plan here of course.  I just know that AoS (over the past year especially) has gotten rather...'patch worked' in its appear as a product.  There's so many ins and outs and cross referencing of this and that to older models but then more recent scrolls for newer older models that need to check the app but can sometimes use the compendium blah blah.  It was becoming a mess.  They needed to clean house of a lot of the stuff and I feel like that's what's going on here.

[Baron Klatz]

That's certainly a understandable theory, the clutter was pretty visible at times.

It's just rather hard to imagine Wanderers getting any form of axe between having such a position in the lore and selling fairly well.

There's a number of theories in my mind for what GW could do for them that ranges from battletome to rebooted line (Wanderer keywords kept but none-Wanderers replaced) but at the end of the day only GW knows what's in store so we'd best just carry on and see what comes.

[Davariel]

Thinking about this some more, I think GW have overall done a good job in doing what's right for AoS, both as a game and as a setting. Getting rid of all the old characters is the right move for the AoS narrative, even if it means losing unique warscrolls. Tidying things up so there aren't multiple versions of warscrolls floating around cuts down on confusion and helps define the setting more clearly.

Having said that, I think GW also needs to follow through and properly focus on developing parts of AoS to replace what was lost. That means bringing in new characters and warscrolls to fill the gaps in armies (especially the poor aelf armies which are fragmented enough already). It means fully commiting to developing the setting and fleshing out all the factions that are actually going to stick around, not just releasing new factions and another campaign starring Stormcasts as protagonists.

Honestly, I think GW has done the right thing... but it could have been done more smoothly. Losing Teclis and his unique, tactical spell would be less of a blow if a new aelf mage had already received the same spell, for instance. More communication about what's coming could help with this, but it's also a matter of actually giving attention where it's needed most. The situation with Tomb Kings would be more palatable if Death had gotten *any* significant attention in the last 2(!!!) years. 

As far as the actual compendium scrolls themselves go... well, GW clearly put a lot of effort into reworking them and making them more AoS appropriate, and I'm grateful. They didn't have to do that at all - they could have straight up deleted them, or left them as they were. But this too feels like the job's only half done - it's absolutely inexplicable that they put in the effort to go through and alter/weaken just about every Bretonnian warscroll, but didn't even bother to update their points (which were generally balanced or if anything, slightly overcosted) or awkward unit sizes. Bizarre.

Put simply, I think GW is on the right path with AoS; there's just a bit more work to be done before it can fully stand on its own. 

[TheOtherJosh]

... It'll be far harder to write them out than stuff that was neither mentioned nor supported. (Exception to the warsphinx whom Archaon fought)

There was a pair of Necrosphinxes in Shyish that the Bloodborne fought in the "Call of Archaon" novel as I recall. On the top of a realmgate.

And there were bone giants as well in the novels. (Don't recall which one...)

[Baron Klatz]

Yeah, Necrosphinxes are what I meant.

[Kamose]

11 hours ago, Auticus said:

However, in perusing forums and facebook groups today the rage seems off the chart and I am also confused as to why that is.  I'm not seeing the monstrous big deal about tomb kings, for example.  You can still play them.  Or Dark Elves.  I own both full armies of these and can still play them.  Could someone shed some light for me why we're a few notches shy of seeing people burning armies on youtube again from this release? 

The reason you don't understand the reason for all the rage is because there isn't actually a legitimate reason for all the rage.  As with most online discussions, let hyperbole and rage be your watchwords.

You are correct of course.  Everyone can still play with all their models.  No models have been invalidated, only some army builds at specific points levels have to change now.  After 14 years in this hobby I've found that most of the anger during these transitions boils down to a couple of things.  Some of it comes from fears that amount to , "...my army may not be as easy to win with as I want it to be."  Some of it also comes from worries that, "...the way I want to build/have been building my army might not be as efficient/powerful as I want it to be." But these things are to be expected when a big update like GHB2017 is released.  These are the facts of life for Wargaming.  Rules change, army lists change, the ways we play change.

What's truly baffling is the notion that GW are somehow being petty or insulting towards their customers by slowly (seriously, folks, its been ongoing for 2 years now) distancing Legacy armies and removing keyword synergies with supported armies.  How exactly is it petty that they provided and updated, for free, rules for models they do not sell and make no money from.  The fact is that they actively lose money and customers to the 2nd hand market due to the presence of these rules.  How is it insulting that they have been providing and still provide veteran players with the means to play with their entire collections, even those models that GW does not sell anymore?  How can anyone look at the support they have freely provided and think that is more insulting than releasing AoS with the announcement that all Tomb Kings and Brettonia players can trash their armies because they have no rules in the new game?

The release of the original pdf's was intended to tide people over until the Grand Alliance Books were released.  The reason that more than 18 months later, they are still updating the Compendium rules, in spite of lost business, can only be due to their respect for the players, the models they've released in the past, and the years of lore they've created for Warhammer.  There is literally no other reason to support Legacy armies, and that is the exact opposite of being insulting and petty. 

 

[awcamawn]

2 hours ago, Baron Klatz said:

@Jharen,  The problem there is that Wanderers have clear mentions in the lore, a meaningful connection to Alarielle, and have several shout-outs on the Facebook as well as receiving those high elves units for their army.

1 hour ago, Baron Klatz said:

It's just rather hard to imagine Wanderers getting any form of axe between having such a position in the lore and selling fairly well.

Are there some mentions of Wanderers in the AoS lore that I'm unaware of? The only bits of fluff I could ever find are the paragraph at the top of the Wood Elves compendium, the couple paragraphs on their intro page in the GA: Order book, and a passing mention in the Sylvaneth's fluff pages in GA: Order. To be clear, I'm not trying to get smart with you!  But if they have had any mention in the novels or anywhere else I would truly love to hear about it! I've been trying to catch up with the lore since I got into the hobby I'm happily surprised to hear them referred to having a solid position within the lore, as I've looked for mentions of them but haven't found any. Granted I haven't actually read or listened to most of what is out there, mostly looked at summaries and reviews and such. I did listen to the Wardens of the Everqueen audiobook, and when they mentioned the humans who fought and died for Alarielle at the beginning of the age of Chaos I was like - pfft, ya right, those were totally pre-wanderering Wanderer aelfs right? Was probably just a translation quirk by the Lady of Vines. 

As to their connection to Alarielle, has this ever been stated outright? It seems heavily implied given that fully one third of their unit options are former handmaids and bodyguards to one form of Alarielle/Ariel, and would certainly help to explain why Sisters of the Watch are now Wanderer models, but we don't really know their current relationship. Are they exiled, self-imposed or otherwise? Will they wander back to Ghyran now that Alarielle is once again ascendant? Anyway... off topic...

31 minutes ago, Davariel said:

It means fully commiting to developing the setting and fleshing out all the factions that are actually going to stick around, not just releasing new factions and another campaign starring Stormcasts as protagonists.

Tying in what I was rambling about, I am really excited and optimistic that this will happen. What's next for those crazy Daughters of Khaine? How about a campaign or novel or something pitting grots and spiders and squigs against some insane skaven engineer and his experiments? I feel like there are many, many stories to tell and they're in a place in the lore where the Realmgate Wars are dying down and they can start really exploring the realms now that the overall stage is set. Sure, now the Blightwar is gonna go down, but what else? The mortal realms are supposed to be huge, right? 

[Baron Klatz]

Those are mostly the Wanderer lore mentions, yes. There's only a few more afterward with a quick mention that they reconciled with Alarielle after the Season of War due to abandoning it during the age of chaos. (besides that iit's just Facebook putting them in a archer competition with other shooters and a mention of them killing Skaven outside Hammerhal)

The human part isn't a typo, there were numerous human kingdoms in the realm with the capital of the Lantic Empire being there during the age of myth.

Josh even notes that there's numerous knightly orders there (one member of which will show ip in Eight Lamentations) that are split in their duties but one of which is guarding Sylvaneth soul-pods.

As for Blightwar, someone mentioned it's to be a timeline filler as it's taking place between the realmgate wars and seasons of war. So GW might be fleshing out that timeskip.(not 100% confirmed by me though)

 

@Kamose, Hear hear!

[The Cranky Dwarf]

I know it's not a pressing matter but does anyone see a mention of my boy Slambo anywhere? He's not in the compendium, gh17, or faq?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk

[awcamawn]

Per his description on the GW webstore: "Slambo includes a Warscroll, which includes points for fielding him in Matched Play games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar, and is supplied with a Citadel 40mm Round base."

Maybe this means the digital warscroll link in the webstore will be updated to show his matched play points at the bottom of the warscroll, a la the new Rogue Idol warscroll. 

Either way, the Azyr army builder in the app has been updated with the new GHB 2017 points, and he's listed at 80 points under Slaves to Darkness there still.

[Tidings]

3 hours ago, Jharen said:

Perhaps they plan on dropping the faction altogether in the future.  It's hard to say.  But allowing allegiances and synergies between older armies (that they may be redoing/canceling) with newer armies that have been more established in the current system, could cause unnecessary headaches for balancing.  They need to narrow down their armies and interactions.  Working to balance a game with a smaller more controlled set of faction interactions and synergies is just easier to do.  I'm fairly sure we're going to see more phased out eventually too, and this is just yet another step in the complete phase out of factions they feel have no place in their new settings as they try to distance the current game from the game that was.  I do think their method of doing this has been a bit slow, and for some feels like someone removing the band-aid slow and painfully.  Of course if they'd just broke ties right from the start it would have caused an entirely different uproar the likes of which may have killed their chances of an AoS launch altogether.  They are between a rock and a hard place with their long time fans I think, and trying to please everyone is impossible.

If they plan to drop the faction, why release allegiance abilities now?

The removal of Wanderer keywords makes the Wanderers worse than they already are, since now they have 1/4 their original faction size and less synergy than ever. I don't think balancing was an issue for them - they weren't remotely viable at a competitive level.

They release new rules for a faction, indicating they are continuing to support it (at least the models still in production) a bit longer. Then instead of just keeping the Wanderer keyword on old stuff, they remove it. This makes it harder to actually use the new rules they just released for the faction. On top of that, it makes the Warscrolls LESS organized, since now Wood Elves and Wanderers are two separate factions instead of just all being Wanderers. 

It seems far more logical to me to release rules for Wanderers and keep the Wanderer keyword another year while developing an actual Aelf release. This way people who like BUYING Elves can continue using Wanderers while waiting for new releases to migrate over to. Sure you can still play mixed order, but again, why did they bother making more of a mess out of old warscrolls and add new Wanderer allegiance abilities if they want you to play mixed order?

Yeah it's definitely a tough situation. They do need to phase old stuff out, or blend it into knew stuff. And you're right they can't just abruptly do it. But I am honestly so baffled by how they've done this. If they just kept the keyword around until an Aelf release arrives, people would be super happy, and it would just make the game cleaner. 

[Envyus]

7 hours ago, Sheriff said:

I got into this game through Total War. Awesome awesome game. I really really love Skarsnik and so started a sigmar army in the same image (goblins trolls and spiders). 

I refuse to call them the lame new names but cannot fault the game itself. I think it's better than wfb that I played as a kid. 

I was actually thinking of bring up Total Warhammer earlier. Stating it must be weird for the players of that game which advertises the miniatures as well to find out the setting is different and none of the characters we are playing with there are around anymore. (Moonclan were hit pretty hard by Skarnik becoming a generic goblin with the FAQ sadly.)

However I do think AoS is a better game myself. I agree there, I dislike the new setting, but I find the game fine. Honestly this time was honestly the maddest I have ever been about AoS. Generals Handbook and most of the upcoming stuff I thought was cool. But them removing all of the old characters just really upset me.   

 

7 hours ago, AGPO said:

This is exactly the type of post @Ben was talking about in the anti-negativity thread. What exactly is it about Tzeentch arcanites, Karadrons or Sylvaneth that's utterly characterless and bland that couldn't also be said about a fair share of the WFB factions. 

I'm not over the moon about the treatment of some of the compendium armies but this is just unconstructive.

Sorry I was talking about the Compendium armies. They are now generic and characterless. Lots of the current armies still have character and stuff. (Though I preferred the Tree People as part of the Wood elves.)

[GammaMage]

I would like to suggest that people read the novels before claiming that Age of Sigmar has no lore and factions are bland. Of course old Fanstasy had a much more fleshed out world, it existed for decades. We only have a couple years of Age of Sigmar so far. But there are some great novels already! The Hallowed Knights, for example, have a lot of really great characters fleshed out over a number of books. The journey of the sylvaneth leader, the Lady of Vines, is very interesting, as it includes her changing perspective on people who aren't trees. Fury of Gork has very interesting revelations about how orruks think, and an Astral Templars chamber who are very different to other Stormcast.

 

And then there's the Plague Garden novel. Plague Garden is amazing. The part of the Blightwar trailer where Horticuluos say Nurgle is displeased? That's a direct consequence of what the Hallowed Knights do in that novel.

[jamierk]

I would like to suggest that people read the novels before claiming that Age of Sigmar has no lore and factions are bland. Of course old Fanstasy had a much more fleshed out world, it existed for decades. We only have a couple years of Age of Sigmar so far. But there are some great novels already! The Hallowed Knights, for example, have a lot of really great characters fleshed out over a number of books. The journey of the sylvaneth leader, the Lady of Vines, is very interesting, as it includes her changing perspective on people who aren't trees. Fury of Gork has very interesting revelations about how orruks think, and an Astral Templars chamber who are very different to other Stormcast.
 
And then there's the Plague Garden novel. Plague Garden is amazing. The part of the Blightwar trailer where Horticuluos say Nurgle is displeased? That's a direct consequence of what the Hallowed Knights do in that novel.

The storyline books through the real gate wars are excellent, one of the reasons I jumped in to AoS. I just don't understand why they stopped writing them? They started writing these tales from novels instead and they lost the epic narrative that was going on?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Kyriakin]

6 hours ago, Jharen said:

They are between a rock and a hard place with their long time fans I think, and trying to please everyone is impossible.

The put themselves between a rock and a hard place by destroying the Old World.

If it was too limited, they could have fudged some "portal" between the new Mortal Realms and the world that was. Everyone's happy, as the sudden appearance of Ghorros Warhoof in the new world wouldn't have ruined anyone's immersion.

[Baron Klatz]

40 minutes ago, jamierk said:

 

The storyline books through the real gate wars are excellent, one of the reasons I jumped into AoS. I just don't understand why they stopped writing them? They started writing these tales from novels instead and they lost the epic narrative that was going on?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Isn't the conclusion of that storyline with the capture of the All-gates from chaos and the timeline forward the reason? (In case that was spoilers don't worry, the All-gates had a lot of twists  )I

[Baron Klatz]

25 minutes ago, Kyriakin said:

They put themselves between a rock and a hard place by destroying the Old World.

If it was too limited, they could have fudged some "portal" between the new Mortal Realms and the world that was. Everyone's happy, as the sudden appearance of Ghorros Warhoof in the new world wouldn't have ruined anyone's immersion.

As I said before, copyright and the need to take out models that other companies were duplicating would've warped the Old World to a unrecognizable state anyway.

No real point In keeping It at that point when even TWW players are scratching their heads why Bretonnia's Skaven country and Altdorf Is New Azyrheim.

I do wish the legacy stuff was handled better, regardless.

[Kyriakin]

I was planning a Soulblight army, and really loved the fluffy rules for some of the compendium characters.

Reading the page where Vlad and Isabella have become "Vampire Lord" has somewhat sucked the life out of my plan. Soulblight may have gained in terms of game mechanics and didn't lose too many options in the crudest sense, but now really lack character. It's a lot worse for Wanderers, though, who have lost a tonne of options if they want to use their allegiance ability.

Ironically, by getting removed in unison, TK sort of dodge the bullet. It's those kind of tweener "half in, half out" armies that are feeling the keyword pain here.

Edit: Thinking about it more, I can't help but feel that allowing the old identity as allies (e.g. Wanderers can take Wood Elves, in addition to their other stated allies, etc.) may have been a compromise. I mean, was Isabella Von Carstein really at risk of breaking the meta?

[Baron Klatz]

You never know, as was the case for mini-Archaon and certainly Teclis & Tyrion,  Isabella might be gone from the past because there's plans for the future.

 

[Arkiham]

so. what was the original topic?